By Charles E. Roop
I just saw this on the crawler on CNN. I was surprised, but relieved. Months ago, I read that the Landmark Communications-owned The Weather Channel and weather.com was up for sale. I remember reading the potential buyers including NBC Universal being one of them. But one potential buyer I read that scared the daylights out of me was News Corp. Ahhh! Thank God that didn’t happen (if so, you could of kissed Forecast Earth and other environmental segments goodbye).
Instead, it was released on the AP wire last night that NBC-U plans on buying The Weather Channel and it’s website for $3.5 billion.
Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but a person familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity said the purchase price was $3.5 billion in cash. NBC was joined in the deal by the private equity firms The Blackstone Group LP and Bain Capital LLC.
[...]
NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., became the sole bidder for The Weather Channel last month after Time Warner Inc. dropped out. CBS Corp. and cable industry leader Comcast Corp. had also expressed interest earlier.
The AP article states that the station will be a separate entity at it’s current studios in Atlanta. The transition should be complete by the end of the year.
This leaves me to wonder what will happen to the station. Will the name change to the NBC Weather Plus Channel? Weather Plus is a digital weather and news service launced in 2004 and local NBC affiliates use that name for their weather departments.
Will they change their studios (after they just spiced-up some of their studios for their primetime and AM weather shows)? Style? Anything? I guess we will see in the coming months.
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