Discovery Communications, parent company of the Discovery Channel, TLC and Animal Planet, has made plans to acquire HowStuffWorks, which calls itself "the leading source of credible, unbiased, and easy-to-understand explanations of how the world actually works."
The news was originally reported in The Wall Street Journal, which named a price of $250 million.
Atlanta-based HowStuffWorks, which was founded in 1998 by North Carolina State University professor Marshall Brain (yes, that's his real name), pulls in about 3.8 million unique U.S. visitors per month, according to ComScore. Instead of issuing a press release to announce the acquisition, the site created a HowStuffWorks article in the "television" category called "The Future of Media is Now," explaining how the popularity of YouTube, video-enabled media players, and high-definition technology have created conditions ideal for such an acquisition.
According to the Wall Street Journal article, Discovery will integrate its own education-based video programming with HowStuffWorks articles and potentially factor HowStuffWorks into future broadcasts.
It's all part of a broader digital strategy for Discovery Communications; earlier this year, the company purchased the widely read environmental blog TreeHugger as a new-media property for its Planet Green network.
A representative for eco-blog TreeHugger has confirmed that the site has been acquired by Discovery Communications, parent company of the Discovery Channel, The Science Channel, Animal Planet, and several other properties. A report of the deal initially surfaced in the New York Post today.
A press release from Discovery and TreeHugger confirmed that the blog will be part of the upcoming Planet Green network, but financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The New York Post had suggested a $10 million price tag.
"TreeHugger.com is a strategic complement to our digital media portfolio, aligning perfectly with Discovery?s corporate values and the Planet Green initiative," Bruce Campbell, Discovery Communications' president of Digital Media, Emerging Networks and Business Development, said in a joint statement. "Bringing TreeHugger.com into the Discovery family gives it the resources to continue doing what it does best: bringing green living to the masses."
TreeHugger founder Graham Hill added, "Discovery Communications, with its global reach and high level of commitment to Planet Green, is launching the most significant effort in green media to date--and we?re excited to be part of it."
The New York Post is reporting that green-centric uberblog TreeHugger may have been purchased by Discovery Communications as a companion blog to its forthcoming new cable network, Planet Green. The new channel is slated for a launch in the first quarter of next year, and has already built up some buzz for its series Eco-Town, created in collaboration with actor and Prius poster boy Leonardo DiCaprio; an already-trendy eco-blog would indeed be a desirable companion for the company.
According to the Post's Peter Lauria, the price tag for TreeHugger was somewhere around $10 million.
The New York-based TreeHugger, which currently occupies the #18 slot on Technorati's ranking of the most popular blogs, claims to have raked in over 1.9 million unique visitors in June. It's no garage operation: the blog has about a dozen staffers on its payroll, and content is contributed by over 40 writers around the world. There's also a smattering of video and podcast content as well as an active community of readers, and TreeHugger has partnered with the likes of the Sundance Channel and Domino magazine on past collaborations.
If the Post article turns out to be true, it won't be too surprising, as Discovery engaged in a very similar strategy when it purchased PetFinder.com as a companion to the Animal Planet network. It'll also be the company's first acquisition under CEO David Zaslav.
We've put out a (paperless) note to TreeHugger for comment.
(Via PSFK)
- prev
- 1
- next
