Time Warner Withdrawals bid for The Weather Channelhttp://tvdecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/13/time-warner-withdraws-bid-for-weather-channel/A group led by NBC Universal now appears likely to acquire The Weather Channel, after Time Warner Inc. withdrew its bid for the channel on Friday.
Time Warner, which owns CNN and other news and information outlets, stepped away from the bidding due to price, according to an executive close to the transaction who refused to be identified because they were not authorized to speak about the negotiations. Bids were due Friday at noon, according to Reuters, which first reported Time Warner’s decision.
NBC Universal and two private equity firms, the Blackstone Group and Bain Capital, had submitted a bid of about $3.5 billion including debt, The New York Times reported on May 31.
Last week John Martin, the chief financial officer of Time Warner, said that a combination of CNN and The Weather Channel would give the company “a very, very interesting cross-platform play.” In conversations with Wall Street analysts, he has emphasized the need for “price discipline” in the bidding. Time Warner was said to be especially interested in Weather.com and the channel’s production facilities near Atlanta.
The Weather Channel, one of the premiere cable channel brands, is owned by Landmark Communications.
NBC could merge The Weather Channel with its upstart weather venture, NBC Weather Plus, and share some news resources with the channel.
The Weather Channel is the leading brand of weather information on television, reaching 95 million households and averaging an audience of 234,000 households at any given time. NBC Weather Plus is a name for a number of services, including a 24-hour network sponsored by local stations, a Web site, and short weather updates for NBC’s cable channels. Weather Plus has not yet turned a profit and is perceived as faltering.
