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Weather Channel Dressing Up For Sale; Could Fetch More Than $5 Billion

Weather Channel and its allied website Weather.com, part of Landmark Communications, are being put up for sale, reports Andrew Ross Sorkin at NYT. Suitors include NBC, Comcast (NSDQ: CMCSA) and Fox, the story says. Landmark, owned by the Batten family, also owns The Virginian-Pilot and The News & Record of Greensboro newspapers and about 50 other other smaller community newspapers…earlier last year it sold off its online video portal TotalVid to Zipidee.

On the online side, Weather.com ranks as the nation’s 18th-largest media site by traffic, with more than 32 million unique users in November, according to NetRatings…it also has deals with AOL (NYSE: TWX), Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) and MySpace. The digital side of course will play a big part in the final valuation.

The company is also looking to sell of its newspaper assets. JPMorgan Chase is advising Landmark on the sale of Atlanta-based Weather Channel, and Lehman Brothers is advising the company on the sale of its other media assets, the story says.

More info in this Virginian-Pilot story.

Jan 2, 2008 11:59 PM ET

Posted In: Media & Publishing, TV, landmark communications, weather channel

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