Cable TV network The Weather Channel is on the market for a reported $5 billion or more, according to the NY Times.
As well as providing the leading cable weather channel, the company also has a big web presence, with Weather.com the 25th most popular site in the United States, according to Alexa. The Weather Channel provides data to a range of leading online destinations including MySpace, Yahoo and AOL and started offering mobile video forecasts with technology from Vantrix in October.
Potential buyers are said to include NBC, Comcast and News Corp.
It’s raining somewhere.
Yep – It’s raining something other that liquid for these guys if the sale goes through
^ no kidding. how old are you?
Weather is a commodity and a number of companies compete in that market. How is that worth 3x what Google paid for YouTube?
I think that the only likely buyer between those 3 is NBC.
Buyers:
1.) Comcast’s market cap is about $55 billion. That means that 9% of their worth would have to be spent. Is it really worth it for them?
2.) News Corp. (worth $60 billion) is actively trying to close the Dow Jones deal (if they’re not already done yet). Its also been reported that News Corp. sold 8 stations to help pay for the DJ deal.
3.) NBC’s parent company, GE is worth $370 billion or so. Since the Weather Channel is already making a high amount of revenue and the deal would only cost 1.3% of GE’s market value, it’d be worth it for them.
WTF? weather.com sucks. $5 billion? Hopefully Rupert buys it – that way we can get ALL of our news from a fair and balanced mega-corp.
weather.gov is free of ad-spam and straight to the facts. It’s probably where all those other sites get most of their info anyway!
The Weather Channel, very competitive site.
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I must admit, that’s a lucrative domain name. Even if there are too many weather websites out there, that comes of the top of an average person first. The channel, I’m sure I have it but umm I don’t even know which one is it.
Here we have a company with a lot of potential with a huge marketplace yet it gets a valuation a third that of a passing fad (facebook)? Something doesn’t make much sense, either they are way under priced or facebook is over priced
Jon
I think they need to work on to forecast accurately about any natural disaster in advance to alert people.
Does 5 billion make it sunny every day? If so, some one please make it happen.
Weather Channel? People still watch that on TV? Better yet, people use that online? It sucks, I swear it always says the opposite will happen.
Nothing beats Intellicast.com
Looking at the November uniques from weather.com it seems like they’re looking for around $1 billion valuation for the website of business, based on comparable sales.
That would leave around $4 billion for a channel that employs some 800 people, 125 of which are the core group, meteorologists.
Cable is old media, and not too many properties have been on sale, but I would say that they are not going to get $4 billion dollars for the cable side of business, unless their profitability proves otherwise.
“Web site, weather.com, are already attracting interest from some of the biggest names in media, including NBC, a unit of General Electric; the News Corporation; and Comcast”
This is interesting.
I’ve never seen a discussion of weather.com without the statement “weather.com sucks”, and this one is no exception (@#2). I got sick of weather.com, so I made my own barebones weather site (forecaster.ws).
Can someone explain why Alexa is still used for on-the-fly user statistics over Compete or Quantcast?
@Spiel
Actually intellicast.com is a WSI site and WSI is owned by Landmark Communications. This makes intellicast.com the sister site to weather.com.
WSI is also the provider of TWC’s computers and graphics systems. Of course, these two branches of Landmark Communications also share data. WSI targets industry, while TWC goes after the general consumer.
The Weather Channel is an enormously successful enterprise. It is by far the biggest independent basic cable channel left and virtually every big media company has tried to buy it at some point over the years. And its web site, like it or not, is one of the most successful properties on the web. This is a huge deal. Landmark will get very close to its $5 billion
.
It is also a deal that is far more important to the web than people know. The Weather Channel has been a major supporter of the National Weather Service and others who want to keep the weather data produced by the government free to anyone who wants to use it. That position has been very important in preventing Accuweather and its allies from using their influence in Congress to have bills passed that would prevent the government from giving away the data that taxpayers pay the government to collect. Though Accuweather no longer has its personal Senator, Rick Santorum, in the Senate to try and push through those bills, I am concerned that the Weather Channel might shift its position if it is bought by a major media conglomerate. Those bills would cripple the many independent weather sites on the web. They would also hurt the economy and cause the loss of jobs, because having the government produced weather data out there has produced a lot more of a vibrant weather economy than there would be if only a few companies were able to afford the data.
Weather.com is horrible (layout, design, ads) I hope the new owners redesign the site and hire real web people.
Social weather forecasting is what’s new in 2008: http://www.otherweather.com
Just popped into my head…
why doesn’t weather.google.com exist?
.rb
I own a company that makes horseshoes for horse-drawn carriages. I believe I will sell my company for 14 trillion dollars. Everyone needs horse shoes, right? Right?
I prefer weather.gov.
@ .rb : In Google, simply search for “San Diego weather” (substitute your city name)
Wow, that’s a bunch of money. All the comments remind me of an article I read a few months ago:
Internet Weather Forecast Accuracy
It’s a detailed study that concluded the following:
“In seeking high temperature forecasts, it looked best to use IntelliCast or The Weather Channel in the long term, but there wasn’t a clear leader in the short to mid term. BBC seemed unreliable in all cases, as well as MSN in the long term. The Weather Network, CNN and Unisys all had blemishes (3, 4 and 0 days in advance, respectively), but were generally in with the pack.
In seeking low temperature forecasts, IntelliCast and The Weather Channel were again the choice in the long term, joined by Unisys in the short term. BBC was still a dud in anything but the very short term, and MSN performed horribly in nearly all cases, as well as Accuweather in the long term.
Accuweather was the clear leader in anything greater than 10 days in advance, being the only site providing a weather forecast.”
No thanks, there isn’t that much weather in the world.
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This is a rare opportunity for one of the large media companies, or other potential buyer. The Weather Channel is a profitable and very well run company. It is poised to give some savvy buyer the competetive edge in feeding people’s insatiable appetite for weather. This company will dominate on television as well as the web for as far ahead as anyone can see.
i think this could be a good opportunity for google because the weather channel consists of a website and a tv station. they could start their video ads on the weather channel and possibly venture into weather predicting technology.