NBC Discovers Women Exist Online, Decides To Buy In
from the putting-lipstick-on-a-peacock- dept
While News Corp's buyout binge of social-networking startups is the equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig, NBC is hitting up the makeup aisle itself, announcing a purchase of women's oriented site iVillage for $600 million. Predictably, NBC executives are talking up the potential for synergies and cross promotion (like putting Today show clips on child care up on iVillage.com). In reality, the deal gives NBC more ad inventory to goose online sales. Come next year things will look good assuming everyone forgets that $600 million was spent on those sales. Usually, the strategic or synergistic argument is used as a way to justify a bad merger in economic terms (think ebay/Skype), but in this case it's the opposite. The deal is okay, probably neutral from an economic standpoint, but NBC still needs to make itself look cool, so they trot out tired explanations. And as long as big media still feels the need to reinvent itself, without altering their business model in any way, these deals will continue with the same justification.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Well Duh...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
primarily caters to women?
Basically, if there are already companies who provide this service and are doing an adequate job of doing such, what does NBC promise to bring to the table that the others are not already doing?
Sure, women buy make-up and they use computers... men buy products that women don't necessarily use - so what's the big deal about NBC discovering that women exist online - other than to just announced that NBC have just purchased a company that primarily caters to women.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: primarily caters to women?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]