NBCU, Equity Firms Buy The Weather Channel

NBC Universal and two financial partners reached an agreement Sunday to buy The Weather Channel for an undisclosed price around $3.5 billion. The buyers include private-equity outfits Bain Capital and Blackstone Group, which will help to pay for the deal and presumably will be bought out later by lead partner NBCU. The seller is closely held newspaper and broadcasting conglomerate Landmark Communications. The properties being sold are the TWC cable networks, weather.com and Weather Services International, which supplies information to local television stations and will help to beef up the NBC Weather Plus service mounted by broadcast TV stations. Also included are Enterprise Electronics, a manufacturer of meteorological radars, and Landmark's interest in Pelmorex, a Canadian weather company. The deal will give NBCU parent General Electric a fresh story to present to investors in its second-quarter earnings call, which is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Friday. GE disappointed Wall Street with poor first-quarter earnings that led to a sell-off of its stock.
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