NBCU Spent $195 Million To Buy Back Half Of MSNBC.com

NBCUniversal spent $195 million to buy back the 50% of MSNBC.com that was owned by Microsoft.

The deal, which was signed last July, saw NBCU take control of the site and its employees, and redirected visitors to a new site called NBCNews.com. MSNBC.com is in the process of being transformed into a site dedicated to the politics-centric cable news outlet. It is a fascinating deal because websites tied to TV operations are rarely if ever broken out financially. The purchase price means that Microsoft and NBCU valued MSNBC.com at around ~$500 million. It is not a perfect science, but general traffic stats have MSNBC.com slightly behind CNN’s digital properties, and almost double that of Fox News Channel’s digital properties.