NBC-iVillage Marriage Already Loveless And Dull After One Year

from the nice-and-functional dept

Last year, when NBC bought out iVillage, the women-oriented online content firm, it looked like a classic case of major media company thinking it could evolve by buying its way onto the internet. Predictably, the company tried to portray the move as something more than a land grab, trotting out terms like "synergies", as it extolled the potential for cross promotions between iVillage and the Today show. The New York Times reports on how the marriage is doing one year later, and not surprisingly, many of these lofty ambitions haven't panned out. Although ad revenue has been solid, iVillage hasn't shown itself to be a strategic asset. Cross promotions with Today have been a total flop and other attempts to put iVillage content on TV have also been a failure. At this point, the deal is panning out very much as we anticipated. From a purely monetary perspective, you could argue that NBC made out okay. But if it really thought that the purchase could help it successfully orient its business around the internet, iVillage hasn't had much of an effect.

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