Altice USA (NYSE: ATUS), a US broadband communications and video services provider, is to acquire Cheddar, a digital-first news company, for $200m.
The transaction is expected to close in the next two months upon receipt of regulatory approval.
With this acquisition, Altice broadens its portfolio of news businesses by adding Cheddar’s digital-first, live business, general news and college network focused on young professional and millennial audiences.
Cheddar joins Altice USA News, complementing Altice’s hyperlocal and global news offerings that include the most watched news channel in the Optimum footprint News 12 Networks, and international and current affairs news network i24NEWS.
Cheddar Founder and CEO Jon Steinberg will join Altice USA to lead Altice News, including Cheddar, News 12 and i24NEWS.
Founded by Steinberg, President and Chief Operating Officer of BuzzFeed from 2010 to 2014, Cheddar is a networks company whose programming is available on Sling TV, DirecTV NOW, Hulu, YouTube TV, Comcast X1, Charter Spectrum, Sony PlayStation Vue, Snapchat, fuboTV, Philo, Amazon, Twitch, Twitter, 60% of smart TVs in the U.S., and Facebook.
The company currently broadcasts two live video news networks:
– Cheddar Business, which covers the most innovative executives, founders, products, and technologies transforming our lives and economy, and
– Cheddar News, a non-partisan general and headline news network.
The company, which broadcasts from the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, WeWork in Los Angeles, and the White House, owns the CheddarU network of 1,600 screens in the public spaces (gyms, cafeterias, student unions) of 600 college campuses. It also owns and operated the site RateMyProfessors.com, where over 5 million students go to rate and review their professors each month.
Its investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Raine Ventures, Altice USA, Comcast Ventures, AT&T, Ribbit Capital, The New York Stock Exchange, Goldman Sachs, Liberty Global, Amazon, Homebrew, WGI Group, 7 Global Capital, Antenna Group, and Dentsu Ventures.
Altice USA is one of the largest broadband communications and video services providers in the United States, delivering broadband, pay television, telephony services, Wi-Fi hotspot access, proprietary content and advertising services to approximately 4.9 million residential and business customers across 21 states through its Optimum and Suddenlink brands. The company operates a4, an advanced advertising and data business, which provides audience-based, multiscreen advertising solutions to local, regional and national businesses and advertising clients.
Altice also operates hyperlocal news network News 12 Networks and international news and current affairs network i24NEWS.
FinSMEs
30/04/2019