Word: weatherly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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With rumors running rife about General Electric planning to unload NBC Universal altogether, some analysts think The Weather Channel acquisition was an effort to spruce up NBC's online portfolio (which also includes MSNBC.com and CNBC.com) before selling the entertainment arm to a digital media company such as Google (which owns YouTube) or Apple. "The Weather Channel would add some icing to the cake," says Nicholas Heymann, an analyst for Sterne Agee & Leach. As syndication fees have evaporated and profit margins have thinned, TV companies have become less attractive assets. GE "has to start lighting a fire under its stock...
Although $3.5 billion is a huge sum, NBC will foot only a fraction of the total bill. The Blackstone Group, Bain Capital, and NBC will reportedly pay just $600 million each upfront, and finance the balance. The Weather Channel's estimated $175 million annual earnings should help defray the debt...
...media category killer. Sheryl Crow named a song after it in 2002, and today it has an estimated 85 million viewers, many of whom are more than happy to tune in numerous times each day. It has also successfully adapted with the times: the channel's free, ad-supported weather service for cell phones is currently its fastest growing business, according to Anstrom...
Like wedding chapels and funeral homes, The Weather Channel has become a permanent institution. For many people, "there is a sense of mystery and power about the weather," says Anstrom. Business strategist Shahid Khan of IBB Consulting in Princeton, N.J., says, "The Weather Channel has a very loyal following. It has cornered the entire market." The promise of a daily forecast may not be as sexy as, say, the new iPhone, but it is just as much a cash...
...remains to be seen whether Gabriel's Revelation, and especially Knohl's interpretation, will weather the hot lights of fame. Even the authors of its initial research seem a little dubious about his claims that it is a dry run for the Easter story. But, as often happens in such cases, they seem better disposed to a slightly toned-down assertion: in this case, that the Gabriel tablet does indicate a very rare instance of the idea that a messiah might suffer - a notion introduced in Judaic thought centuries before by the prophet Isaiah but which supposedly went...