It's finally official:
A&E acquires Lifetime
A&E's Abbe Raven will lead the merged entity
By Diego Vasquez
Aug 28, 2009
Lifetime, coming off the successful acquisition of “Project Runway” from NBC Universal’s Bravo, has been itself acquired by an NBC Universal-owned company.
A&E Television Networks, home to A&E and the male-skewing History Channel, among others, yesterday merged with Lifetime Entertainment Services, home to female-skewing Lifetime and all its sister networks.
Disney and Hearst had split ownership of Lifetime previously. A&E Television Networks is jointly owned by Disney, Hearst and NBC Universal.
The new deal gives NBC Universal the option of leaving within the next 15 years, but all three parent companies have stakes in the new resulting company.
The acquisition was announced more than two months after the first report about a possible deal came out.
Analysts say that the deal could result in cost savings thanks to a more streamlined operation and combining ad sales departments.
But the merger is not expected to change the programming strategies of any of the Lifetime networks.
The new entity will be overseen by Abbe Raven, currently president of A&E, who has been with the company for more than two decades.
Andrea Wong, Lifetime’s CEO, will report to Raven, though it’s unclear what her reaction has been to the deal. She has yet to comment to the press.
Lifetime is winding down a solid summer during which it launched comedy “Drop Dead Diva,” one of the summer’s top 10 new cable shows in total viewers, and saw drama “Army Wives” continue to thrive.
But its biggest success was clearly “Runway,” which smashed records last week with its sixth-season debut, drawing a series-best 4.2 million total viewers.
A&E in recent years has refocused its programming strategy to draw younger viewers, as has History, while maintaining its focus on men.
Lifetime, too, has been trying to attract younger women while shedding its reputation as carrier of weepy movies.
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