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Dow Jones to buy MarketWatch for $519M
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Mon, Nov 15, 2004
Source UPI
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NEW YORK -- The company that owns the Wall Street Journal has agreed to pay $519 million to buy the financial news Web site CBS MarketWatch.
The weekend deal, which came after an auction that included bidders like Viacom, parent of CBS, Yahoo and the New York Times, is subject to approval by shareholders of San Francisco-based MarketWatch and government regulators, the New York Times reported Monday. Owning MarketWatch, a free news site at cbsmarketwatch.com, expands Dow Jones' focus from primarily using paid subscriptions in its online operations, like The Wall Street Journal Online, to using a free site that depends on advertising revenues. The paid-subscription model has limited the company's ability to cash in on the recent surge in online advertising because the Dow Jones site's audience is confined to subscribers, who number about 701,000. In comparison, CBS MarketWatch's site had 5.8 million unique visitors in September, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Dow Jones is expected to run MarketWatch as a separate site, though it is likely to lose the CBS part of its name and will no longer benefit from in-kind advertising with the network. Copyright 2004 by United Press International
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