Altice USA announced a deal to buy millennial-news streaming startup Cheddar for $200 million.
It’s a successful exit for three-year-old Cheddar and its founder, Jon Steinberg: Altice USA was among the investors in Cheddar, which had raised a total of $54 million in funding. Other investors included Amazon, AT&T, Comcast Ventures, Raine Ventures, Liberty Global, Goldman Sachs, the New York Stock Exchange, Lorne Michaels’ Broadway Video, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Cheddar will become part of Altice USA News, the New York-area cable operator’s local news division whose properties include the News 12 Networks (available on to Optimum cable customers) and international and current affairs news network i24News.
Steinberg, a former BuzzFeed exec who founded the company in 2016 and is Cheddar’s CEO, will join Altice USA to lead Altice News.
“Cheddar has demonstrated an innovative approach to live news while building an engaged audience, solid followership and a strong brand,” Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei said in announcing the deal. “As one of Cheddar’s early investors, we have enjoyed our partnership with Jon and admire the entrepreneurial spirit, energy and smart disruptive mentality that he brings to the news business.”
Cheddar operates two networks — the recently rebranded Cheddar Business, positioned as a CNBC-style financial and business network for millennials, and Cheddar News, which it previously called Cheddar Big News. Cheddar’s linear programming is available to 40 million pay-TV households via pacts with Dish’s Sling TV, AT&T’s DirecTV Now, Hulu With Live TV, YouTube TV, FuboTV, Philo, and PlayStation Vue, as well as on free platforms including Roku devices and Viacom’s Pluto TV.
Altice USA said the Cheddar deal is expected to close in the next two months, contingent on regulatory approvals.
Cheddar itself spent around $10 million on acquisitions. Last year, in two separate deals with Viacom, it bought RateMyProfessors.com (which has over 5 million users) and MTV Networks on Campus, which Cheddar used to launch CheddarU, a collegiate-focused news network that runs on 1,600 TV screens across 600 U.S. campuses.
Pictured above: Cheddar founder-CEO Jon-Steinberg (l.), Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei
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