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Times Company to Buy About.com for $410 Million

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The New York Times Company announced this afternoon that it had agreed to acquire the online consumer information provider About.com from Primedia Inc., a magazine publisher, for $410 million in cash.

The acquisition is the biggest for the Times Company since it acquired The Boston Globe for $1.1 billion in 1993.

About.com operates a network of nearly 500 guides who create sites on thousands of topics from personal finance to consumer electronics. The company says About.com attracts 22 million unique visitors a month.

The Times Company, which owns NYTimes.com, Boston.com and more than 40 other Web sites, said that it expected strong revenue and profit growth from About.com and that the acquisition should add to its earnings in 2007. It said About.com would complement its existing portfolio of Web sites and strengthen and diversify the company's online advertising base.

"The global reach of About.com and opportunities for cross-promotion between its channels and our digital properties will be additive for both businesses," Janet L. Robinson, president and chief executive of the Times Company, said in a statement.

Primedia put About.com on the block earlier this year and executives close to the auction said at the time that the bidders included Google, Yahoo, the AOL unit of Time Warner and AskJeeves, along with the Times Company.

About.com was acquired by Primedia in October 2000 for $690 million in stock.

Primedia, which is controlled by the New York investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, is a leading owner of niche publications like Power Trend magazine, as well as Internet and television properties.

The Times Company said that About.com would operate as a distinct business division and that it expected the acquisition to be completed either late in this quarter or early in the second quarter. The acquisition was announced after the stock market closed. The Times Company's shares closed down 46 cents, at $38.25, on the New York Stock Exchange. Primedia's shares closed up 3 cents, at $4.05.

Also today, the Times Company announced that Martin A. Nisenholtz, chief executive of New York Times Digital, had been named senior vice president for digital operations at the company. Mr. Nisenholtz will oversee the company's Web sites including About.com.

Separately, the company announced that its board had nominated Lynn G. Dolnick, a member of the fourth generation of the Ochs-Sulzberger family, to stand for election as a director at the company's annual shareholders meeting on April 26. Two of the company's board members - Donald M. Stewart, president and chief executive of the Chicago Community Trust, and Jacqueline H. Dryfoos, a New York psychotherapist and also a member of the Ochs-Sulzberger family - are stepping down this year.

Along with The New York Times, The Boston Globe and the Web sites, the Times Company owns The International Herald Tribune, 16 regional newspapers, eight television stations and two New York City radio stations.

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