Discovery And Revision3: Peanut Butter ‘n Chocolate

I’m at an industry event yesterday in NYC and I run into the affable Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3. He follows this little blog occasionally, and we’ve spoken at numerous industry events. (Jim is also cool, geeky and provocative… important attributes of “emerging media mavens”).

For no particular reason, I asked him when someone was going to acquire his studio. He smiles and says, “acquire or invest?” Moments later a Google guy tipped me off to the TechCrunch rumor earlier this week that Discovery was acquiring Revision3. Psychic powers? Apparently.

Well chocolate and peanut butter merge, friends.

All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka just reported that Discovery Communications acquired Revision3. Says Kafka:

Discovery isn’t disclosing a purchase price, but multiple sources familiar with the transaction tell me the cable guys will pay around $30 million for the start-up. The company ended up raising about $10 million during its six-year lifespan, with the last chunk coming from a group of investors that included Mark Cuban.

Revision3 will continue operating out of its San Francisco headquarters, and make its own web shows. Obviously Discovery will want to figure out ways to leverage Revision3’s experience in online-video audience development and distribution. 

Revision3 now has Discovery’s dollars, distribution and clout with advertisers, and Discovery gets to learn how to produce video more efficiently. “We produce content on a $500,000 to $750,000 an hour scale,” said Discovery’s digital leader JB Perrette. “Producing something at a tenth of that cost means it has to be very different.”

For those reasons, I like this combination better than peanut butter and chocolate. Revision3 was one of the first online-video properties, and Discovery Channel was a cable network that began to figure out online video earlier than others (see my “Shark” blog post about Discovery from 2009). Now it gets interesting.