IAC Explores Sale of College Humor Parent CH Media

(Bloomberg) -- Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActive Corp. is exploring a sale of its CH Media business, the parent company of CollegeHumor and other digital brands, according to people familiar with the matter.

IAC is in the preliminary stages of working on the potential divestiture of CH Media, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public. It is unclear what valuation IAC is seeking in a potential sale of the business. No final decision has been made and IAC could opt to keep the unit, the people said.

A representative for New York-based IAC declined to comment.

IAC’s shares were little changed at 9:41 a.m. at $226.83, giving the company a market value of about $19.1 billion.

A potential sale would be the latest corporate move IAC has taken to streamline its portfolio. The company has been moving forward with a spinoff of one of its biggest money-makers: Match Group Inc., which owns dating app Tinder.

Growth-starved digital media companies have been merging in the hopes of sparking a turnaround in recent years. Vice Media Inc. agreed to buy online publisher Refinery29 this month.

CH Media also owns Dropout, an ad-free streaming service for comedy videos featuring talent from CollegeHumor.

IAC has owned CollegeHumor since 2006, when it acquired a controlling stake in its parent company. Founded in 1999, CollegeHumor targets people aged of 18 to 49 and has more than 15 million unique monthly visitors, according to its website.

IAC, a media and Internet company, owns more than 150 brands and products, including Match, the video-sharing platform Vimeo and news website The Daily Beast. Billionaire media mogul Diller is IAC’s chairman.

To contact the reporters on this story: Ed Hammond in New York at ehammond12@bloomberg.net;Michael Boyle in New York at mboyle40@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Hauck at dhauck1@bloomberg.net, Liana Baker, Matthew Monks

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