Real Estate TV - Controlling Stake bought by Fox

News Corp’s Fox International Channels (FIC) has completed a buyout of overseas property channel Real Estate TV (RETV) and now owns a controlling stake in the company.

The deal will include cross-promotional efforts from both companies, with RETV advertising FIC related programming and FIC conducting a large marketing campaign promoting RETV across its global audience of 100million subscribing households, spanning 80 television services in 29 languages.

RETV will also produce a series of bespoke property programmes to go out across the FOX network. A spokesperson for FIC said at the heart of the deal lies the need for the media industry to “inform and educate” its viewers on real estate issues in an increasingly competitive market in 2008.

“RETV is addressing an attractive and underserved media market with strong growth potential,” said David Haslingden, CEO of FIC. “Our strategy has always been to find innovative brands that satisfy market gaps and then use our distribution power and know-how to extend these globally. We will work aggressively to rollout the RETV service to other key markets around the world.”

RETV’s founder and managing director Mark Dodd will remain at the helm, and will oversee the company’s move to its new office in west London, which it will share with FIC, later this month. Dodd believes this deal will help RETV reach more viewers and increase the attractiveness of its brand to companies in the industry.

“By becoming part of FIC’s international bouquet of channels, RETV will be able to leverage the company’s publishing, online and other channels to further improve our viewers experience while enhancing at the same time the value proposition we can offer to our advertisers,” Dodd added.

The announcement from RETV, comes just days after it signed a strategic partnership with blinkx.com, the world’s largest video search engine, to syndicate its content across the portal’s platform which receives over 50 million unique visitors a month.

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