$1 BILLION FOR… THE TRAVEL CHANNEL?

Ca$h Cow loves this deal, yo

The Travel Channel offers the following: Anthony Bourdain being a cool dude, Andrew Zimmern eating various species’ genitals, that one Playboy chick in a bikini, and a guy eating lots of food. Apparently, that’s worth close to a billion dollars, according to a report in Are You Sh-tting Me Weekly:

Cox Communications is expected to command close to a billion dollars for the Travel Channel, people close to the bidding war for the channel said on Thursday. The company is entertaining bids from a number of media companies… At least one of the offers exceeds $900 million. [...]

By the ratings and revenue metrics of cable channels, the Travel Channel is undistinguished. The channel, which counts “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations” and “Man v. Food” as its most popular shows, is distributed in nearly 100 million homes, but it earns on average just 6 cents per subscriber. It draws a modest average of 485,000 viewers in prime time.

Well, sure. This makes sense now, in the booming economy, but one of these days the bubble’s going to burst and– I’m sorry, what? A year ago? Worst economy since the Great Depression? Are you sure? Seems like something I would have heard about. No, I missed the election. I was too busy watching “Bridget’s Sexiest Beaches.”