NuvoTV, the English-language cable channel where Jennifer Lopez is a minority owner and serves as the network’s Chief Creative Officer, has reached an agreement to acquire Fuse from the Madison Square Garden Company for $226 million. “Music is my first love so the acquisition of Fuse is near and dear to my heart,” Lopez said in a statement. “It’s exciting that between NUVOtv and Fuse we’ll have the ability to deliver a broad array of terrific content both from a Latino perspective and across multiple genres, including music, to a broader audience. The acquisition of Fuse means we now own two wonderful assets. It’s a phenomenal time for our company and we look forward to growing both networks in the years ahead.”
The deal is expected to close between July 1 and September 1. Prior to Lopez’s NuvoTV reaching a deal, Sean “Puffy” Combs, backed by billionaire supermarket magnate Ron Burkle, had reportedly made a $200 million offer. The assumption in the industry that Lopez and Combs, who owns the fledgling Revolt TV Cable Channel in partnership with Comcast, were interested in acquiring Fuse to convert the struggling network to their respective programming formats and gain access to Fuse’s 74 million cable households. (NuvoTV and Revolt reportedly reach in the neighborhood of 34 million households.)
