NBCi Venture Launches as Packaged Deal

NBC formally entered the cyberspace land-grab on Tuesday with its launch of NBCi, a new company wrapping together several of the network’s online assets as well as the Snap portal site and the e-commerce company Xoom.com.

NBCi, which will be based in San Francisco, also announced a deal with Clear Channel Communications Inc. to promote NBCi’s services on the Web sites for Clear Channel’s 425 radio stations.

NBC will contribute to the venture several of its Web sites including NBC.com, content from its TV shows, and $400 million worth of TV advertising. NBC first announced the deal to create NBCi in May.

The network, which is a unit of General Electric Co., will own 47% of the new company, while stockholders of Xoom.com will own 39% and CNET, the former parent of the Snap portal, will own 14%.

The publicly traded shares of Xoom.com were converted on a one-for-one basis to stock in the new company, which began trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Tuesday under the symbol NBCI.

In anticipation of the launch, shares of Xoom.com soared $17 to $88.50 Monday. The stock closed Tuesday at $76.

The high stock price gives the new company a value of about $4 billion and a war chest for making acquisitions.

CBS has also been making several Internet investments, usually taking large equity stakes in Internet companies in exchange for promoting them on CBS properties.

NBCi includes many, but not all, of the network’s online properties. Not included are the MSNBC news channel, a 50-50 joint venture with Microsoft Corp., or CNBC. A portion of CNBC’s Web site is included in NBCi, however, and both stations are likely to be mentioned prominently on NBC Web sites.