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Oct 25, 2018 - Economy

Cheddar is acquiring Rate My Professors

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Photo: Cheddar

Cheddar, the streaming video network dubbed the "CNBC for millennials" is acquiring Rate My Professors (ratemyprofessors.com), the popular website used by college students to rate their teachers and professors.

Why it matters: The franchise, used by more than 6 million students a month, will add a user-generated component to Cheddar's business, which to-date has focused on mass distribution of professionally-created news content.

Details: Advertising company Taboola has also signed on as a strategic in-feed discovery partner for Cheddar’s operation of Rate My Professors. In a statement, Taboola CEO and founder Adam Singolda says the company is bringing an infinite scrolling feed structure to the site, which is meant to attract millennials.

Between the lines: The acquisition follows a spree of acquisitions and partnerships brokered by Cheddar over the past few months, many of which focus on winning the young adult and student demographics.

  • In May, the company acquired Viacom's "MTV Networks on Campus," the distribution platform for Viacom's college campus-based service, MTVU.
  • The live network, now called CheddarU, reaches nine million students nationwide on 600 college campuses.

The bottom line: Cheddar has built an extensive distribution network to make sure their content is consumed as widely as possible.

  • Like other popular media businesses, they hope to have more pricing leverage, both with consumers and distributors, once they reach a point of saturation. In July, Cheddar said it will do $25 million in revenue for 2018, but Steinberg says it will now be closer to $30 million. Still, millennials are their target audience.
"Rate My Professors coupled with our OTT networks and CheddarU network makes us the defining media company for a new generation that has no relationship with legacy cable news media.”
— Cheddar CEO Jon Steinberg
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