IFWT_jennifer-lopez-nuvo-tv

According to sources familiar with the situation, J-Lo has outbid Diddy in a battle to acquire cable music channel Fuse TV.

Jade Raven

NuvoTV, where Lopez serves as chief creative officer and owns a minority stake, has reached an agreement to buy Fuse TV from Madison Square Garden Co. according to people close to the situation.

Sources have requested to remain anonymous because the agreement isn’t public. “Things are in that 99.9 percentile,” says a source familiar with the negotiations. A deal may be announced today, they said.

Lopez and NuvoTV, an English-language channel marketed to Latinos, offered more than $200 million of cash and equity for the struggling music network.

Michael Schwimmer, chief executive officer of NuvoTV, declined to comment, as did Kim Kerns, a spokeswoman for New York-based MSG. Press contacts for Lopez and her partner Benny Medina didn’t respond to requests for comment, says Bloomberg.com.

But, according to ‘The Hollywood Reporter’, Lopez’s manager Benny Medina, said in an interview that took place on Wednesday, before the deal was reached, spoke about JLo’s entrepreneurial branding strategy.

Medina explained that if NuvoTV wins, there were no immediate plans to change Fuse’s format. “We do look at these channels as two different companies with two different identities, audiences and goals,” Medina said. “And these shall remain intact.”

He adds, “In many ways, Jennifer and Sean are cut from the same cloth,” Medina said. They’re both passionate artists of the same generation who think on a grand and global scale. They were two superstars seeking to build their brand, who happened to be Jennifer and Puffy.”

The assumption in the industry is that Lopez, and Combs, who owns Revolt TV cable channel in partnership with Comcast, were interested in acquiring Fuse to convert the network to their respective programming formats and gain access to Fuse’s 74 million cable households. NuvoTV and Revolt reportedly reach about 34 million households.

[THR,Bloomberg]