Cheddar News is for sale by Altice

Cable company Altice USA is weighing a potential sale of Cheddar News, the news network once billed as “CNBC for millennials,” less than five years after buying the company, report Lauren Hirsch and Ben Mullin of The New York Times.

Hirsch and Mullin write, “Altice USA has hired Goldman Sachs to help explore strategic alternatives for Cheddar News, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. They cautioned that Altice is still weighing its options and may decide against a sale. Representatives for Altice USA and Goldman declined to comment.

“A sale would be a retreat from Altice USA’s big bet on the streaming news company. Altice, which is controlled by the French-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi, paid $200 million for the streaming network in 2019. The deal was seen as a way to elevate the company’s news division, which also includes the News 12 channel. Cheddar had pitched itself as the future of financial news, featuring interviews with C.E.O.s, newsmakers and journalists from the floor of the N.Y.S.E.

“Cheddar doesn’t operate like a traditional cable business. The network’s founder, the former BuzzFeed president Jon Steinberg, struck deals to distribute it across a wide range of platforms.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.