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NBC has relearned, at great cost, a valuable lesson. The Web is more than the Wild West. One doesn't profit by simply squatting on land; it actually has to be developed. Beth Comstock, NBC's president of integrated media, dazzled the Net with NBC's acquisition of women's health site iVillage. She boasted how the purchase gave NBC "scale and a profitable, established platform to expand [its] digital efforts." It would allow the company to connect "more deeply online, on mobile and on demand with key consumers throughout their various life stages." Now, Comstock admits she bet wrong, to the tune of $600 million.


It's a masterful mea culpa, the best way to spin bad news. "Few people at NBC Universal are boasting about iVillage now," says The New York Times, which slams the whole iVillage deal as a rather embarrassing affair. The Times chronicles NBC's attempts to latch iVillage onto its existing properties through promotion on the Today Show and the creation of companion TV show "iVillage Live." These failed.

"You assume in the beginning that a mention on the 'Today' show will drive tremendous traffic, but it's not that easy," said Comstock.

You'd think that some folks at NBC would remember NBCi, the company's failed 1990s-era broadband portal. Like iVillage, NBCi found that on-air promotion didn't count for much on the Web. But that lesson clearly didn't stick. And, as with NBCi, which it cobbled together from several Web startups, NBC found that iVillage's technology, far from cutting edge, would need to be expensively updated. So much for providing a platform.

Comstock, of course, maintains that all is now well and NBC has righted its worst mistakes. And iVillage has longstanding relationships with advertisers that NBC has managed not to burn. So the deal can clearly be salvaged. But it's an expensive way to learn things that NBC should already have known.