As a bunch of my loyal readers know (yes Mom, I’m talking to you) I spent about a year running online research for Weather.com and helping out with the cross-media research for the Weather Channel. As many of you also know, Landmark put the Weather properties on the block earlier this year and NBC last week confirmed that it was involved in exclusive negotiations.

If this deal happens, then it makes tons and tons of sense. First, NBC has been struggling over the past couple of years to establish its WeatherPlus brand in the market. This allows them to buy success rather than build it. From an online standpoint, this fits with other trends in the market. NBC has a history of buying online properties (iVilliage most notably) to expand its ad reach. This fits a similar bill, and while it doesn’t provide demos like the iVilliage purchase did, it provides some of the best geo targeting online. It also fits with market trends. CBS’s purchase of CNET earlier this year may have been more ambitious from an online standpoint, but this purchase may in fact bring NBC additional reach/inventory, which they could certainly use.

What does Weather.com get out of this? Well, clarity on its ownership. But more importantly from a market standpoint, it might bring some fresh eyes to a Web 1.0 site that has tons of potential (sorry weather.com guys, I know you’re trying). It also allows them to be part of broader ad packages now that their content can be bundled cross-media with NBC’s huge reach (rather than The Weather Channel’s somewhat smaller reach) and also group the weather.com health/women’s ad packages with iVillage.

Stay tuned to see if congratulations are in order to my buddies at the Weather Channel.

Tags: nbc, weather channel, weather.com