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The Knoxville News-Sentinel

By Carly Harrington, The Knoxville News-Sentinel, Tenn.

Jun. 9--Jewelry Television is acquiring the assets of the struggling Shop At Home network.

The deal, which Jewelry Television hopes is finalized within a week, will help the rapidly growing Knoxville-based network meet its aggressive growth goals, spokeswoman Kelly Fletcher said.

"From a technology standpoint, it was too good a deal to pass up," she said.

Jewelry Television needed to acquire the types of assets available from Shop At Home, which include satellite uplink facilities, backup information technology systems, and Internet platforms that would allow the company to improve its backup systems.

There are also four broadcast studios that can serve as backups and as locations for promotional video production.

The E.W. Scripps Co. owns Shop At Home and announced last month that it planned to close the Nashville-based network, which was founded in Newport in 1986 to sell satellite equipment to satellite TV viewers.

Cincinnati-based Scripps acquired Shop At Home in two transactions with a total value of $285 million, acquiring controlling interest in October 2002 and buying the remaining interest in April 2004, along with five Shop At Homeaffiliated broadcast stations.

Neither Scripps nor Jewelry Television would comment on the value of the deal under discussion.

Shop At Home was not profitable when Scripps bought it, but Scripps hoped the channel would provide a shopping outlet for products related to Scripps' cable networks Home & Garden Television, Food Network, Do It Yourself Network and Fine Living.

Scripps spokesman Tim Stautberg said the company is in the process of selling certain assets of Shop At Home to Jewelry Television but declined to offer further detail until an agreement is finalized.

The five Shop At Home television stations that carry its programming are not included in that deal. But Stautberg said Scripps has retained a broker to list the stations in San Francisco, Boston, Cleveland, Bridgeport, Conn., and Raleigh-Durham, N.C., for sale "to get the maximum value for shareholders."

Shop At Home has been a separate division of Scripps unrelated to Knoxville-based Scripps Networks. Scripps also owns the News Sentinel.

Fletcher said Jewelry Television has no plans to move to Nashville, but the company, which employs more than 2,000 people, is considering how much of a presence it will have there.

Jewelry Television has delayed until 2008 construction of a planned $20 million, 300,000-square-foot headquarters on a 50-acre tract in West Knox County's Pellissippi Corporate Center business park.

The 24-hour shopping network will instead relocate several departments to 100,000 square feet in the former Peeble's warehouse on Parkside Drive. The first group is expected to move in July.

Jewelry Television has said stronger-than-expected sales this past holiday season created an immediate need for additional space to prepare for the 2006 holiday season.

The company's rapid growth recently earned it a spot as the 15th largest retailer of jewelry in the United States, according to National Jeweler Magazine.

Revenues for the company have jumped during the past seven years from $5.2 million in 1997 to $390 million in 2005. It has a goal of becoming a $1 billion company by 2010.

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