Early years Edwin Thomas Meredith founded the company in 1902 when he began publishing
Successful Farming magazine. In 1922, Meredith began publishing
Fruit, Garden and Home magazine, a home and family service publication. Two years later, it became MC Productions, and Ralph Andrews bought back rights to the game shows later that year, which resulted in a subsequent lawsuit in the late 1970s. In 1973, Meredith teamed up Avco Broadcasting to produce a series of nine prime-time television specials, which
Avco Program Sales is syndicating, aimed for youth children. In 1987, Meredith Corporation made a deal that they would purchase MMT Sales for $40 million, and would represent national advertising spot time on 60 stations across the entire US country. In 1994, Meredith and
CBS struck an agreement to renew its
Kansas City station and affiliate two of the
Bay City and
Phoenix stations with the network.
2012–2021: Merger with Time Inc.; Gray/Dotdash sale In March 2012, Meredith acquired
allrecipes.com from
Reader's Digest Association for $175 million. In February 2013, Meredith discussed buying an interest in
Time Inc. from
Time Warner. Instead, Time Warner sold Time Inc. as a separate company. In October 2014, Meredith announced a 10-year licensing agreement with
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia of the rights to
Martha Stewart Living and
Martha Stewart Weddings magazines and to the marthastewart.com website. In November 2014, Meredith acquired mywedding.com. In January 2015, the company acquired Selectable Media. Also in January 2015, Meredith acquired
Shape,
Natural Health, and
Fit Pregnancy magazines from
American Media Inc. Meredith's
Fitness magazine was folded into
Shape, while both magazines' websites continued to operate separately. On September 8, 2015,
Media General announced its intent to acquire Meredith in a cash and stock deal valued at $2.4 billion. Pending regulatory and shareholder approval, the deal was expected to be consummated in June 2016. However, the offer was countered by
Nexstar Broadcasting Group, who made a successful, $4.6 billion bid to acquire Media General instead. In February 2017, it was reported that Meredith and a group of investors led by
Edgar Bronfman Jr. were considering another possible purchase of Time Inc. On November 26, 2017, it was announced that Meredith Corporation would acquire Time Inc. in a $2.8 billion deal. $640 million in backing was provided by
Koch Equity Development, but the Koch family would not have a board seat or otherwise influence the company's operations. On January 9, 2018, it was announced that Meredith would launch a
Hungry Girl magazine on January 16, expanding from the online brand. On January 31, 2018, the company completed the acquisition of
Time Inc. In March 2018, only six weeks after the closure of the deal, Meredith announced that it would lay off 200 employees, up to 1,000 more over the next 10 months, and explore the sale of
Fortune,
Money,
Sports Illustrated, and
Time. Meredith felt that, despite their "strong consumer reach", these brands did not align with its core lifestyle properties. In October 2019, Meredith Corporation sold the
Money brand and website to Ad Practitioners LLC, a media and advertising company based in
Puerto Rico. Terms were not disclosed, but sources said the brand went for just over $20 million, that was more than the $10 million Meredith was seeking in early 2019. In November 2019 the company unloaded one more asset acquired in the Time Inc. acquisition, its 60% equity ownership of digital advertising company Viant Technology Holding Inc. that, among other assets, owns social networking site
Myspace. Also in November 2019, the company announced the launch of a new quarterly magazine, called
Reveal, in January 2020 in collaboration with
Drew and
Jonathan Scott from
HGTV's
Property Brothers. On May 3, 2021, Meredith announced an agreement with
Gray Television for the latter to acquire Meredith's television division. The transaction will be structured as a
spin-off of a new (short-lived) Meredith Corporation, containing the magazines division, to existing shareholders, to be immediately followed by the old Meredith (by then consisting solely of its TV stations group) being acquired by Gray for $2.7 billion in cash. Later that year, on October 6, Meredith announced an agreement whereby the company's remaining magazine and other non-broadcast assets would be acquired by
IAC's Dotdash for $2.7 billion, forming a new entity called
Dotdash Meredith. On November 15, Meredith announced it received regulatory approvals for both the Gray and IAC transactions. Both deals were completed on December 1. On February 9, 2022, it was revealed that six former Meredith Corporation magazines (
Entertainment Weekly, InStyle, EatingWell, Health, Parents and
People en Espanol) will cease having print circulation and switch to a digital-only format. == Divisions ==