Fixer Upper stars Chip and Joanna Gaines are returning to television with their own network and spilled the beans where else, on TV, the medium that catapulted their Waco-based Magnolia home remodeling company into a fast-growing brand. The Gaineses appeared Friday on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to promote Joanna’s just released book, Homebody: A Guide to Creating Spaces You Never Want to Leave. The Gaineses are working with David Zaslav, CEO of Discovery Inc., which last year paid $14.6 billion for Scripps Networks Interactive, the parent company of HGTV and the Food Network. The value of HGTV rose with the ratings of Fixer Upper and its coattails. The show ran for five seasons through this past spring, but reruns continue to be broadcast. The talks with Discovery “are in early stages,” said John Marsicano, a spokesman for Magnolia, the couple’s company that has expanded beyond real estate into retailing, e-commerce, furniture, books, restaurant and hospitality creating hundreds of new jobs in Waco. Their business partnerships included retailer Target, magazine publisher Meredith Corp. and paint company Kilz. The plan is to create “a lifestyle-focused media network for Magnolia,” he said. “The details surrounding this opportunity remain a work in progress, but together, our hope is to build a different kind of platform for unique, inspiring and family-friendly content,” Marsicano said. When announcing the return to television on The Tonight Show, Chip referred to a non-disclosure agreement he signed with Discovery and joked that it allowed him to only tell… [Read full story]
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