BuddyTV Gets $6M More

Television blog and community site BuddyTV has raised $6 million in Series B funding from Madrona Venture Group.

Previously, BuddyTV raised $2.8 million from Gemstar-TV Guide and was part of Charles River Ventures’ seed funding program. BuddyTV said it would spend the new funding on personnel and infrastructure.

We had previously had sources confirm rumors that BuddyTV had been bought by Comcast last September. But BuddyTV CEO Andy Liu tells us tonight, “That was way too premature — we actually had interest from multiple parties and ultimately decided that we wanted to continue building the company.” The Comcast deal was supposedly worth single-digit millions, so with this round it’s clear the company’s valuation has jumped.

BuddyTV has 4 million monthly uniques and 25 million monthly page views, according to Liu. That’s up, but not ridiculously up, from the 3.6 million uniques I have in my notes from talking to him last May. Liu told us more recently that the writer’s strike proved to be a traffic boon for BuddyTV.

“The networks resorted to more reality and celeb reality based shows as the scripted shows were on hiatus. Reality has a much stronger following online than procedurals like CSI and Law & Order which in turn drove more traffic to us. The timing on the writer’s strike ending is also good for us since it ‘extends’ the TV season well into June.”

If you look to public traffic stats for competitive comparison, Compete.com shows BuddyTV leading other television blogs but lagging major portals like TV.com and TVGuide.

Another company in the space, MeeVee, has put itself up for sale after losing its CEO and much of its staff.