Various news sources (such as Variety) are reporting that Canadian company DHX Media have bought out the entertainment side of Iconix, which means they get the primary ownership of the Peanuts property (the Schulzes still own some) as well as full ownership of Strawberry Shortcake and some other items.

DHX already owns a respectable set of youth-targeted “properties” – Teletubbies, Yo Gabba Gabba, Caillou, Inspector Gadget, Degrassi, and more. They are not just a property-manager, they make new material, they have their own distribution structure and own some Canadian cable channels.

It will be interesting to see how well this all becomes integrated, whether being part of a company that already owned many thousands of hours of TV and is clearly TV-centric brings advantages to how Schulz’s creation is handled, or if being among a bunch of other content gets it treated in a cookie-cutter manner. Peanuts has previously been a big fish in smaller ponds (although to be clear, even at DHX it will still be quite a sizable fish!)

For those of you with a business eye: sales price was $345 million. The main things being sold are the United Media rights that Iconix bought for $175 million and American Greetings, which Iconix bought a couple years ago for $105 mil.

(Added later: I should speak a little more precisely in a post like this. Peanuts was and is owned by Peanuts Worldwide, LLC. What’s been sold is 80% ownership of that company. The Schulzes own the other 20%.)

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