It's in NBC's hands now. Landmark Communications Inc. announced Friday that it has closed on the sale of The Weather Channel Cos. to NBC Universal and two private equity firms, The Blackstone Group and Bain Capital.

Landmark Communications Inc. of Norfolk announced today that it has sold Q Interactive, which provides marketing services to advertisers and publishers, to Intrepid Investments, a merchant bank based in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. Terms were not disclosed.

NORFOLK Decker Anstrom grew up without the benefit of a TV set at home. His mother and stepfather, high school teachers, didn't consider it a healthy influence. "They really believed in literature and books and conversation," Anstrom said Monday.

July 1981 Landmark Communications Inc. announces it will begin operating a live 24-hour weather news network nationwide on cable TV starting in the spring of 1982. May 2, 1982 The Weather Channel debuts. November 1982 The Weather Channel starts airing locally to Cox Cable subscribers. August 1983

NORFOLK Landmark Communications Inc. of Norfolk has agreed to sell The Weather Channel Cos. to a consortium of NBC Universal and two private equity firms, the companies announced Sunday. Neither Landmark nor NBC disclosed the price. But people close to the negotiations said NBC and its partners, Bain Capital and The Blackstone Group, offered about $3.5 billion.

Wehco Media Inc. of Little Rock, Ark., said last month that it was considering a bid for The Virginian-Pilot and its sister papers, owned by Landmark Communications Inc. of Norfolk. Last week, its executives checked out the merchandise.

NORFOLK A group including NBC Universal and two private equity firms are in “exclusive negotiations” to buy The Weather Channel, its owner Landmark Communications Inc. confirmed in a statement late Friday.

NORFOLK

The decision to put Landmark Communications Inc. up for sale this year thrust the diversified media company into a position its chairman shrinks from himself: directly in the spotlight.

NORFOLK Maurice Jones has been a Rhodes scholar, corporate lawyer, senior state official. His newest title: newspaper publisher.

There’s a new kind of editing going on at Landmark Communications Inc., which owns The Virginian-Pilot and announced in January that it was considering selling all of its properties. Bruce Bradley, the newspaper’s publisher, told a gathering Wednesday of the Downtown Norfolk Council that it’s a slow process compiling the “books” for Landmark’s newspapers.