Vijith Assar via Slashdot: “Last week, Tribune Company completed the $170 million acquisition of Gracenote, a deal originally set in motion in late 2013. The merger is an unusual one: Gracenote owns a massive library of media metadata, and the Tribune Company is best known as the publisher of print newspapers and tabloids, most notably its flagship paper in Chicago. Five years ago, Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy as advertising revenues declined, the result of the global recession; at the time, Gracenote had just been acquired by Sony for almost $100 million more than its most recent price. The acquisition places Gracenote directly alongside Tribune Media Services (TMS), a division within Tribune Company that syndicates both editorial content and and media metadata such as movie showtimes and television listings. Gracenote’s data is similar, although more focused on individual consumption habits rather than mass presentation. “Gracenote’s video products have been using TMS data for some time, re-distributing their data as part of our products,” said Gracenote president Stephen White, “so it was a pretty natural fit.”