MTV Networks to Buy Atom

Viacom’s MTV Networks will acquire Atom Entertainment for $200 million, the companies said today.

The deal will bring a number of popular video and gaming destinations into the Viacom fold, including Atom Films, AddictingClips, Shockwave.com and AddictingGames.

The sale is expected to close in this quarter.

MTVN’s other digital media acquisitions have included XFire, Y2M, iFilm and Neopets.

“This acquisition is right on the money with our digital strategy,” said Viacom CEO Tom Freston in a statement. “It adds great scale with users, improves our growing casual gaming position, and brings a world-class digital video library and a fantastic management team.”

Atom Films was among the dominant sources of video clips and filmed entertainment online before the emergence over the past year of amateur and video sharing sites like YouTube and MySpace Video. Atom is now trying to catch up in this area with the launch of its own video sharing and upload features on AddictingClips.

Earlier this week, MTV Networks announced a deal with Google through which the search firm would distribute MTV’s video content to a network of third party sites, and marry those clips with in-stream ads.