nimal Planet has now become pet friendly. Recently a popular pet-adoption site that links shelters to prospective pet owners, Petfinder.com became a part of Animal Planet. The channel has also acquired PetsIncredible, which produces pet-training videos. The total cost of both acquisitions is estimated at $35 million. The pair of acquisitions shows that the Discovery-owned cable channel is beginning to tap into the domestic pet industry in a bigger way.

The channel will not abandon its wild animal shows, but it is following the lead of other Discovery networks in turning itself into what it calls an enterprise business, which means the cable network is the flagship for a whole host of other businesses, including licensing, merchandising and e-commerce. Animal Planet has a line of small pet toys at Target, for example, and a line at Toys 'R' Us. ... more