Imaginova, a business that nearly flamed out when it was known as Space.com and led by TV personality Lou Dobbs, has charted a new course, acquiring comics site Newsarama  to expand its coverage to fantasy, science fiction, and other entertainment news.

New York City-based Imaginova declined to disclose the financial terms of the deal announced Monday, but the company said it was part of a strategic expansion of its advertising-supported web sites such as LiveScience, Space.com, and Aviation.com.

Dan Stone, who joined the company as president and chief executive in June 2002, said the company is pursuing its audience of highly educated, tech-savvy 25- to 54-year-olds into another area of interest.

“Part of this was driven by our advertisers in Hollywood,” he said, noting that ad buyers, like movie studios and publishers of computer games, prefer a larger audience to create a more efficient campaign.

Imaginova’s flagship web site, LiveScience.com, offers a range of science news for lay audiences. Recent headlines included “Plants Communicate to Warn Against Danger” and “Study Reveals 10 Most Terrible Office Behaviors.” Those kinds of stories have earned LiveScience plugs on shows like “The Colbert Report” and “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

Space.com attracted Dobbs as its chief executive and astronaut Sally Ride as president in 1999, as venture capitalists lavished funding on the startup, including a mammoth $50 million round in March 2000. Soon afterward, though, Mr. Dobbs and Ms. Ride, the first American woman in space, exited as the news site failed to generate the expected revenue and tech stocks went into a swoon.

In 2004, with Mr. Stone at the helm, the company launched LiveScience and took the name Imaginova. For years the company’s storyline was about survival after a dot-com flameout, he said, but patience has put the company on a growth curve, with Newsarama’s nearly 500,000 unique visitors per month added to the six million at Imaginova’s other sites.

Aside from advertising revenue, Imaginova makes money by directing its visitors to its e-commerce sites like livesciencestore.com and starrynight.com, which carries astronomy software and hardware.

In 2006, Imaginova pulled in a $15 million venture round that helped fund the Newsarama acquisition. That funding round was led by Steelpoint Capital Partners as prior investors RedShift Ventures (formerly known as SpaceVest), Venrock Associates, and the venture arm of newspaper giant Gannett.