Gannett Co. has bought a minority stake in online family calendar service Cozi, and as part of the deal, the U.S. newspaper company will make the service available across all of its online newspaper and television properties, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported Thursday.

The calendar service, a Seattle start-up, also includes a photo screen saver, and the calendar function automatically imports selected information, such as school calendar activities, holidays or information on local events or sports teams. So far, the service has been installed by more than 200,000 families.

The publisher of USA Today plans to roll out local content and calendar information from its newspapers into the Cozi system, Michael Maness, vice president of design and innovation at Gannett, told the Seattle-Post Intelligencer. Gannett and more than 80 newspapers will promote Cozi in print and online.

Gannett, the largest newspaper group in the United States, will greatly benefit Cozi, said Robbie Cape, chief executive of Cozi. More than 25 million unique visitors visit the company's newspaper Web sites and other online properties each month, and more than 20 million households in the United States are reached by Gannett's 23 television stations.

“To put that sort of media power behind the Cozi brand and the Cozi value proposition, you can only imagine what kind of impact it is going to have,” he said, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.