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CBS Acquires CNET Networks for $1.8 Billion
An anonymous reader writes "According to an announcement made today by Neil Ashe, CEO of CNET Networks, CBS has acquired CNET Networks. "Today, CNET Networks announced that it has been acquired by US media company CBS, in a deal valued at $1.8bn. The agreement represents an important strategic step for both companies and should be completed by the third quarter of 2008." So guess we'll be seeing The Late Show with Dan Ackerman, Molly Wood in Hollywood and CSISpot." If you'd like to read about it someplace other than CNet, Ian Lamont contributes a link to coverage at The Standard. It seems reasonable to ask how much longer they'll let news.com remain an IT-centric site.
And the new company is....CnetBS?
This guy's the limit!
I wonder if there was internal discussions in the buyout about how much the domain news.com was worth as I can certainly see that being attractive to CBS.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
"news.com" domain name sold for 1.8 billion, because that's what it really boils down to. Sure, they get a portfolio of websites that get a lot of eyes and I would imagine a fair amount of dollars, but everyone knows how fickle that can be in today's world. CBS's news divsion is at the bottom of the pack of major US news networks despite the Katie Couric hire, which was supposed to get them back on track. This sounds like a similar ploy, the bulk of C-Net being sweetener to the "screw the news division, it's not a profit center" investors.
I didn't realize that CNET had $1.8 Billion in office furniture. That is what they are buying it for, right?
They really NEED some modernization over there. Granted they will have to explain the concept of the "internet" to many of their staffers, but hey if they can learn to use a telegraph, they can learn the internet too. And maybe someone on a CNET forum can tell them about Andy.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Yay, I guess... or maybe boo? Meh? Whatever.
CNet has been struggling recently and that valuation seems too high, but traditional media have a bad habit of paying too much for aqcuisitions of tech companies.... Comcast Acquires Plaxo, even though nobody can figure out how to make money AOL Acquires Bebo (popular, but not enough to justify almost a billion dollars) CBS (again!) Acquires last.fm (popular among bloggers but eclipsed by other sites in the real world) the only big media deal I can think of in recent years that was a good bet was Newscorp's undervalued' acquisition of myspace.
In the early 90's when there wasn't much else on the Internet for download sites, I used to go to Download.com to find shareware for Windows, CNet for product reviews and news. And yeas, there are a bunch of other umbrella sites under CNET. Frankly the only one I ever found of any use is GameFAQs. Over the years, the quality of those sites has decreased. There are many other sites I will chose over the CNet sites. So, I wonder if this is really a wise move for CBS. They've had a great history in journalism and now they've bought a site with not much in-depth or useful information. So this will either mean that the brand will either get worse (if CBS just wanted News.com and doesn't care for CNET or mismanages) or better (CBS will have an impact on the journalistic side and bring more quality material).
... iTunes U), and he discusses CBS's history and how the company (among others in news reporting) didn't get into the Internet right away. Perhaps this is seen as buying into the Internet experience and (obviously) adding technology reporting to its side. I don't watch MSNBC but I'd have to think that its more or less the same there.
Its interesting to see this from another angle. Dan Rather gave a speech (if I recall at Duke
Seriously, I remember playing Shadowrun and Cyberpunk as a kid (ok, not a kid, but a long time ago...) and thinking the idea of megacorps running the world was nice for a fictional view of the future.
Apparently it wasn't so fictional with all these multi-billion dollar mergers of mega-media corporations, manipulation of political agendas by corporate interests, and whatnot.
Where do I sign up for my cybernetic implants because I know how this story goes and I want to have a fighting edge when things go bleak...
CNet also owns TV.com -- surely that domain name, too, is of value to CBS.
I really wasn't aware how many domains CNET has. Did a bit of research and they own search.com, mp3.com, tv.com, radio.com, chat.com, etc. Those are some extremely valuable domains.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
The next time they create "fake but accurate" documents, they will be far more plausible!
Brett
CBS is buying much more than just a few (highly valuable) domains and websites with the acquisition of CNET - they are buying a highly trained technical team that has experience serving huge amounts of data to many users at once across multiple domains targeting many different interests. Which is of course, essentially what CBS wants to do, except they took a long time getting into the internet. To be completely honest they would have been better off making this purchase a few years ago.
This isn't to say that CBS doesn't already have a talented technical team, but I would place my bet on CBS planning to expand further into the internet realm. They probably realize that the future of their medium is tied heavily to the internet, and are making strides to ensure that they will be able to deliver their content over the internet seamlessly in the future. Even accounting for team attrition after acquisition, acquiring an entire company at once is probably much easier than a long term hiring process, especially for a company as large as CBS which has already hesitated too long.
CNET also has a blog that , while not extremely well known, is frequently perused by JavaScript and web developers- Clientside. I haven't visited Download.com in a long time, but I visit Clientside nearly every day for examples , reference, etc. I'm a little worried about its fate(considering that the author could leave always leave CNET after the acquisition), but I hope it survives. It's also a good example of the talent behind CNET- there are some good programmers there, for sure.
According to http://www.dnscoop.com it's worth $734,464,000.
--- Band: Joey Ultra
Assuming CBS wants news.com for their own news portal site, the current CNet computer & tech news portal will be moved to a new, easy-to-remember address: com.news.com.com