tedstr

CBS and CNET: Vision, or Desperation?

Old media content cos love new media content cos. Feels comfortable. Feels like you can replicate your old world experience in the new world. You can't. Virtually all of the old world media companies are being defensive in these aquisitions. They are looking for synergies and ways to defend their old market positions instead of building new businesses in the new world and embracing the future. The old organizations are so full of fiefdoms that simply want to bury the new to perpetuate the old, survival becomes impossible. CNET will get diminished or destroyed the same way CBS abandoned Marketwatch, Healthwatch, Sportsline, NBC-Zoom (and currently iVillage). Inforseek was at one time the #4 largest portal on the web...unitl ABC bought it. The cable MSOs obliterated $ 4 Bil in market cap in Excite@Home. The landscape is littered with these old media/new media failures.

Old media companies have a terrible history or doing any kind of diversification.