They all look alike to Old Media
Made you look! You thought this was another post about race.
I’m actually back to technology. Specifically CBS’s purchase of CNET for $1.8 billion.
From an investor’s perspective, this looks like insanity. After reading CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves’ rationale for the takeover, it looks more like just plain old ignorance. Here’s from a New York Times story:
“We are not going to spend $1.6 billion on YouTube,” he told The New York Times, referring to the video-sharing site that Google had recently bought. “We are looking for the next YouTube and Quincy knows all the players.”
Mr. Moonves now appears to have decided that CBS needs to spend at least that much to build out its Internet presence and make it attractive to advertisers.
“There are very few opportunities to acquire a profitable, growing, well-managed Internet company like CNET Networks,” he said in a press release Thursday. “Together, CBS and CNET Networks will have significant additional exposure to the fastest-growing advertising sector and can accelerate our growth through a number of new content, promotion and advertising initiatives.”
How, exactly, is CNET “the next YouTube,” other than that they’re both accessible via the internet? No offense to CNET, but for the most part it would be just at home on paper as online. It’s a content site. To some extent YouTube is, too, but it’s of a form that couldn’t exist without the internet.
The most successful internet companies - eBay, MySpace, Facebook, CraigsList, Google, etc. - all harness the power of the medium. There are great content sites online, but for the most part they aren’t financially successful without the backing of a print, cable or broadcast entity.
Too many Old Media execs still cling to the hope that by putting up a website they’ll be the same as YouTube. Toss in some animated graphics and one of those blog thingies and we’re all set. Yahoo, among others, has taught us that if you create a front door that harnesses the power of the medium, people will come … and then stay for the content.
Newspaper execs stubbornly cling to their old model, time after time building websites that lead with flat content, hoping that maybe somehow people will search out the interactive elements and stay for a while.
Simply having a website doesn’t make CBS or the Washington Post or anyone else an internet company. Until the Old Media execs see this, they’ll continue to fail online and say “See, I told you, there’s no money to be made online.”
Now back to the discussion of race. I’m working a post called “They all look alike to Old Media …”
