CBS paid $1.8 billion for CNET last summer, and today it is dealing with the consequences: A re-org and layoffs. CBS execs won’t release a total for the number of people fired, so news will be coming out in piecemeal fashion for some time. In the meantime, here’s CBS Interactive’s new corporate structure, detailed in an internal memo distributed late today.
CBS has yet to announce any cuts or restructuring after acquiring CNET this summer for $1.8 billion. That changes today.
Want to watch nerd-favorite “The Fifth Element” via Netflix’s awesome streaming service? OK, but hurry up–the movie will disappear from the service on New Year’s Day. Want to rent the excellent George Clooney corporate thriller “Michael Clayton” via iTunes? Too late! The movie was there, but now it’s not. Wait a minute: Hadn’t big media finally gotten religion and agreed to give us, the demanding consumers, everything we want, whenever we want it? Nope.
We haven’t heard of much bloodletting since CBS bought CNET for $1.8 billion this summer. But obviously there have to be some cuts as the companies merge the network’s CBS Interactive unit with the Web publisher. Here’s one: Patrick Keane, the former Google exec hired as executive vice president and chief marketing officer in February 2007, is out. In his place is Mickey Wilson, who was SVP of marketing at CNET.
CBS has pulled the plug on MobLogic.TV, a news and politics Web video series it launched with some fanfare last spring. CBS says the show’s demise isn’t a product of cost-cutting at CBS, which is still integrating its $1.8 billion acquisition of CNET.
One way for a big media company to avoid the embarrassment of shutting down a Web site–just avoid launching it altogether. That’s what CBS has done with “Juke,” a music site that CNET had started assembling last spring and planned to launch this fall.
Datz Music Lounge, a new service that gives users unlimited music downloads in exchange for $162 a year, sounds like a good idea. Or at least a potentially good idea.
MySpace’s very, very long search for someone to run the social network’s new music site is just about over: A person familiar with the situation says the company has just about wrapped up negotiations with Courtney Holt, who heads up digital music at Viacom’s MTV.
CBS has had plenty of bad news lately–a tanking ad market, a huge write-down, Sumner Redstone’s worrisome debt problems–but it got to offer at least one piece of good news in its quarterly earnings report this morning. CNET, the tech-focused Web publisher it bought this summer for $1.8 billion, turned in a decent performance.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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