“The core businesses of CNET Networks and CBS Interactive represent near perfect category symmetry in premium online content,”
Quincy Smith, President, CBS Interactive.
And that symmetry is apparently worth about $1.8 billion, which is what CBS just agreed to pay for CNET. The deals values CNET at $11.50/share, and puts a 45% premium on stock from their closing price yesterday. CBS, which is worth a little over $16 billion, is down just over 3% on the news as of 7:45 am PST. Silicon Alley Insider was among the first to break the news.
The deal is about increasing CBS’s reach, as noted in the press release: The acquisition will make CBS one of the 10 most popular Internet companies in the United States, with a combined 54 million unique users per month, and approximately 200 million users worldwide.
The deal also likely ends the months-long fight between CNET and the activist investor group led by Jana Partners. Jana had accused CNET’s board and management of “presiding over massive value destruction” and were trying to oust much of the CNET board of directors.
Damm. That’s lots of cash. This can only mean good things for TechCrunch and other category leaders.
Very nice…kudos to CNET. I wonder if they’ll end up disposing some of their non-core business units.
CBS now owns the mp3.com domain? The circle is almost complete.
Bye Bye CNET? Hope that it doesn’t go down like when TechTV was bought by Comcast.
Wow, take that FIM!
great news! {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/3LcdZD2FbC_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”great news! ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/cFFnSZ9ccs”}}}
Another buyout?
Btw. Mike, Wired scooped this news just 15 minutes ago.
Interesting that CBS and their acquisitions appear to be biased more towards news and technology while ABC acquisitions appear to be biased more towards entertainment. Just a cursory observation, I haven’t put a lot of research into their acquisitions or that of competitors like NBC and Fox.
so mike, what does this mean for you guys?
What a waste of money…They are not worth $1.8 Billion.
That was great news for me as a shareholder. I cashed out
I hope that CBS can do good for the CNET brand. I love their array of offerings and domains that they have, and always thought there was a huge amount of potential there.
In the back of my mind I was hoping that AOL was going to buy them out, I feel like they could have done something better with CNET over CBS in accordance to their lineup of sites like Weblogs.
Great price. CBS owned Marketwatch and dumped it, I guess they are trying online content again.
I was shocked to read this on Reuters before Techcruch.
Holy, people are buying like there is no tomorrow. p
Peter
do you follow me @ http://twitter.com/peterurban
I expect TC to be the first with startup news, announcements and funding stories, not big media acquisitions like this, so I’d lay off the “you’re late” comments.
Check your phone. NewsCorp will be calling you soon. You’re next.
old news….
Fuck its just too much cash..overprice, overvaluation..It will be good for an analyst or for CBS to come out and speak out on how they arrived at that figure for the valuation of CNET…
bye bye web cred for CNET…
What a day for your iPhone to go through spurts of working, eh?
someone explain this valuation. I just don’t get it.
personally, when i think CNET, you know what i think of? Lousy reviews (get your 10 sided dice, but everything is 8.1,8.2,8.3…) and miserable commentary (todays… “Should apple release a gaming platform?” doesn’t even need a comment)
CNET has a lot more than people realize:
CNET.com
News.com
Bnet.com
Download.com
MP3.com
Search.com
MySimon.com
GameSpot.com
TechRepublic.com
TV.com
Chow.com
UrbanBaby.com
ZDNet.com
I’d say that’s a pretty strong following for a lot of potential outside of just cnet.com itself.
Hope they don’t change MySimon! Just kidding- no one uses MySimon.
It would be intersting if CBS can revive News.com and TV.com as destination sites. I think a lot of good sites fail because the domain name isn’t easy to remember. Fox owns myspace and nbc has msnbc. Viacom/CBS are now back in the game in a big way.
CNET have CHINA. CNET have fast growth internationally – and they know how to publish stuff which people trust. it’s a good match, as CBS growth has stalled for three years but they have a lot of cash to spend, and this extends CBS rather than duplicates. I applaud. AOL would have just cocked it up.
TC is NOT next; TC is NOT cnet, it’s just a blog.
In other acquisition news, Dictionary.com was bought out (again). This time by Ask.com.
CBS also bought Art Moreno’s biz, Universal Outdoor for a “premium” but with the benefit of hindsight___________________ !
CBS, one of the most established brands in america with real revenue is worth $16B and the estimated Facebook evaluation is $15B – with no real revenue?!? something is not right here
The media needs to DE-consolidate. All this consolidation calls for some new telecommunications regulations.
cbs has good taste lately. they bought last.fm a while back. no perceptible damage to that company has resulted thus far.
“CNET has a lot more than people realize: …
CNET.com
News.com
Bnet.com
Download.com
…”
And don’t forget the silly
Crave.com
Webware.com
domains.
I remember back in the day when Cnet was the brightest and best computer tech news site on the web. Then they started all that junk with home entertainment system reviews, car electronic reviews, and then finally adopting a blog format and breaking it out into sites like Crave and Webware.
Now everything seems to me like mush coming out of the Cnet organization. They do a good job of reporting on press releases (to some degree) but don’t seem to offer much in the way of usable commentary on it anymore and about half the time they are asking what everyone else thinks because (I guess) they don’t have the resources to do real comparison review among brands.
I long for the days of the PC Magazine Laptop Torture Test (and similar reviews) when reviewers would get together 20 brands and compare performance, usability, and durability and then write a report. This rampant generic reporting that everyone seems to have adopted is not very time worthy in my opinion … “So and so released a new display with better saturation and more pleasing images. We definitely like it better than the other brand we tested last week.”
Maybe I’m over generalizing a little.
CNET paid 700 million (in cash and stock) for mySimon (back in 2000 i believe).
CNET paid $730 million in stock for mySimon in 2000. At the time of the acquisition, mySimon was the leading shopping site on the Web– bigger than Shopping.com (then called “Dealtime”), NexTag, Shopzilla, PriceGrabber and others.
Over the next two years, CNET stripped all resources (headcount, marketing budget) from this property. Quality declined. Traffic declined. Awareness declined.
Any idea what the market value of Shopping.com and NexTag is today?
Buying Cnet is like winning an auction for a Members Only jacket on eBay. It’s nice to win, but you probably overpaid for something that went out of style a long time ago that will just end up in the back of your closet.
@Gregor That was just before the bubble. Everybody had their share of overpriced acquisitions. But, I don’t like cnet… it feels too old school web 1.0 with tacky boring domain names
.
I believe that Michael will have to quickly announce a major round of financing and aggressively beginning rolling up blogs, blog companies or blog networks (or other media properties) to keep pace, thrive, and ultimately survive.
As I was reading about CBS’ $1.8 billion purchase of CNET on MarketWatch.com, I couldn’t help but remember when CBS purchased MarketWatch.
Today, MarketWatch is owned by Dow Jones. And Dow Jones, of course, is owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Meanwhile, you have Norman Pearlstine (previously head a top honcho at Time Inc. and the Wall Street Journal) hired by Bloomberg, another online powerhouse.
The common denominator: Online is where many, if not most, people are getting their news. More at my blog: news.ihollywoodforum.com