IP Democracy: CBS Hires Digital Overseer

The New York Times’ Geraldine Fabrikant has this piece today about CBS’ move to coordinate its web properties by hiring an investment banker, Quincy Smith, formerly of Allen & Co., to organize the company’s web efforts and to hunt for acquisitions. Out the door is Larry Kramer, President of CBS Digital Media, who oversaw the company’s wholly owned web sites.

CBS President Les Moonves claims that Smith’s hiring is an indication of the company’s desire to unify its various web properties.

Leslie Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, said in a telephone interview yesterday that “we have different divisions with interactive strategies and there needs to be some unification. There are silos in the various divisions and there needs to be someone to connect the dots.”

That may very well be true, but the complexity of CBS’ web and interactive properties can’t hold a candle to the vast Internet properties run by sister company Viacom (the companies used to be unified but are now separate, although both are controlled by Sumner Redstone). Just look at the table below (from our TV 2.0 report on Viacom over at IP Media Monitor), which details Viacom’s Internet and wireless businesses globally.

The fact that CBS is making a fairly high-profile move to coordinate its web businesses — and perhaps make purchases — further underscores that CBS is becoming the favored child of Redstone, a reversal of how the two companies got out of the gate when they both went their separate ways late last year. Back then, Viacom, headed by popular cable veteran Tom Freston, was the favorite.

But now Freston is gone, and CBS, under Moonves, seems to have greater momentum.

Update: Reuters’ Kenneth Li has a more revealing article on Smith’s hiring, including a transcript of his interview with Smith. Basically, Smith is appealing to just about every start-up in Silicon Valley to come talk to CBS. Here’s an excerpt:

Reuters: What types of properties will CBS seek?
Smith: I’m looking for the next YouTube, only a year earlier, when they were 1/32nd of their size, without building out stuff that we would find duplicative like sales force. The core engineering team is always important.

But the one thing I’ll say, particularly to your audience, is I want to make sure that this is an appeal to every entrepreneur of every company size. This is a notion that CBS is reaching out to Silicon Valley and a little bit of New York with the Allen & Co. pedigree. But keep in mind most of my clients are out there.

We want to see them all. We want to see everyone in there. And we want to learn.

And you’re going to call me, hopefully, consistently…once a week and be asking, “”We hearing you’re talking to so and so and you know I’m not going to comment.”

We want to be the first ones called.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on November 6, 2006 8:07 AM to IP Democracy