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Alan Breznick
Further boosting their role in cyberspace. CBS Corp. and News Corp. both made big new investments in major Internet content sites last week.
CBS, which already owns sizable portions of SportsLine USA Inc. and Marketwatch.com, announced it will take a 30% stake in ThirdAge Media Inc., a Web site for older adults. The broadcaster agreed to pay $49 million in advertising support and $5 million in cash.
News Corp., which has been scrambling to catch up with the other major broadcasters on the Internet, said it's taking a "significant minority" stake in sixdegrees.com, a community site on the Web. The company declined to say what it's spending.
In the executive suite, Time Warner Inc. named Richard Bressler as chairman/CEO of the company's newly formed Time Warner Digital Media unit. Bressler, formerly a corporate executive EVP/CFO of Time Warner, will oversee the rollout of the company's five "vertical Internet hubs" and the possible public spinoff of its Web properties, among other things.
The moves are part of a continuing effort by the leading broadcasting and cable companies to expand their media empires to the Internet. In recent weeks, Walt Disney Co. has been seeking to buy a controlling stake in Infoseek Corp., a leading Web portal, and General Electric Corp.'s NBC swung a deal to combine most of its Internet assets with Web portals Snap.com and Xoom.com.
At last weeks National Show industry titans expressed an interest in expanding their Internet presence. Rupert Murdoch, chairman/CEO of News Corp., said he sees "a convergence between multichannel television that's emerging and multichannel Internet. All these things will come together."
Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom Inc., said his company plans to dominate the music and children's categories on the Web, similar to what it's done on cable. "You will see us do with the Internet what we did with cable."
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