Quincy Smith has carved out a reputation as one of the leading digital visionaries among old media execs. Since joining CBS 18 months ago as head of digital efforts he has made a show of disdaining tired old Web 1.0 ideas in favour of Web 2.0 thinking (In a comment to the Wall Street Journal, he recently accused the video site Hulu of “arguing to be a premium destination in a time when nobody wants a destination.”)
This has not always made him popular in media circles. A senior figure at a big CBS rival I spoke to recently bristled at Smith’s apparent rejection of the traditional model that has typified the mass media business from the beginning: create your own destination (be it a TV network, newspaper or website) and attract as big an audience to it as you can.
So it seems highly ironic that Smith has just led CBS into a $1.8bn purchase of that icon of Web 1.0 internet media, CNET. Clearly the overriding online need for CBS right now is online reach and scale, Web 2.0 niceties be damned.
This is what my colleague Johsua Chaffin had to say after talking to Smith only a matter of weeks ago (full article here):
As CBS tries to catch up, Wall Street has been bracing itself for a big digital acquisition. When he took the job, Mr Smith said his goal was to find “the next YouTube” - only a year earlier in its development and considerably cheaper than the Dollars 1.6bn paid by Google.
After scouring the Valley, he now reports that there is a dearth of candidates that can add meaningful revenues right away and would not entail big integration headaches because of old technology.
“Every media company is gunning for properties in this space,” Mr Smith says. Then he asks rhetorically: “Has the next YouTube come in the last 18 months?”
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