Net Effect of CBS-Viacom Merger

CBS and Viacom announced plans to merge Tuesday morning, creating a media giant that will keep Viacom's name. The deal is the biggest media merger ever, spanning radio, TV, cable, movies and — yes — web sites. How will the Internet be affected?

Although generally perceived as the less spirited company with the older "Matlock" audiences, CBS has accomplished much more with dot-com plays than the MTV-inflected Viacom. For several years CBS has deftly taken stakes in Internet start-ups in exchange for broadcast promotion. Usually no cash was involved, and the deals have tended to cost CBS little more than the chance to build its own second-rate web sites — just imagine if TV executives had been in charge of "CBS Sportsline" instead of a bunch of option-crazed Florida sports fanatics. Indeed, on Viacom's side, respectable sites like MTV.com and Nick.com have secure online footholds for the company's brands, but not much else. This has left hungrier online competitors such as MP3.com and Launch.com to innovate with music downloads and streaming video-on-demand services. Meanwhile CBS's share of its independent Net companies has soared, most dramatically with the CBS MarketWatch investor site. MORE >>