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Media

CBS (CBS): A Chance To Spin-Off CNET

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Cammonopoly_wideweb__430x3250A chance like this only comes along rarely. CBS (CBS), which is trading at just above $17, down from a 52-week high of $32.97, could spin-off CNET. The large collection of tech websites has found new success under the CBS umbrella.

CNET.com posted a 22% increase in unique visitors over July 2007, pointing to early success of its beta release, which launched in June and officially launches later this month.

BNET.com, another part of the operation, posted a 19% increase in unique visitors over last month.

PaidContent.org questioned the numbers, but they still seem pretty good.

CBS bought CNET for $1.8 billion. Based on CNET’s improving fortunes, it must be worth much more than that, perhaps $2.5 billion.

In less than a year, CBS’s market cap has gone from over $25 billion to under $12 billion.The TV network company now has a chance to partially spin-off the tech company operation at a valuation which should help the CBS share value.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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