All Things Digital

A lot of people have been piling on CBS for its deal to buy Web site operator CNET Networks for $1.8 billion in cash.

Not BoomTown.

And it is not because newly crowned CBS Interactive CEO Quincy Smith (pictured here) is the ever-amusing Energizer Bunny of the Internet.

Okay, CBS (CBS) paid too much and that makes the whole thing suspect. But is it the wrong direction?

I have been noodling on the deal for a while now and have concluded that I like it.

Why? Primarily, because it is a big bet on big traffic from a high-quality Internet-born content and video site, which has been unnecessarily pilloried much as much, much smaller Web 2.0 competitors have been over-hyped.

With a hard re-haul–and there is no question CNET has to shake the Web 1.0 tone out of its system–and a true effort to find new advertising paradigm, the site could be just the kind of proof that content on the Web can really be powerful and more lucrative.

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Here are some more video interviews I did at the Monaco Media Forum last week.

Talking about a range of Web issues, the interviewees include pundit and investor Esther Dyson, Real Networks’ Rob Glaser, Simon Assaad of Heavy, BSkyB’s James Murdoch and the ubiquitous Quincy Smith of CBS:

OK, I am definitely not Princess Grace-worthy (well, who is? But here’s a picture of her, because it just makes life more pleasant).

But I am headed right now to her glam neck of the woods for the Monaco Media Forum, which is set to take place from tomorrow through Saturday in Monte-Carlo.

Hosted by HSH Prince Albert II, its subhead this year is “Leadership for the Digital Revolution,” and the group gathered is pretty heady and packed with American Webheads, as well as from around the globe. It has all been wrangled by Wired’s Spencer Reiss.

Speakers include Google’s ad guy Tim Armstrong, RealNetworks’ CEO Rob Glaser, CBS interactive guru Quincy Smith, pundit Esther Dyson, Babelgum Chairman Silvio Scaglia, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe, NetVibes CEO Tariq Krim and News Corp.’s British Sky Broadcasting CEO James Murdoch (whose father is BoomTown’s new bossman).

I will be doing a one-on-one interview Friday morning with InterActiveCorp CEO Barry Diller with the title “Reality Check.”

Videos to come, of course, as BoomTown gets some European class.

Please see this disclosure related to me and CBS.

And what exactly did Quincy Smith get for handing over millions of dollars to the daily financial Web show, Wallstrip?

Well, to start, a cameo on its aggressively cute-as-ever episode yesterday. The jaunty president of CBS Digital wore sneakers with his uncomfortable-looking power suit as he gamely delivered his lines in a sendup of the site’s host–the also aggressively cute-as-ever Lindsay Campbell–arriving at the media giant’s headquarters in Manhattan without anyone caring.

Let’s hope that does not actually turn out to be the reality of the situation for the quirky creativity of Wallstrip, although I have an uneasy feeling it might be.

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I always pay attention when anyone calls a media executive smart and, when it is a newly minted one, I pay particular attention. In a post today, BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis points to a story in The Wall Street Journal also today about CBS’s renewed efforts to plunge into the digital space under the leadership of Quincy Smith, its new Web guru whom I have known since he was doing investor relations for Netscape back in the day.

While he was impossibly young then, looking like a 12-year-old except for the sideburns, Smith is still the same jumping bean of a person he always has been, all frenetic energy and rat-a-tat-tat patter.

The Journal piece discusses Smith’s strategy of placing bets all over the Web by putting CBS content just about everywhere, across a wide range of sites. “CSI” on MSN! “CSI” on Bebo! “CSI” on AOL! “CSI” in your glove compartment! (It could happen.)

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