By and large, for traditional media companies to penetrate the Top 10 Rankings of Largest Media Properties, the cost of entry seems to be $2B, give or take a few hundred millions of dollars.

We already covered this for News Corp., who spent just under $2.5B to get to where Fox Interactive Media is now: continue reading...

A number of otherwise smart people suggest that Napster should be worth “at least as much as Last.fm”, whom CBS bought for $280M.

Napster? They’re worth $70M, and if you look at their net value, it’s trading at, hum, $0. continue reading...

One by one, they pick up the baton and run with it.

News Corp. Chairman and Rupert Murdoch had mentioned how he had become enamored with the Web because with very little investment, he got abnormally positive returns. So off he went. continue reading...

Paid Content refers to a NYT article on CBS which calls for the company that Bill Paley built to make digital acquisitions, which begs the question: should they go for a big purchase or make small moves?

Of course, answering that question alone without addressing the backdrop to that question yields an incomplete picture. continue reading...

The following is a perpetual-work-in-progress.  Once you start to compile a list of mergers and acquisitions, you realize why it’s nearly impossible to have a complete list.  We are quite confident that the following is a very good, comprehensive list of the largest, more notable deals… but it is not - and no list will be - fully complete because there are too many countries around the world and too many industries to report (it is highly possible that the Wall Street Journal or Financial Post, for example, has such a list… but it would be thick and unwieldy).

We have included: continue reading...

Editor’s note: I knew we were speaking too soon. One more deal to add to the list: Time Warner to buy Quigo. Added to the bottom of the list, under ad networks.

According to The Jordan Edmiston Group Inc.’s October 2007 Client Briefing report, the number of deals through the first three quarters of 2007 exceeded full year 2006 figures: 637 transactions with $95B in value thus far. Do the math and that is $150M per deal, quite rich. continue reading...

Clearly there were many reasons, some of which I listed here, but it is very interesting to see the rationale provided by angel investor here:

Stefan Glaenzer is looking for his third hit, although the German angel investor, now based in London, cannot complain so far. He made several million selling his share in Ricardo, the internet auctioneer, to QXL in the first dot-com boom and later used some of that cash to invest “a few hundred thousand” in 2004 into the internet radio service Last.fm, which turned into £22 million on its £140 million sale to CBS this month.   continue reading...

For the past couple of years, News Corp. amassed considerable real estate online with the acquisitions of Scout, IGN and MySpace.  The company’s fortunes grew as a result: MySpace today boasts the most amount of pageviews amongst any site.  While the company continues to make specific acquisitions to bolster its portfolio - namely Strategic Data and Photobucket - the company is not spending anywhere near as much as it was last year.

This year’s M&A media leader seems to the CBS, so far at least.  This is all that more interesting because CBS was supposed to be the value vehicle in the Viacom spinoff, with Viacom being the growth opportunity.  But, ever since CBS CEO Les Moonves lured dealmaker Quincy Smith from Allen & Co., it looks like ’tis CBS - and not Viacom - who’s shopping for growth and strategic fits. continue reading...