Major media companies are on a buying spree, but are they cost-conscious?

"Do you know any companies we might be interested in?" This questions, or soemthing much like it, has beern posed to me on more than one occasion in recent months by the heads of digital units in large media companies. People are shopping, and the old media companies that once over-invested and then sniffed cynically at digital media are back to the table. Hearst puchased both Kaboodle and UGO in recent months, expanding both their audience into young male miches and their business into shopping directory. CNet has a good overview of recent activity in the space.

But are the big media shoppers themselves well-informed buyers? The article suggests that the NBCU buyout of iVillgae and Conde Nast’s purchase of Reddit have been disappointments. Even the News Corp. big buy-in of MySpace seems a little less promising now that Facebook is in ascendance. Well, that may be taking the point a bit too far. The success of the digital campaign for "The Simpsons Movie," much of which was fueled by innovative uses of MySpace, seems to show where the synergies can happen.

Mark Glaser has a good look at Hearst pursuing a start-up model in re-launching its magazine sites at his MediaShoft blog.

I think old media buying up new media is a good thing. If anything, the new companies help educate the old in the ways of interactivity. The moguls admit that the world is shifting beneath their feet and they need to acquire the audiences that smarter fledglings have amassed. While Web acquiaitions once were a matter of hubris, now they are a matter of humble necessity.

Posted under Michael's Blog