More hot gossip from NedBrainard's poison pen.
We hate to invoke that old cliché about the phoenix arisen, but what other metaphor is there to describe the reascendence of our old friend Fred Davis in the relentlessly derivative world of CMP? Fred, you'll recall, was once one of the guiding lights of NetGuide Live, the star-crossed, San Francisco-based Web analog to the equally star-crossed Long Island-based NetGuide magazine. But, as we reported last year, the happy relationship between Fred and CMP came asunder shortly after Fred invited bombastic pal and fellow partier Marc Canter to deliver his peculiar view of the interactive world to an auditorium full of appalled CMP executives. Fred friends familiar with the byzantine political landscape of CMP tell us that he has managed to worm his way back into the affections of CMP president Ken Cron and his lieutenants; indeed,the CMPers may soon take Fred's advice and implement the radical restructuring plan he's proposed for both the magazine and the Web site. What's so radical about Fred's big plans? Let's just say when it comes to the art of the deal, Fred admires minimalism.
Apparently battling the likes of Softbank, IDG, and CMP just isn't satisfying enough for our friends Halsey Minor, Shelby Bonnie, and Kevin Wendle. The peripatetic founders of CNET have long harbored dreams of doing more on the Net than building sites like Mediadome, the massive marketing service for a major advertiser, which also happens to generate a constant flow of conflict-of-interest problems for the company's news staff. Now we've heard they're ready to challenge Disney and Viacom. Back in October, the company registered the domain cnetkids.com; the company has been busily hiring staff to work on the service for months now. Sources inside the company tell us the site is ready to launch in April with a full panoply of children's-oriented material; soon your children will be able to learn about the wonders of Intel products (and maybe even make a purchase) in their own special corner of the c|net world. CNET, apparently, is hoping the same rules apply for technology coverage as for tobacco: Hook customers young, and they're addicted for life.
Rumors to the contrary, it's highly unlikely that PointCast will be sold any time soon to any private buyer, particularly News Corp. Our friends at PointCast have told us there's been much mirth inside the company about the way the rumor took off; we can only hope for their sakes that they're able to laugh all the way to the bank in a few months should the public markets welcome PointCast at any of the outrageous valuations being bandied about last week. But who cares how much PointCast is worth? What's far more interesting to us about the PointCast/News Corp. stories is figuring out who the rumor monger driving the stories could be, and how they managed to dupe, on consecutive days, not only iWorld anaylst Steve Harmon but the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. While the obvious candidates for leaking the story would be anyone hoping to drive up the valuation of PointCast - in other words, any of its investors or employees - we've recently heard some far more interesting speculation regarding News Corp.
This theory holds that News Corp., not PointCast, was the source of the leaks - not because they wanted to spend as much as US$450 million for PointCast, but because they wanted to smoke out a potential bargain or two by attracting interest from any of PointCast's competitors who might be seeking financing. Pursuing Net acquisitions with such eager subterfuge might be a stretch for News Corp., however. Friends who attended a recent broadcasting conference in Monterey, California, said that in casual conversation, Rupert Murdoch sounded like anything but a potential buyer of Net property. Given his recent history, which includes a disastrous investment in Delphi and an even more disastrous partnership with MCI, Rupert's Net aversion is certainly understandable.
