Company insiders say the concept started in development three months ago and the portal should launch as early as this fall, possibly in November. CBS (NYSE:CBS) has hired some high-profile consultants for Project Bulldog to study multiple Internet strategies, including a portal strategy, sources said.
Meanwhile, CBS is busily amassing popular Internet destinations -- not with cash, but with multi-year, multi-million dollar advertising and branding deals. In all, CBS has exchanged nearly $800 million in advertising on its broadcast, cable, radio and outdoor mediums over the next seven years in exchange for a piece of nine sites.
The deals started in March 1997, when CBS purchased a 12.5 percent stake in SportsLine (Nasdaq:SPLN) for $57 million in promotional deals (a deal subsequently extended). Lately, it's picked up the pace, making three such deals in April, two more in June, and another earlier this month, when it exchanged $150 million in advertising over seven years for a 35 percent stake in Medscape.com.
Plenty of content to draw from
In addition to this stable of online properties, CBS also has a bevy of news and entertainment content from its dozens of broadcast outlets, and appears poised to put it all together. But the company declined to comment on that potential.
"We have not stated yet as a company how all these properties will tie together," a CBS spokesman said. "That piece is something we are considering and not announcing at this time."
It remains unclear whether CBS will attempt to create a portal that would rival Go.com (ABC) or Snap.com (NBC). Doing so would probably mean CBS would have to put some actual cash into brokering new content deals, said one insider, who asked not to be named. CBS, for instance, doesn't have nearly the variety of online content of its traditional rivals or portal leader Yahoo! Inc (Nasdaq:YHOO).
CBS is also limited by not having a public Web unit, an executive at one of its partners said.
But somewhere to put it?
"CBS can't do anything until it creates a currency, a stock currency. Right now it's been all advertising," said Larry Kramer, CEO of CBS MarketWatch. Kramer also wouldn't comment on the potential for a CBS portal, but did say "they are committed to being a major player on the Web. We're happy about that because we're a part of the team."
If Project Bulldog were to turn into a portal, whether it would have any bite was questioned by at least one analyst.
"I don't think it's a smart move. It's very late in the game to do that. It's going to be very difficult for them," said Charlene Li, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.
Li said that aggregating its current vertical sites from one single site, while less ambitious than building a portal, might make more sense.
"The best strategy is to aggregate what they already do, and brand it with existing brand," Li said.
Li said brand is an important part of any Internet strategy, "because that tells users what kind of experience that you will have online."
