CBS Primes TV.com With More Video

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Eight months after CBS's $1.8 billion deal to buy CNET, its strategy for one of the websites acquired in the deal, TV.com, is coming into focus.

CBS has long considered TV.com one of the most intriguing properties included in the deal. The site had a distribution agreement with the NBC Universal-News Corp. video site Hulu.com, but had built a big following (4.8 million monthly unique visitors according to ComScore) with very little video content at all.

Now CBS has made a move to add more TV to the service, signing catalog deals with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Sony Corp, PBS, Showtime and Endemol USA. The deals bring shows such as "Starksy & Hutch," "Charlie's Angels" and "Weeds" to the service.

CBS Interactive Senior VP Anthony Soohoo said the idea is not to replicate Hulu, but to "acquire content that drives community activity on the site."

As the Compete table below shows, TV.com became a pretty big online property without much video at all. On a traffic basis, it's bigger than Hulu, although Hulu serves many more video streams and is gaining fast. Hulu is also working on community functions that it plans to roll out later this year.