CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) has acquired the celebrity gossip site Dotspotter.com for about $10 million, according to paidContent.The acquisition, which Sumner Redstone probably paid for out of petty cash, is surprising. First, the site is only 10 months old. Second, as paidContent's Rafat Ali points out, there is no shortage of celebrity news sites, including Time Warner (NYSE: TWX)'s TMZ.com and Showbuzz a site that CBS launched last year that hasn't exactly burned up the charts.
CBS already is knee-deep in the celebrity news business, producing Entertainment Tonight and The Insider, so the acquisition does make some sense. Maybe the New York-based media company hopes to capture some of the page views that are heading the way of TMZ and Perez Hilton. Dotspotter has some interesting features, including allowing people to vote on whether they like the story about LIndsay Lohan's new boyfriend.
But for the site to be successful, it won't have to reinvent the wheel, just make it more interesting. In today's celebrity-saturated media environment that will be hard.
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