In an announcement, CBS Corp. said that it is buying the online video watching guide Clicker.com and making its CEO Jim Lanzone, co-founder of Clicker Media Inc., the new president of CBS Interactive. Lanzone will replace Neil Ashe, who announced in December that he wanted to leave the company. Ashe has served as president of CBS Interactive since CBS acquired CNET Networks (News - Alert) Inc. in June 2008.

Lanzone was the chief executive of Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves), where he is credited with turning around the search engine ahead of its sale to IAC/InterActiveCorp in 2005 before founding Clicker in October 2008. Clicker has about 2.5 million users per month and indexes more than 1 million TV shows online. Most of those shows are free, but in other cases, users are directed to different sites such as Amazon.com or Comcast (News - Alert) Corp.'s XfinityTV service, where they are then prompted to prove they are pay TV subscribers or to rent or purchase shows.

In a statement, Leslie Moonves, president and chief executive officer of CBS Corporation said, “Jim is a dynamic, creative executive who knows the interactive space and its key players. Throughout his career, he has proven to be both a leader and an innovator, and now he'll bring both of those skills to help CBS Interactive build on its success. In these last couple of years, we've grown CBS into a top 10 global Internet property. I'm confident that with Jim at the helm, we will continue to expand our digital footprint, and capitalize on our scale in this fast-growing marketplace."

In a recently reported story from February 26, 2011, the television landscape has become pretty clear: after Fox's "American Idol," there's CBS, and there's everybody else.

The two versions of "Idol" last week were the most popular programs on TV, the only shows with more than 20 million viewers, the Nielsen Co. said Tuesday. The next 16 shows on Nielsen's list were all on CBS, including the premiere of Forest Whitaker's new drama, "Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior." It had more viewers last week than the show it was spun off, "Criminal Minds."



Jennifer Russell is a TMCnet Copy Editor. Previously she worked as an Editorial Production Assistant at the Taunton Press and as a Production Assistant at Hersam-Acorn Newspapers. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell