• by Wayne Friedman , January 4, 2006

CBS started its new corporate life on Tuesday with a glitzy new "eye" logo, and also let it be known that it once again has its eye on CNN's business. As part of a media blitz touting his new corporation, CBS chief Les Moonves broke the news on, of all places, the Fox News Channel, that CBS had at one time been interested in acquiring CNN, and is still considering possibilities in the business. Moonves added that a CBS cable news channel makes sense, just as it has for NBC Universal, News Corp., and Time Warner.

This came from questioning surrounding the revamping of CBS News. Moonves declined to talk about rumors concerning whether CBS was negotiating with NBC's Katie Couric for her to take the top news anchor news job at "The CBS Evening News."

CBS Corporation began formal trading on the New York Stock Market yesterday, and investors gave it some backing, as its stock closed up almost 3 percent to $26.20. One analyst at Prudential Equity Group said CBS could have a target price of $30 a share because she anticipates that CBS will begin charging cable and satellite operators for its CBS network signal by 2009. At a fee of 25 cents per subscriber, that will mean an additional $3 to $8 a share.

CBS began trading on the NYSE in 1937, and stopped in 2000, when its merger with Viacom was completed and it began trading under the Viacom ticker. Along with CBS's new life as a separate company from its former Viacom sister company, now called Viacom Inc, CBS Corp. also launched a new corporate Web site, www.cbscorporation.com.

In the wake of its new start, CBS also applied its "eye" logo to all its television, radio, digital media, publishing, outdoor advertising and theme parks businesses. This also includes an added "eye" logo to the UPN TV network logo.

In addition, two former Viacom entities, now CBS companies, will change their names. The Viacom Television Stations Group will become CBS Television Stations, and Viacom Outdoor will be known as CBS Outdoor.