• by Shankar Gupta , June 13, 2006

Adding to the crop of TV, movie, and music verticals, Fox Interactive's IGN and CBS.com Monday launched separate sites focused on entertainment.

CBS Digital's "Showbuzz" covers music, movies, and TV, while IGN's IGNTV.com is TV-only. Despite the differences, both are focused squarely on attracting entertainment-obsessed youth.

"We want to use the credibility of CBS News, but we wanted to build a younger-skewing audience," said Larry Kramer, President of CBS Digital. Showbuzz will offer news, interviews, and clips that originate on CBS properties, including CBSNews.com, CBS.com, "The Early Show," and "60 Minutes." In addition, through partnerships, the site will also offer content from The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, MovieTickets.com, and Broadway.com.

Steven Horn, publisher of IGN's Entertainment division, said that IGNTV.com will be targeting TV shows that are "of relevance to the 18- to-34-year-old males." IGNTV.com will include original feature stories, interviews, "watch to watch" suggestions, and video clips. The site will also offer visitor blogs, editable fan pages for each show, and an editable database for movie trivia, facts, and quotes.

The two sites enter a space that is currently dominated by major portals and media companies. AOL Entertainment tops the field with 34.8 million unique visitors last month (24.4 million at AOL Music, 15.2 million at Moviefone, 11.4 million at AOL Television, 8.8 million at AOL Games, 7.9 million at AOL Celebrity, and 7.9 million at Hollywood gossip site TMZ, according to comScore Media Metrix). Viacom Online's MTV Networks garnered 29.5 million unique users last month, while Yahoo Music drew 21.6 million.

Kramer said that CBS aims to compete directly with those large portals and networks. "We see ourselves as a full-service entertainment site, across the full range of entertainment," he said. "The idea is to have a really broad-base entertainment site that has a broad audience, and draws a lot on video."

The site was conceived in part as an ad play, Kramer said, because the entertainment pages on CBS.com were being sold out. "Because it's new, we started with a clean slate," he said. "One of the reasons we did this is our advertising opportunities on CBS.com were sold out on the entertainment news sections."

IGN's site, conversely, will be narrow and focused--targeting 35-40 TV series, including "Deadwood," the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim lineup, the new "Blade" series, and other youth-focused programming. The site is built around a strong community, incorporating user-generated content and exclusive content, including interviews, clips and previews, Horn said.