Essay: Internal factor evaluation matrix (IFE) CBS corporations

Internal Factor Evaluation Matrix (IFE)

CBS Corporations

CBS Strengths

Increasing Popularity for CBS Radio

CBS Radio is one of Unites States leading and largest radio broadcasters, that owns and manages over 130 radio stations. It serves more than 25 markets and is transmits the different shows and programming’s through the internet or airways. CBS offers and covers a large variety of programming such as news, sports, “talk shows” as well as music. Approximately all CBS Radio stations are in the top 50 largest US market and one of their main competitors is Clear Channel Radios.

CBS Radio is on a mission to insistently make strategic moves to join new and traditional media via creative programming and advanced delivery methods such as HD Radio, mobile messaging and podcasting. They are at this time audio streaming nearly 200 CBS radio stations and most of them are also offered online and two thirds of the company’s radio stations are distributed in HD digital radio. In addition, CBS Radio is expanding the use of internet and has contracts with AOL Radio and Yahoo! Radio through which CBS powers AOL and Yahoo! Music Radio and broadcast the stations to its listeners.[1]

CBS has also realized how important it is to satisfy the large market of different ethnic groups. Due to the growing population of minority’s such as Hispanics CBS has invested into the leading Spanish Broadcasting system; where they now own 10%.

Program success and loyalty

As I mentioned earlier CBS Corporation is one of the leading media distributors and networks in the world, and CBS Broadcasting is currently #1 broadcasting network in the United States. By operating 30 television stations and their 50 % ownership with CW network as well as their ownership of Showtime and CBS College Sport Channel they continuously are offering new and established programming that satisfies the viewers, which have created a sense of loyalty.

Not only are the providing intriguing and creative programming that has become an addiction for the viewers to tune in. But their most popular television programming has allowed CBS to branch over to the rest of the world. They are currently providing shows such as CSI, NCIS, Two and a Half Men, Medium, Gossip Girl etc to countries in Europe, Asia, and South America. These CBS shows are extremely popular worldwide but one of CBS series that is considered a “global phenomenon” is the CSI franchise. In January 2008 CBS took over the control of the CSI franchise international television distribution. The three series (CSI, CSI: Miami and CSI: NY) that are a part of the CSI franchise, and are licensed in over 180 countries.

CBS Corporation as a whole has a lot of attractive products and services that has worked well on the market which is shown in the Inventory Turnover because of its high percentage (10.6 %) compared to the industries (5.9%), which basically shows that their products are in demand. Compared to the industry and its competitors (3%), CBS Corporation is making a profit of (3.4%) which shows that they are making enough profits and reduces the risk of being in business. The high inventory turnover (10.6%) goes hand in hand with high net profit margins which are 0.8% higher than the industry and the current profit ratio is 10.6% higher than the industry. Even though CBS Corporations own a diverse set of media and entertainment channels it is through their broadcasting network and its “advertisements” which is where CBS is constantly acquiring for more assets and through which they are earning the most profits.[2]

Expansion of CBS’s online division

CBS Interactive is a leading online content network (owned by CBS Corporation) for information and entertainment. Their collection of leading brands and websites includes CBS.com, CBS sports, CNEt.com, Gamespot.com, TV.com, Bnet.com etc, which includes popular categories of information such as entertainment (includes online TV), technology, business, music and sports.

June 30, 2008�CBS Corporations purchased CNET networks, which owns many of internet’s leading entertainment, news and information websites. Not only does CNET have impressive yearly revenue, but also a large information portfolio and a large international base particularly in China. With this purchase CBS combined the CNET websites with their own secure and growing interactive business. Today, CBS Interactive has approximately 150 million people visiting these websites each month, which has earned them a position in the top 10 Web properties in the world. (Find footnote in my printed papers) CBS Interactive increased its revenues to $421.7 million in 2008 and compared to 2007 revenues of $166.1 million dollars, reflects that CBS decision of purchasing CNET was extremely profitable for them.[3]

Through CBS Interactive and their substantial purchase of CNET, CBS has emphasized the importance of the internet as well as online television. In February 2009 it was announced that TV.com (which is owned by CBS) will be a new available application to download for the Apple iPhone, which is one of the world’s most popular smart phone choices. Tv.com offers free full-episodes of the most popular shows and programming’s in the United States. CBS was extremely receptive of sharing their programming content which can lead to great success for their shows as well as network- due to ratings and popularity. In today’s world it is extremely easy to download movies, shows, or just view programming live straight on your phone, iPod, iTouch or iPhone, mp3 players, portable computers. If CBS promotes their new application on the IPhone extensively and productively, this offered programming and it’s already popular site (www.TV.com) can increase its popularity and gain competitive advantage against its competitor (FOX, ABC, and NBC). [4]

CBS Weaknesses

Lack of employee communication

I decided to visit www.glassdoor.com to get an insight look of what the employees felt about CBS Corporation. To my surprise I saw that CBS have a lot of failure with their internal communication between employees and senior/ upper management. According to the employees (the driving forces of CBS) there is a great lack of internal communication; they are always the last to know about corporate changes, plans, evaluation etc and are treated like “outsiders” by the upper management. One current employee also stated that “divisions do not communicate well�the communication between the various sections of CBS is non-existent” (Corporation review p. 4) and this creates a sort of “unhealthy internal competition” between the different divisions. Another employee stated that”the organization is so big, communication can lax” (Corporation review p. 10). The department/ group managers as well as the senior managements are suppose to supervise and lead its employees to work productively and show potential, but if there is a lack of communication problem and that the employees feel that they are “kept in the closet” their need to be a drastic change in their management structure. If the employees don’t feel as a “part of the team” their creativity and efficiency will decrease over time which will probably be show in the overall work.[5]

Unhappy employees are affecting the finance of CBS, the problems regarding gross margin, quick ratio, and return on assets comes from management efficiency problems, as said before if the management are not happy with the company (such as lack of progress, internal problems, people are just not happy with the company due to no incentives offered) they will not recognize problems regarding managing assets.

Advertising-Net Sales Decrease

The economic recession has harmed many aspects of the media businesses worldwide, but when large network such as CBS depends on the advertisers for their highest profits, there have been a decline.

CBS Corporation depends on local advertisers for most part of their revenue (approximately 65% of sales) and their full revenue (including all different media channels) for 2008 which was 13.95 billion dollars compared to 14.07 billion dollars in 2007; this decrease was the result from lower advertising revenues. Both CBS television and radio networks had a decrease in profits due to the weakened and declining advertising market. Companies could not afford to spend the same type of money they did before the recession on advertising which made it hard to attract new customers.[6]

CBS profits comes mostly from the United States

Most of CBS Corporations businesses are directed to the market in the United States. Even though they have CBS Outdoors that conduct business worldwide, CBS Broadcasting that distribute programs internationally, and CBS Interactive that reaches to anybody worldwide who have access to the internet, their revenues are still depended on the US market. In 2008 most of CBS Corporations revenues came from the US, while only approximately 16 percentages came from international affiliations.[7]

[1] http://www.cbsradio.com/about/index.html and CBS Radio on Hoovers Company Records

[2] http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/results/compare.asp?Symbol=CBS

[3] CBS Corporation-2008 Annual Report

[4] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/cbs-beams-star-trek-episodes-to-iphones/?pagemode=print

[5] http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/CBS-Corp-Reviews-E1053.htm

[6] CBS Corporation on Hoovers Company Records and CBS Corporation-2008 Annual Report

[7] http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/companyProfile?symbol=CBS.N