CBS President-CEO Leslie Moonves said analysts and investors aren't giving his media empire the credit it deserves for modernizing. Speaking at the "Outlook 2010" seminar hosted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mr. Moonves was asked why CBS isn't getting more credit from Wall Street for its many digital innovations of the past six months.

Here is part of his reply as reported in AdAge:

"There is a perception out there that we are 'old media,' that we are stuck in the old days ... [but since we formed [the digital media division in] Jan. 3, we have probably done over 20 new-media deals. We did a Comcast deal. We've done a Google deal. We've done numerous deals with Verizon. We're doing video on demand on our own website. We did the NCAA basketball tournament."

What caught my attention this morning was that Mr. Moonves said CBS took in $4.2 million in new revenue from advertisers supporting its March Madness webcasts, and he expected that figure to double next year.

So, a let's do a simple calculation: 21 days of March Madness averages to $200,000 per day in ad sales from one web site (albeit a very popular web site).

Next, let's find a comparison. National Cable Communications is the rep firm for the cable MSO's. While they do not sell all the ads for local cable television, they do (presumably) target the same type of advertisers that CBS covets: nationally focused and large. NCC probably sells $3 Million in ads per day; that is $1 Billion in national ad sales for spot cable last year. Let's keep in mind that this business represents national ad sales inventory for the entire country across Comcast, Time Warner, Cox, Cablevision, Charter, etc.

The two metrics are not an apples-to-apples comparison and people could pick it apart. But I find it interesting that one very popular web site can generate 1/15'th the daily gross revenue from national advertisers as all of local cable can.

Some of the data in this email may be so television ad industry specific that it is clear to me but not clear in type. Please contact me if it is confusing.