How To Marry A Trillionaire
By John Townley
December 14, 1999

As the number of eligible bachelor/bachelorette streaming companies move past nubility to the serious dating game with traditional big media mates, the question on the mind of many is, "What are the right moves to bag that trillionaire?" Of course, there is always the option of becoming the "big one" yourself without resorting to outside help, but the specter of becoming left behind when the networks and other media giants have bought up all they need and proceed to erase you as competition is getting more real with every merger and acquisition. As of old, increasingly, big pockets are calling the shots, and quality streamers can use a little assistance from mutual welfare arrangements.

Arranged marriages in corporate life, as in real life, can range from legalized rape to happily ever after. Which way it goes depends on how suited you are to each other, and how much you realize it. And, as with men and women, fate often plays a critical hand.

No better example of suitability and fate may be the marriage of CBS and health dot-com Medscape, complete with a wedding reception on AOL. These two, who have one of the best traditional media/dot-com unions, succeeded because they truly shared mutual needs, took the right steps all along the way, and were blessed by circumstances. As a result, they may be looked at as cover models for corporate "Bride and Groom" magazine, from which would-be newlyweds can learn a lot.

While the newly-born (1995) Medscape was getting its act together earlier this year, not yet ready to make approaches to larger partners, fate took a hand in the personal life of John Frazee, vice president of news services for CBS News. He went to the doctor for a routine physical and found that he had a raised lymphocyte count, a possible symptom of otherwise asymptomatic chronic lymphocyte leukemia. He sent for new tests, which were delayed, and in the meantime started suddenly-urgent research on the disease he might have, which was known to be fatal. His first stop, the Internet. There he found, as so many had before him, a wealth of information - some of it helpful, some misleading, but all of it instantly available. "I became a well-informed consumer via the Internet on issues and options involved in lymphocytic leukemia," he attests.

But the source he favored most was Medscape. "I found the Internet to be a source of high-quality information, and one of the sites most satisfying was Medscape. With Medscape it was easy to determine which information was new, compared to using search engines." Fortunately, the results of his second set of tests turned out to be negative, but the seeds of corporate romance had been sown. CBS was already developing an entry model into the dot-com world with its fledgling MarketWatch, so Medscape seemed like a possible next step.