Media Companies Should Court Tech Suitors Now

(MoneyWatch)  Around a year ago, a variety of sources inside Google (none of whom would allow me to quote them by name) made me aware of a conversation that had been conducted at the top level of the company about how to help the ailing news media companies that create so much of the content upon which the search giant depends.

One statement by a high-level exec that was repeated to me several times in slightly different versions was, "If it means we should buy The New York Times, then we'll consider that."

Of course, there already was a robust speculation among analysts and bloggers that some tech giant might scoop up a major newspaper, magazine, or television operation simply because it made sound business sense -- Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and others are, whether they like it or not, in the media business themselves, and securing a reliable stream of authoritative content is in their best interests.

Today, our Bnet tech industry blogger, Erik Sherman, updates this argument with some revealing facts & figures: Besides the Times, he demonstrates how Time-Warner and CBS, for example, might also be purchased for bargain-basement prices by tech giants that enjoy far higher market caps and cash reserves, as well as far less debt and other onerous obligations, than do their potential acquisitions.

Erik's forward-looking argument anticipates the shrinking content pool that is one unavoidable consequence of the looming failure (or drastic scale-back) at so many traditional media companies. As they compete with one another in sector after sector, Apple, Google, Amazon, Sony, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and others all are going to need to gain competitive advantages in order to continue to thrive.

The soaring growth of video online, combined with the rapid transition to mobile platforms, makes what formerly might have been unthinkable suddenly quite thinkable. If you work for management in a media company that's in trouble, you could do worse than figuring out how to begin to convert a baron in Silicon Valley into a potential suitor.