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CBS and CNET Network has sealed an acquisition agreement that could probably be the next biggest acquisition deal after the failed Microsoft-Yahoo deal. Although the price involved in this acquisition is not as big as the Microsoft-Yahoo deal, the fact is both CBS and CNET Network own some of the most popular internet properties and combining them would elevate CBS into the ranks of the 10 most popular Internet companies in the US.

For a purchase price of $11.50 per share, CBS hopes to acquire CNET Networks by the close of the third quarter this year. Luckily for them, the CNET Board has unanimously approved the proposed deal valued at $1.8 billion.

This deal would certainly be most favorable to CBS, since if you combined the unique visitors of its Internet properties with that of CNET Networks, the company would gain around 54 million unique users per month, with a total of around 200 million users worldwide. This is certainly not a bad deal at all for both companies.

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Radio and TV network CBS will be running an experiment about cellphone advertising based on a person’s location or what it commonly known as location-based advertising. However, CBS did not specify the exact date and duration of this trial. The network giant hopes this will help arrest the aversion of many consumers to traditional ads seen on newspapers, TV and Websites.

Thanks to its tie-up with major mobile operators and social networking site Loopt, it can take advantage of the GPS-based technology to accurately serve geographically relevant ads the minute a customer steps in a particular establishment like restaurants or stores. These ads will appear on the company’s mobile sites, CBS Mobile and CBS Mobile Sports.

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NBC, News Corp., CBS, and Viacom are all in talks to take out the grand champion YouTube, by creating a competing site in which they get all the profits.  They’ve got plenty of content in their archives, so it would be relatively easy to do.  It would be kind of like… IPTV now wouldn’t it?

So the real question is, will this work?  Will people really be driven away from YouTube because a few networks are teaming up to start another site?  I say absolutely not.  The site may become SEMI-popular, but won’t have the Indie feel that YouTube does.  But I’m going to say they’re not aiming for the YouTubers.  They would be aiming for people that want FULL-LENGTH TV shows and don’t want to go to iTunes and shell out cash.  If they provide TV shows for free with commercials, I’ll probably get on over there and watch me some shows I’ve missed.  It all sounds great in theory, but lets be honest, they’re quite a bit more greedy than that.

According to the New York Times, issues are also likely to pop up due to the networks’ differing agendas.

But each partner in the proposed YouTube competitor brings its own agendas and potential conflicts. For instance, the News Corporation also owns both the Fox television network and the popular MySpace social networking Web site.

We’ve got to say, EchoStar (owner of DISK Network) has not had a good couple of weeks.  A couple of weeks ago, they paid out $90.6 million to TiVo for patent infringement, and this week, they’ve agreed to pay $100 million to network affiliates (ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox) so they don’t shut off “distant network channels.” According to the press release, “Distant channels are ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox network channels that originate from a market outside the community in which the subscriber lives.”

With the announcement, EchoStar has now reached settlements with almost 800 channels and hopes to be done with the 9 long years of litigation.  I cannot possibly imagine how relieved their lawyer is.

Quick Fact: EchoStar has paid out about 1.3% of their 14.33 billion market cap in just 2 weeks.

Looking to watch last night’s TV show online but not sure where exactly to get it? TechCrunch has posted a rundown of each broadcast channel’s options (NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX) as well as the iTunes library content offering. Hopefully this will help you find what you missed, because we know walking into work without knowing the winner of tonight’s American Idol finale will cost you, your reputation.

Read [TechCrunch]