CBS chairman Sumner Redstone walked past him at the Bel-Air Hotel, shortly after CBS bought CNET for $1.8 billion. Minor hasn't been at CNET since 2000, and wasn't involved in the sale. So why would he expect Redstone to recognize him? Nostalgia? Pity? Portfolio reports on Minor's many difficult relationships; he told the magazine that Gateway founder Ted Waitt, formerly an investor in one of Waitt's startups, is no longer a friend. Add to the list of those difficult relationships: Minor with facts.

(Photo by Rob Howard/Portfolio)

Media conglomerates such as Time Warner, which went through its own disastrous mega-merger with AOL in 2000, seemed finally to be recognizing that size wasn't everything. “Whether [Time Warner] is the biggest is not the main thing," said Jeffrey Bewkes, Time Warner's incoming chief executive. "It needs to be the most profitable." Sumner Redstone last year spun out Viacom's traditional media businesses such as TV network, CBS. And Barry Diller's IAC is, even if only after pressure from disgruntled shareholders, being broken up.

Now one can be sure every media company chief executive is running around like a headless chicken. They know that their future depends on internet advertising. For the moment, the bulk of the growth appears to be going to those properties with the biggest audience reach, which scares smaller media companies. Add in a mega-merger they don't understand: it's the perfect environment for media bankers to present consolidation as inevitable and their hair-brained schemes as urgent.

Most of these ideas will come to nothing. But someone who understands the web just enough to be dangerous, will be panicked into a moronic deal. (Arthur Sulzberger of the New York Times, maybe, though he's hampered by the family legacy). Microsoft will survive the hugely expensive and wearying combination it is now proposing. Traditional media companies which follow its example don't have the luxury of making the same mistakes.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. We don't miss boats. Other people miss boats, and they may have missed the Viacom boat.

The fact of the matter is, without copyright protection, there is no entertainment business. And so we instructed YouTube to remove 100,000 pieces of video from their site. Why? Because they were using it without paying for it. I don't believe in that. If you want to use us, pay us. Or make a deal with us that is commensurate with the value of our product. We are the only totally content company, and our content has taken years and years to develop, with a lot of hard work. People who want to use it are going to pay us, or good-bye.