CBS Integrates Video Platforms for New MoneyWatch Site

So the pioneering Wallstrip is still M.I.A., but CBS has figured out a new way to combine finance and online video for its new CBS MoneyWatch.com personal finance site, formally launching Tuesday. The site aims to give a more real and realistic take on money than the standard stock-picking financial media approach. Further, MoneyWatch will be a way for CBS to prove it can do integrated content, post-CNET acquisition.

MoneyWatch (a leftover brand from when CBS owned MarketWatch) will air 5-10 segments per day of between 3 and 5 minutes each. But, from the outset, CBS is trying to make this more than a single-platform play. Editor-at-large Jill Schlesinger, a retired financial adviser, will shepherd MoneyWatch’s commentary as an oldteevee on-air correspondent on the CBS News Early Show, the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, and local CBS TV and radio stations. This kind of effort parallels CBS’ new interactive fiction TV show Harper’s Island, made with lonelygirl15 creators EQAL.

“CBS fundamentally believes that the financial crisis is one of the big stories for the next two years,” said Greg Mason, general manager of CBS Interactive’s Business Network (BNET). Thus, the official mandate for MoneyWatch is “to help people make smart decisions on how to manage their money and take control of their financial lives.”

While MoneyWatch looks to be a nice start at a cross-platform approach to a big topic, complete integration of video and television platforms is a ways off. CBS Interactive doesn’t even have consistency across its online video technology yet, with different players being used by each site. But Mason said player integration efforts were in progress, and “close” to coming to fruition.

As for an older financial video project we’ve been missing? Of Wallstrip, the funny stock market show CBS bought before CNET, Mason confirmed that the show has been discontinued (not that it wasn’t obvious; the last new episode was in December), but said it might come back at a later date.

We’ve been close followers of Wallstrip, in part because it was one of the only online video shows along with Barely Political to get acquired outright.

Mason explained, “Quite frankly it’s not the perfect time to take a humorous look at what’s happening around the [financial markets].” Though we might interject that Jon Stewart taking Jim Cramer to task was a fantastic example of just that.