…about media conglomerates getting ever-bigger? It’s working out to be a poor business strategy, at least as viewed by executives who only pay attention to The Almighty Stock Price.

Thus, Viacom’s thinking of spinning off CBS into a separate company. This comes just five years after Viacom (originally formed when CBS spun off its local cable systems and its pre-1972 rerun library) picked up CBS, which had been previously bought and spun off from Loew’s and Westinghouse.

The new CBS would include not just the eye-branded network and network-owned TV stations, but also the Infinity radio stations, the UPN mini-network, and the UPN-branded Viacom-owned TV stations (including KSTW here). Viacom would keep its cable channels (MTV, Spike, BET, et al.) and Simon & Schuster publishing.

Paramount Pictures would be severed, Solomon-baby-like. Viacom would keep the feature-film and DVD businesses; while CBS would get Paramount’s TV production and syndication arms (including all those old CBS shows). Among other results, this would mean TV Land (to remain part of Viacom) would have to pay CBS for most of the shows it airs.

American society and American discourse could still use more voices, more choices. There’s no guarantee that the split-up pieces of corporate media giants would behave any less corporately.