CNET's Worst Day Ever

CNET Networks had one awful bad day Wednesday. It was the worst in company history (aside from buying mySimon for $700 million).

CEO Shelby Bonnie resigned amid acknowledgement that there were "deficiencies" in his part in how the company handled stock option pricing. That same day CNET GC Sharon Le Duy, SVP Heather McGaughey of Human Resources, and former CFO Doug Woodrum also agreed to get the boot (resigned) for their part in favorable pricing of options.

CNET shoved in Neil Ashe to be CEO. Bonnie, tarnished, stays as a director. Bonnie still holds ton of stock--and majority vote?

But this part seemed to just slide by:

The committee report also said that recently resigned executives and the directors who received improperly priced options have agreed to have those options repriced at fair market value.

So let me get this straight. They got busted with their hands in the register, but it's OK because they've agreed to put back the money?

The options scandal is just the beginning. There's more bad news that day. The company also lowered it's sales guidance for next quarter and full year.

Analyst were none too pleased. A bunch of notes were issued. Some pointed to the lowered revenue guidance and CNET's volatile area of revenue, dependent on technology industry sales. If the tech market is in decline, guess who has no ad budget to fill CNET's ad inventory?

Jefferies & Co. pointed to some dire traffic numbers. Citing comScore number, analyst Youssef Squali said in a research note that CNET's year-to-year traffic had dumped 50 percent. "CNET.com is down 54 percent, Gamespot is down 21 percent, and ZDNet is down 30 percent," Squali wrote.

Yikes! That's a problem. To be fair, CNET has done major changes to its web platform in the past that messed up the tracking. So this could be the case.

But if not, what's stealing away all of red ball's traffic? Tech blogs? Have all the general news and business sites figured out CNET News.com's game? Has CNET finally lost an edge in reviews because of places like the New York Times doing it smarter?

After all the bad news hit CNET, a number of analysts said it might be ripe for acquisition by a big media company looking for an instant web strategy. I'll buy that.