Barring any late and successful legal challenges from spurned moguls Lachlan Murdoch and Bruce Gordon, one of Australia's most famous media companies has a new owner, a US media giant with an even more celebrated history.

CBS, which was advised by law firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth, played its cards very close to its chest throughout the Ten administration process. It also declined to comment for this column.

For a $US28 billion ($35 billion) corporation that generated $US13 billion in revenue last year, the deal is pretty small in the scheme of things.

But it also comes just as CBS prepares to embark upon significant, internet-driven global expansion.

Founded in 1927, CBS was originally a radio company which in the 1950s morphed into a TV powerhouse. It is again attempting to make the transition from one fading medium - broadcast television - to its dominant successor, the internet.

Like Ten, and its broadcast TV peers in the US, CBS has been hurt by deep structural changes as audiences have shifted from watching TV at set times, to viewing shows on the internet when they feel like it.

Instead of trying to fight this trend (some call if the "Netflix effect") CBS decided to embrace it.

In 2014, it was the first big US network to launch its own internet streaming service in America. At the time, it was ridiculed, but the service is actually doing quite well.

Last week, at an industry conference in the US, CBS chief executive Les Moonves revealed CBS' All Access streaming product, together with its premium Showtime streaming product, had amassed 4 million subscribers.

This means CBS is well on track to hit its target for 8 million subscribers for these services by 2020.

Of course, these kinds of numbers are tiny relative to Netflix's 100 million-plus global subscriber base.

But they are still something. And the streaming platform has added benefits for CBS of raising the network's clout with advertisers, and giving it leverage in crucial negotiations with pay TV companies (who in the US, are required to pay broadcast networks "re-transmission fees" to air their channels).

For these reasons, Macquarie's New York-based media analyst, Tim Nollen, describes CBS as "the best-placed TV network group" in the US at the moment. Due to its streaming products, it is able to "stand apart from much of the cord-cutting fears", he says.

Internet products tend to work best when they are global and not just local. Netflix now has more international subscribers (52.3 million) than US subscribers (51.3 million). CBS knows this, and plans to take All Access global, with Australia and Canada up first.

"When you look at Netflix, they have 50 million subscribers internationally," Moonves said last month on an earnings call.

"That's a pretty tremendous number. Now All Access is not going to get 50 million, but there are people out there clearly who want this service. And we've proven we can do it domestically, and we will do it internationally.

"We are very aware of the international success that other streaming companies have had. We now see huge opportunity for CBS to go direct to consumer on a much bigger scale worldwide."

One complicating factor for CBS in taking its streaming products global is that it has long-term deals in place to license its content in overseas countries. In Australia, for example, all of Showtime's content, and some of CBS's content, has been licensed to Stan (a joint venture between Fairfax Media, which publishes this column, and Nine Entertainment Co).

Over time these deals will need to be renegotiated. Morgan Stanley argued last year that Fairfax should sell its stake in Stan. Its not unreasonable to think that should it ever proceed with such a move, CBS might now be involved.

Another question is how much consumer appetite really exists for yet another online subscription video product. In Australia, we already have Netflix, Stan and Amazon's Prime Instant Video, as well as free services from the major TV channels (including Ten). How that gets resolved remains to be seen.

In any case, it is going to be fascinating to watch CBS operate in Australia. At the very least, the company is more than used to competing with the Fox/News Corp empire.

The enmity between CBS' nonagenarian top shareholder Sumner Redstone, and his younger peer Rupert Murdoch, is legendary.

"I have always wanted to be No.1 in my business," Redstone says in the book Stealing MySpace (via The Guardian), "and to be No.1, you have to be ahead of Rupert Murdoch."

Redstone's National Amusements vehicle remains CBS' single biggest shareholder, but the mogul no longer has any involvement in running the business. A series of salacious legal battles over his health culminated in his removal from the post of executive chairman last year.

Last week, Moonves was quoted by the US entertainment press as taking a gentle swipe at Lachlan Murdoch.

"I also heard him say that the network was not a core asset," Moonves said of comments Murdoch earlier made at the conference. "We make a lot of money. I guess maybe they do not."

It looks like the acquisition of Ten will add another chapter, and another generation, to this rivalry.