For CBS, raiding Silicon Valley for talent is the fastest way to lose its rep as your grandpa’s choice media company.

CBS Interactive President Quincy Smith, himself a veteran dealmaker for tech and media companies with close ties to the west coast, has been poaching top tech companies for talent, particularly engineers, to build up its online offerings.

Recent hires, he told a press luncheon in New York, have come from eBay, Google, Yahoo, Apple, Oracle, Netscape, Sun, and Microsoft, among others.

“Media is finally starting to hire real tech people,” he said. 
     
Other takeaways from Smith:

• 70 percent of the people watching Sunday football games on CBS also have a computer turned on — perhaps checking on fantasy results.
• CBS viewers are most often watching online videos just before prime-time rather than during the workday.
• CBS would consider joining up with Hulu.
• Another Web show, MOBLOGIC, is launching this week.
• The CBS Interactive team is known around the company as the honeypot. We didn’t ask …