From skinny bundles to skyrocketing rights fees and everything in between, CBS President & CEO Les Moonves covered a broad range of sports and entertainment topics this morning during a one-on-one Q&A at the '15 NeuLion Sports Media & Technology Conference. Moonves acknowledged that the landscape of network TV has been changing rapidly, saying, “More has changed over the last two years than the last two decades.” But he made one thing crystal clear: “Network television is not dead.” Moonves: “I’ve been hearing that network television’s been dead since the day I took this job over 20 years ago. ... Network is still pretty damn important, and pretty damn successful.” Regarding Disney Chair & CEO Bob Iger’s recent comments about ESPN needing to shift its strategy, and the subsequent Wall Street reaction, Moonves said, “Right away, that sent up a red flag, and once again, a vast overreaction on Wall Street: ‘Oh, my God! The traditional places are going to be losing subs; the whole ecosystem is failing.’ And that just is not true.” He added, “Wall Street has been looking for this digital story. ‘Digital is taking over the universe. The old guys are dead.’ Digital -- don’t get me wrong, it’s very important to all of us. It’s a very important part of my company. We are getting hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars from digital advertising, subscription fees and all sorts of ways of getting paid by digital. But, for us as broadcasters, they’re not taking away money. Digital is taking away money from print, and I might say niche cable networks that are targeting a very small demographic.”
CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN: Moonves stood by previous comments in which he called overnight ratings “virtually useless” due to the exorbitant number of viewers who watch shows after they originally air. He said, “I still wake up at 5:00 in the morning and look at them, and you still feel good when you get a high number and you feel bad when you get a low number, but it doesn’t mean nearly what it used to be in the old days, so you don’t get up and run around the bed no matter what the numbers are either way. ... Obviously, if it’s a very high number or an extremely low number, you take note of that. But they are far less significant than they were a few years ago.” Moonves added of what the networks can do to create a universally accepted and viable unit of audience measurement: “That’s a question that’s plagued our business for 50 years. ... Nielsen’s the only game in town, unfortunately.”
SPORTS TALK: The 40-minute conversation between Moonves and moderator Ben Grossman shifted from general media to sports media about 25 minutes in. Moonves addressed the subject of paying exorbitant fees for rights, saying, “There comes a point where you have to decide what business we’re in. ESPN is in a very, very different business than us.” He said CBS at one point was losing “a significant amount of money” on the NCAA Tournament before partnering with Turner Sports. Moonves: “It’s nice waking up in the morning when the tournament begins and not saying, ‘Gee, I’m going to lose $150 million in the next three weeks.’” He added of Sunday afternoon and Thursday night football, “The NFL is pretty important to the networks. It’s pretty important. They know it. I must say, they use their leverage appropriately, and you take it with a smile because, guess what, you need the NFL.”
Quick Hits:
* On the impact of digital media: “The economics have changed in how we’re getting paid, but, at our core, we’re still producing great content, and that’s what it’s all about.”
* On the future of media: “I’m very bullish on the networks; I’m very bullish on cable networks; I’m very bullish on programming. It’s about the content.”
* On the enormous increase in new channels and shows in recent years: “There can never be, in my mind, too much television. There is a lot of great stuff on television. I think there are more good shows on television now than in the history of television. There’s also more crap on.”
* On skinny bundles: “What we’re trying to do is set ourselves up for the person who wants the 180 channels, the person who wants the 15 channels, or the person who wants to buy a la carte. You can get your CBS in three different ways.”
* On being “virtually sold out” of Super Bowl ads: “There are a few spots left, but you have to pay a lot of money for them.”
* On a possible NFL team in L.A.: “It’s crazy that the No. 2 market in the United States doesn’t have a football team.”
* On the World Series: “Can the Mets come back? Absolutely. … Although, there’s a part of me, even though I’m an old-school Mets fan, competitively, wants the (series) over in four. I don’t want Fox to get three more of those great numbers.”
