Les Moonves Says C7 Ratings Standard Coming “Within A Year”
This was one of the points the CBS chief just made to investors to promote his favorite message: that all’s well for CBS and broadcasting. He’s been lobbying to have advertisers pay for the viewers who see commercial spots on DVRs as much as seven days after they first air, up from today’s three days. And that’s “coming right around the corner, and that will be good for us,” he said at a wide-ranging Q&A session at the Deutsche Bank Media, Internet and Telecom conference. Even with the existing C3 arrangement he predicts that in the upfront market “CBS will lead in volume and CPM increases” although he declined to provide a specific target. He adds, though, that “the thing that the press writes that bothers me the most is that 18-to-49 is the only viewer the advertiser cares about…The fact is, we win total viewers by more than we win every other demographic. We welcome everybody and we sell to everybody.” He’s also enthusiastic about digital streaming services including Netflix. “House Of Cards? That’s great. I don’t view them as a competitor. We’ve talked to them as a production company about producing shows for them. So they’re our friend, not our enemy.” Netflix also isn’t the only game in town. “Amazon’s jumping in in a big, big way,” Moonves says. But CBS will stick with selling online services for its older shows, especially serial dramas. “We’re not going to risk our entire schedule.” That’s the main reason why CBS didn’t join Hulu. If the company puts a show on CBS.com that interferes with viewing at the main network “I can pull that in 10 seconds. At Hulu you can’t. Once you give it up, it’s gone. Your child has left you.”
As for expansion plans, Moonves says he doesn’t see many interesting acquisition plans and it’s too late to come up with a broad-based cable channel. “The last thing the cable operators want is another general entertainment channel from us.” Talking up the quality of TV programming, Moonves took a playful jab at producer Mark Burnett and his History Channel miniseries The Bible: “I like his branding: ‘Mark Burnett’s The Bible.’ If you know Mark, it’s not that far from the truth.”
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