CBS’ Leslie Moonves Eyes Acquisitions

Content Companies, Broadcast Outfits, New-Media Concerns on Shopping List

By Michael Malone -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/13/2008 12:13:00 PM

After a few modest acquisitions the past few years, CBS president and CEO Leslie Moonves indicated that the company is very much in the mood for a big purchase at McGraw-Hill’s Media Summit Thursday morning in New York.

“We’re in a very good position financially to do some things,” he told his interviewer, Business Week editor Steve Adler, adding that CBS had a couple of billion dollars to spend thanks to a “pristine” balance sheet.

Moonves said he’s targeting content companies, broadcast outfits and new-media concerns. He said Facebook was off CBS’ radar screen if it’s asking in the $15 billion range, adding that The Weather Channel would be a good fit at CBS if the price was right. “We look at absolutely everything,” he said.

Asked if that included ESPN, Moonves said Disney boss Bob Iger would never sell it.

Moonves also shed light on Hulu, the new online-video venture between NBC Universal and News Corp. He said CBS could accomplish the same goals with its CBS Audience Network platform, only on better terms for CBS. He did not rule out CBS joining the Hulu gang, however.

The CBS chief was defensive about the network’s older viewers, chastising rival networks for favoring the 18-year-old consumer over the 50-year-old. He derisively noted seeing a reference to “upscale” 18- to 34-year-olds: “The only 18-34 upscale people I know are my children, and they come to me when they want to buy a car … It’s a bullshit demographic.”

Similarly, Moonves said the notion that the older demo was set in its ways in terms of purchases was “a great old wives’ tale. We think the boomer is still where the money is and where we want to go.”

Regarding the pending NCAA Basketball Tournament, Moonves said avails were nearly sold out and were running way ahead of last year’s pace, heading toward a $23 million windfall.

Asked about the well-publicized productivity loss as hoops fans watch the games in lieu of working, Moonves boasted about the “Boss Button” (click on it and a spreadsheet replaces the action) and joked that he’d shut down the broadband coverage if the U.S. would pay CBS the reported $2.5 billion in lost productivity.

He was bullish on Katie Couric holding her anchor spot in the evening news, chastising the viewing public for failing to accept a female anchor (and perhaps a female president, he added), and the media for focusing more on her hair than her reporting. “Qualitatively, our show stacks up equally with the other two,” Moonves said. “Katie is spectacular … I’m prejudiced, but I think she’s doing great.”

Moonves took a hard line when discussing the past writers’ strike and contract negotiations with the actors’ unions. He said writers may look back on the “100 days of hell” and lament what they’d lost, compared with relatively miniscule gains from digital revenues, adding that the strike pushed CBS to change its development strategy, slashing costly annual exclusive contracts with writers and opting for pilot “presentations” that are far cheaper than full-on pilots.

Moonves also labeled outdoor advertising the fasting-growing division at CBS, thanks in part to the increasing presence of digital billboards, and shared his favorite programs -- among them The Sopranos, Californication and Two and a Half Men.

Fox’s American Idol did not make Moonves’ list. “If somebody would kill that show, I’d really appreciate it,” he said with a smile.