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CBS Corp. CEO Leslie Moonves on the Future of Television — and Which Show He Thinks Will Mark the Turning Point

Jun 23, 2016  •  Post A Comment

CBS Corp. CEO and Chairman Leslie Moonves says he sees the future of television, and it’s over-the-top. The New York Post’s Page Six reports that Moonves explained how his company is positioning itself for that future during a discussion today at the Cannes Lions advertising festival in France.

For CBS, Moonves said, the upcoming “Star Trek” reboot is a key part of the strategy.

“Moonves, who successfully pushed cable-TV providers to pay broadcast networks for carriage in the same way they do for cable channels, touted the company’s efforts to grow its own Web-delivered streaming service,” The Post reports.

Moonves said during the discussion: “We believe OTT is our future. You will want to pay $5.99 to get ‘Star Trek’ and that will get the ball rolling.”

“Star Trek,” due to premiere in January, will be an exclusive on the CBS All Access streaming service.

Commenting on why CBS is keeping “Star Trek” for itself rather than farm it out for huge money to Netflix or Amazon, Moonves said: “We want to offer you something you can’t get anywhere else. What better way to do it than with the crown jewels.”

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8 Comments

  1. Les is right to try this. The internet is providing exactly what people have been asking for the past 10 years. The opportunity to only pay for the channels they want to watch. The cable companies better understand this soon, and start working harder on high speed broadband services, and pay options for services. Offer to let consumers buy only the channels they want and charge the price that still provides the cable companies with strong profits. Google sees this and is already starting to gain ground in fiber delivery speed.

  2. Cable TV providers are not the ones forcing the big bundle and ever increasing costs. Programmers force providers to carry all the channels in the programmers block of channels, or not take any at all. (in order to get ESPN and DIsney, you have to carry the entire suite of channels) Plus, they are the ones who dictate the cost of programming, and the 10% ave rate increases yearly. The ironic thing is that programmers rely on ISP’s that are built by cable companies, to go OTT. Programmers whine about losing subscribers, but it is their policies and pricing that are the problem, the the operators. As an FYI, there isn’t enough bandwidth available to offer all the programming streaming across the grid.

  3. No, I DON’T want to pay $6 a month to watch some Star Trek show, without knowing if it’s in the original universe or Abram’s Kelvin universe. I also DON’T want to pay for that show, unless it’s absolutely and positively excellent. Can you guarantee me that, Les?

  4. Oh, and I forgot… I’ve read in this same publication a month or so ago, that in other countries, ST will be available over the air. It’s only people in the US who will have to pay for it. WE Americans built the popularity of the whole ST universe and kept it going for the last 50 years, and you’re penalizing US.

  5. For those of us paying for cable and satellite, where part of fees are also being pocketed by Moonves in retransmission fees passed along in our cable bills, we are basically screwed over to watch the new Star Trek. Sorry, but I will NOT pay for CBS OTT when I’m already getting CBS via cable. Why isn’t this being offered via our cable subscriptions? Greed – CBS earnings are outrageous, as is Moonves salary, because we little guys are screwed.

  6. Consumers would be better served if ISPs were 1) considered public utilities (with singular PU-type rates) that furnish customers with “dumb pipes” (infrastructure), and 2) have no control over, nor any “piece-of-the-financial-action” of, what goes over those pipes.

    What we need is a consortium composed of all current ISPs… and that any future ISPs could join. All ISPs would pay fees to run the consortium and it would be responsible for building out, maintaining, and updating the infrastructure of the internet in the U.S.

    Naturally, of course, no ISP in the country would support this.

  7. I’m a Star Trek fan but won’t be watching the new series because I want pay CBS for it. I pay too much already for TV.

  8. CBS could have avoided some backlash by calling its subscription VOD service by a different name. Calling it “CBS All Access” makes anyone who already pays for CBS feel as though they are entitled to that content as part of their existing subscription. People don’t understand that it is the equivalent of Netflix, with its own original programming (essentially its own network), as opposed to being an extension of CBS, or simply a CBS mobile app that isn’t free.

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