CBS' Les Moonves: “I Don’t Care Where You Watch Our Shows"

Les Moonves

New technology may be the focus of the Consumer Electronics Show, but CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves argued on-stage Thursday that tech may not be changing his business as much as you might think, accoridng to TechCrunch.com.

“At the end of the day, you still have to tell good stories,” he said during an interview with MediaLink’s Michael Kassan. Moonves contrasted that approach with a presentation from a rival network that focused entirely on the tech and “how they would sell it out there.” Moonves’ conclusion: “The reason for that is their content was crap.”

That said, CBS is moving into new modes of distribution with its subscription streaming service CBS All Access. Moonves credited “our interactive guys” (including CBS Interactive CEO Jim Lanzone) for coming to him 18 months ago and saying they wanted to make the network’s programs available over the top (i.e., not through a cable provider).

Moonves’ initial response was supposedly to provide “12 reasons why it was a bad idea,” but over time his team kept bringing it up, and he decided it was worthwhile to reach the country’s 10 million broadband-only homes.

“I don’t care where you watch our shows — just watch them,” he said. Moonves made a similar comment when discussing Nielsen’s rating system: “We don’t care where you watch it or when you watch it — we just want it to get counted and we want to get paid appropriately.”

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