Evolving CBS into an ‘Audience Company’

Roughly one year after taking the International CES stage on the heels of its split from parent Viacom Inc., CBS Corp. President and CEO Leslie Moonves returned to recap the media company’s progress toward becoming what he termed an “audience company.”

Deals over the last year with firms such as Google Inc., Yahoo, Comcast Corp., YouTube Inc. and most recently Verizon Wireless Inc., are helping CBS “evolve from a one-way content distribution company to an audience company,” Moonves said, adding that achieving this goal requires the company to be both big and small.

Citing Census Bureau projections, he said the average American will spend 146 days with media this year. “That’s more than 3,500 hours a year of Internet TV and radio,” he said. “With the platforms we have, we can find them wherever they are.”

Moonves cited as evidence a deal announced Sunday with Verizon Wireless and MediaFLO Inc. whereby users with select VCAST mobile phones can access a 24-hour CBS channel.

Looking back at all the partnerships and content distribution channels launched and enhanced in the last year, Moonves said, “There’s no such thing as old media or new media, there’s just programming.” The same holds true for programming, he quipped, where it can be as diverse as CSI or C++.

The content visionary also issued a stern warning to companies that don’t get the two above mentioned statements, saying: “Those that don’t get in front of the parade end up marching behind it. Any media company that cares about the future has to be up front.”

A top priority in CBS’s efforts to become an audience company require interaction, he stressed, citing the wild success of the network’s CSI franchise, which started out as a TV show and has been expanded through diverse channels to the point where viewers can text in the name of the criminal to compete for a $10,000 prize.

“We have to form, deeper and more interactive communities around our content,” said Moonves. He cited one where an Arizona woman e-mailed the CSI creator and suggested they take the tie off CSI-NY star Gary Sinise and get him a girlfriend.

“We did both and the ratings went up as well,” said the show’s creator, Anthony Zuiker, who spoke as part of the keynote.

In addition to the good-as-gold CSI franchise, which reaches well beyond TV, according to Moonves, CBS will be televising two huge events in the next month – the Grammy Awards and the Super Bowl. He said CSI now boasts 67 million viewers per week.

CBS has been aggressive in acquiring high value content with NFL broadcasts and having bought college sports network CSTV. That adds to the draw of CBS SportsLine.com, one of its Internet sites.

Well aware of the value, including community building, that results from being able to view your favorite content many ways, Moonves said that 53 percent of fans that watched a CBS show online, turned around and viewed it on TV as well.

CBS Corp. www.cbs.com  

Comcast Corp. www.comcast.com  

Google, Inc. www.google.com  

Viacom Inc. www.viacom.com  

Verizon Wireless Inc. www.verizonwireless.com  

Yahoo www.yahoo.com  

YouTube Inc. www.youtube.com

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