"It's All About Me" Moonves At It Again

moonves1.jpgThe people around Les Moonves are making a point of telling me he's a moderate, and saying he's not a hardliner. That may cause his showrunners to like him more when the strike is over. But why can't he use his charismatic influence to lead the AMPTP to closing a deal with the writers sooner rather than later? The fact is it may not matter that he's a moderate or hardliner because I hear he's still unified with his Big Media brethren. Even though I predict flopsweat under his perfect tailoring now that Wall Street believes his CBS could be hurt by the strike worse than other Big Media (as the WSJ reported yesterday). And because the Parents Television Council, which this week lashed out at Moonves' idea to broadcast cleaned-up versions of Showtime's racy and gory and violent Weeds and Dexter and Brotherhood on CBS, could make trouble for him with the FCC.

« "Speechless" #20: Woody Allen   WGA Picketing Has Gone To The Dogs... »

20 Comments »

  1. Hmmm…
    Ya think the finger pointing’s about to start? So when government hearing’s start the hardliners are targeted 1st?

    Comment by e — December 6, 2007 @ 12:57 pm

  2. “Flopsweat”… LOL. Godbless you, Nikki, that term is not used enough!

    Comment by jr — December 6, 2007 @ 1:17 pm

  3. He told me that…call you later.

    Comment by Anonymous — December 6, 2007 @ 1:23 pm

  4. I personally heard Moonves talk about how he likes his employees to fight so he can control them. On CSI New York ANthony had control of the show and Moonves couldn’t tell him what to do so he would fire a writer any time there was a disagreement. The CBS RADFORD LOT USED to be a friendly place before Les sucked the life out of it with his fake caps. he’s a failed actor. Don’t believe him

    Comment by Shiffon — December 6, 2007 @ 2:00 pm

  5. Nikki, can you please ask the WGA to give special dispensation to the writers at the Daily Show and Colbert to go back to work for the sake of the health of our democracy? Thank you.

    Comment by FilmsofLiberty — December 6, 2007 @ 2:01 pm

  6. What does he have to gain?

    Not getting blamed (read: fired) for destroying CBS.

    Comment by stuck in development — December 6, 2007 @ 2:24 pm

  7. IF I WERE AN ADVERTISER OR CBS SHAREHOLDER I WOULD BE VERY UNEASY WITH LES’ STRIKE SURVIVAL STRATEGY.

    Parents Television Council Lashes Out at Potential of ‘Super-Raunchy’ Weeds , Dexter and BrotherhoodAiring on CBS
    By John Eggerton — Broadcasting & Cable, 12/5/2007 5:30:00 PM

    The Parents Television Council is not happy with CBS’ plans to put some Showtime shows on the network during the Writers Guild of America strike.

    Saying that potential shows could includeWeeds, Dexter and Brotherhood, PTC president Tim Winter said CBS was funneling super-raunchy Viacom-owned premium-cable content onto the CBS broadcast network, even though CBS and Viacom were now “separate” (Winter put the word in quotes).

    Actually, CBS will be funneling its own cable content to the network, since it got custody of the cable network in the split with Viacom.

    Winter threatened to call for an advertiser boycott if CBS went through with the plan. The network had no comment at press time.

    CBS just paid $300,000 to settle an indecency-related license challenge brought by a PTC member, and it is still in court over the Janet Jackson Super Bowl indecency finding generated by hundreds of thousands of complaints, the vast majority of which were from PTC members.

    CBS president Leslie Moonves told Wall Street analysts Tuesday that the network planned to air some shows from sister premium-cable network Showtime, although he did not identify which ones.

    Comment by Sam — December 6, 2007 @ 2:27 pm

  8. This strike will hurt very seriously studio stock/share value in the long run when honest analysts look at the disruption to cash flow that the aborted TV season will have when there are no DVD products out this summer from this seasons shows. Even off of non-hit shows this a significant return on the TV deficit financing monies that have been invested by the studio and count very much toward studio profits. Because of the lack of these profits Les knows Sumner Redstone can turn on you in a nano-second. So Les needs to keep his mogul options open if he were to get “Frestoned” next week or next month and make it look like he’s not making the strike go longer than necessary and hurt the corporation (more than he already has from his initial ego-driven hard line stance). Side note the honest Wall Street analysts I referred to earlier would need a media outlet to get out that word but I doubt many nets would line up for his/her appearance so it’s up to the WGA to publicly make the points I outline here. If the average Hollywood studio stockholder (ex: Disney is a very widely held stock in the US) finds out the truth about the precarious position his share values are at because of this strike then the pressure on studios to settle would come from Main Street USA as well as Wall Street.

    Comment by ReelBusy — December 6, 2007 @ 2:33 pm

  9. Les can suck it a little, i personally think!

    Comment by striking writer — December 6, 2007 @ 3:09 pm

  10. He should be sweating. Les’ brilliant idea of airing Showtime series like Weeds and Dexter on CBS had the Parents Television Counsol threatening an advertisers boycott before the end of the business day. I don’t think the Moonves Strike Survival Plan had the calming effect on the advertisers and shareholders that Les was hoping for.

    Comment by Sam Frank — December 6, 2007 @ 3:12 pm

  11. I was recently in another country where watching TV revealed 75-80% of the programming to be of AMERICAN origin - Desperate Housewives, House, Brothers and Sisters, Standoff, Scrubs, etc. etc. etc. How much money are the networks/studios going to lose by not supplying the worldwide entertainment pipeline, which has grown heavily reliant on the Hollywood machine to pump out product? As much as the AMPT likes to posture that they can hold out forever against the WGA, market forces may quickly beg to differ…

    Comment by JB — December 6, 2007 @ 3:31 pm

  12. Moonves’ days are numbered. CBS just paid $300,000 to the PTC to settle another case… and the Janet Jackson Super Bowl deal is still in the courts.

    I guess I should also mention the ongoing lawsuits against CBS for the “Kid Nation” labor infractions… all for a show that had 5 of CBS’ top 10 advertisers refusing to run spots during it. Oh, did I mention that “Kid Nation” flopped in the ratings despite all the free press it got for it’s morally reprehensible premise.

    Oh… by the way, can anyone tell me what happened in the third episode of “Viva Laughlin”?

    Right.

    And now this genius thinks he’s going to soothe the jittery nerves of his shareholders and advertisers with a serial killer with a heart of gold and a drug dealing soccer mom sex pot?

    Why not just show Jessica Fletcher blowing a shetland pony… cause I’m telling you, that would be a lot easier to edit for Network Television than Dexter and Weeds.

    Les Moonves can survive a writer’s strike…

    …ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

    Comment by strikey mcstriker — December 6, 2007 @ 3:34 pm

  13. From Unitedhollywood.com
    … public outcry, and concern on Capitol Hill has led to this:

    Two key House lawmakers announced Monday that they were investigating the Federal Communications Commission, accusing its chairman of “possible abuse of power” and a failure to operate fairly and openly in handling proposed cable TV and media ownership regulations.
    –As reported by Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, December 4, 2007.

    It’s only a matter of time before the House starts looking into who & why…

    Comment by e — December 6, 2007 @ 3:40 pm

  14. I know many people who have worked for him both behind and in front of the camera. And they all say he’s a complete slimball, that he’d screw his mother over to earn a penny on his stocks. Hope the PTC gives it to him good. Hear that, Les? That’s my violin.

    Comment by Anonymous — December 6, 2007 @ 5:03 pm

  15. What? No Kid Nation complaints anymore?

    Comment by Kid of a Nation — December 6, 2007 @ 5:38 pm

  16. ReelBusy has it totally right. I’ve been saying this all along– audiences aren’t going to want to buy “The Office Season 4-and-a-Quarter,” they want the whole thing. Without these cash cows in the summer and fall (and how many people are excited to get the newly-released — and admittedly lousy — 6th season of “24″ without season 7 in the wings?), what are the networks and studios going to do? NOBODY buys reality TV on DVD– unless someone puts out “Battle Of The Network Stars,” which I’d buy in a heartbeat.

    As for Dexter and the other Showtime offerings, it’s a bad BAD idea. The shows work so well because they’ve been designed for cable– and each episode would have to be cut, not just for sex, violence and/or language, but for time as well as each episode tends to run 52-58 minutes, commercial-free. It’s going to be a mess.

    Comment by Jack Burton — December 6, 2007 @ 8:42 pm

  17. Why is he sweating? Uh… maybe because every single CEO in the room is laughing behind his back because they know that both the AMPTP and WGA can survive a prolonged strike better than CBS. Maybe because Chernin is wetting himself just thinking about putting his first run eps of American Idol up against Les’ Airwolf reruns.

    Comment by Got Script? — December 6, 2007 @ 10:15 pm

  18. The sad thing is, he thinks of himself as a friend of the writer. He started out as an actor. He still could be. Just step away from the others and make a separate deal for with WGA. The others will have to follow and makes their own deals after him… what are they going to do… lock out the writers while Les and Nina go off and shoot their pilots?

    And after a stand-up move like that, there wouldn’t be a writer in town who wouldn’t bring their project to Les first. Every A-list scribe would be knocking down the guys door to get in business with CBS/SHOWTIME.

    Comment by CBS FAN — December 6, 2007 @ 10:22 pm

  19. No need to complain about Kid Nation. He’ll answer to a higher power than the FCC for that abomination.

    Comment by anotherWGAmember — December 6, 2007 @ 10:57 pm

  20. What higher power. Anyway, the last time I believe he acted for money was for David E. Kelley when he was held hostage in an episode of The Practice. I am waiting for him to crack any second now though he could avoid the PTC just by airing all of Gilmore Girls back to back and in order from beginning to end and save the Showtime stuff for late-night.

    Comment by Jessy S. — December 6, 2007 @ 11:08 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

XHTML ( You can use these tags): <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong> .