• by Wayne Friedman , May 30, 2008

CBS' chief executive Les Moonves was upbeat that this year's TV upfront advertising market will be a positive one--even if total dollars might be lower.

"Scatter is still up by double-digit [increases] from [last year's] upfront," says Moonves. "We are guardedly optimistic that [this year's] upfront is going up, and CPMs are going to be up. If volume is down, that doesn't bother us. That's one of the great misnomers [about the upfront], that volume matters." He added that as long as "we sell scatter higher than network pricing, we'll just sell less advertising."

And at the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Strategic Decisions Conference, Moonves assured that the audience network program pricing will be higher.

"We have begun the dance with major advertisers. I'm not going to give you a number. The marketplace will be up. We won't sell anything that is not up. How high up? It's still early to tell. It's going to be a slower process this year, primarily because a few networks have delayed even doing pilots. So there is a lot less to see and access."

Moonves did confirm that local TV advertising for CBS stations has had a different picture. "Local has been softer. There is no question." But he noted that political advertising will continue to grow, grateful that [the presidential] "race is getting bitterer and bitterer by the day, so we make more money. That'll continue right into November. We also see senatorial campaigns that'll affect our advertising."

He did confirm that automotive advertising has been slowing.

The CEO declined to talk specifics about how CBS is doing on a pricing or volume level on a quarterly basis. His reticence was similar to Viacom's. The previous day, the company would only say that it was lowering its ad revenue picture for the second quarter. However, Moonves did say that for the May sweeps, there was a rush of movie companies buying up pricey advertising for their big summer movies.

In regard to CW's rating losses, he said the network still offers programming benefits to a number of CBS-owned stations. Moonves also noted that CBS stations gain much from syndication programming, via CBS Television Distribution, with shows such as "Dr. Phil."

While The Weather Channel was of some interest to CBS, Moonves says that ultimately, it isn't a good enough fit for the company. Oxygen was. Although he did not provide details, Moonves said the company continues to gain revenue from retransmission consent deals from cable operators.