Moonves: Big TV Networks Can Help Marketers Drive Consumers To Digital Platforms

LAS VEGAS — Les Moonves is optimistic that the TV mass scale platform can work well with new one-to-one personal marketing efforts of the digital age. 

Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show here, the president/chief executive officer of CBS Corp. talked about the mass marketing platform of TV networks — like CBS — and new digital platforms that promise personalization.

"They are not mutually exclusive,” he says.

Moonves cites examples where car manufacturers or other TV marketers launch products using big CBS shows, such as “Big Bang Theory” (which gets 20 million viewers), or its popular drama “NCIS.” 

TV advertising in those programs can yield major on-air awareness for those marketers. In turn, that can move viewers to pursue those products for additional information. Moonves says "when [viewers] want to take the next step, they go online."

Content — storytelling — is still the key in the new digital world, Moonves says -- even if it is shorter-form storytelling that new digital platforms tout. "Wireless is useless if it’s hitless,” he says. “At the end of the day, you still have to tell good stories.”

Big Data is very important for CBS — but only up to a point. "Research has become only part of the decision-making process.” However, he goes on to say that it still takes programmers, writers, and talent to give a show the “magic” when it comes to big shows — say a “Homeland,” “Big Bang Theory” or “Game of Thrones.”

“These are spectacular creations that data could never produce,” he says. “The utilization of data is very valuable — and we use it every day. But it is part of our decision-making. The day that stops is the day machines will be making our content. And we can’t allow that to happen."

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3 comments about "Moonves: Big TV Networks Can Help Marketers Drive Consumers To Digital Platforms".
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  1. Christopher Sanders from The Ingredients Group, January 8, 2015 at 8:50 a.m.

    Moonves' comments are as old and uninspiring as CBS' content... I would not out Big Bang Theory in the category of Homeland and GoT

  2. Leonard Zachary from T___n__, January 8, 2015 at 3:08 p.m.

    Being a "Me Too" OTT app and subscription based streaming won't do it for CBS. I am a broadband only subscriber and have been for the past 4 years. Ad supported linear TV is going to require an innovative seamless integration with mobile and broadband else it's looking like a platinum Amex that still looks good now but at the expiration date will not be renewed. How many more years of retransmission fee growth will be supported by a flatlined bundled payTV model? The platinum Amex still says this is all cyclical not secular.

  3. Nicholas Schiavone from Nicholas P. Schiavone, LLC, January 9, 2015 at 3:38 p.m.

    Mr. Zachary,

    You made no more sense at 3:08 PM than you did at at 3:05 PM yesterday. Either your record is scratched (sorry, old technology) or you have run out of original thinking.
    Let other readers get a load of your self-referencing in your reply to the Wayne Friedman piece on how "Broadband Is Hurting Cable TV." "Leonard Zachary from EquityStep, (January 8, 2015 at 3:05 p.m.) I am a broadband only subscriber and have been for the past 4 years. Ad supported linear TV is going to require an innovative seamless integration with mobile and broadband else it's looking like a platinum Amex that still looks good now but at the expiration date will not be renewed. How many more years of retransmission fee growth will be supported by a flatlined bundled payTV model? The platinum Amex still says this is all cyclical not secular.'

    This would be funny, if it were not pathetic twaddle rehashed.

    You were wrong the first time and you were wrong the second time.

    Here is the real issue: We need to address core issues, like the cross-platform synergy that Les Moonves and his Team seem to have welll-harnessed at CBS.

    We also need to be careful for the invisible filters of journalists like Mr. Wayne Friedman, even if well-intentioned.

    The way Mr. Friedman reports the CBS story, Mr. Les Moonves sounds at worst, melodramatic, and at best, brilliant! In fact, Les could not have taken CBS or himself to the pinnacle of success that they enjoy today without being one smart, savvy and well- experienced business person and one creative, tactically-adept television programmer. (I am sure Les Moonves has no patience for melodrama, although he clearly knows how to harness the dramatic.) As for the role of research at CBS, let's not suffer collective amnesia. I have known Mr. David Poltrack for over two generations. He, too, is one brilliant business person and one ingenious chief research officer (CRO). David has provided just the right measure of accurate, reliable and useful working knowledge (i.e., research) at all the CBS Decision Tables -- coast to coast. Further, Mr. Poltrack has surrounded himself with sharp research colleagues from the start. What a Research Team!

    In closing, turnabout is fair play. As I wrote yesterday, readers should set aside your observations, prognostications and recommendations as well-intended nonsense. But who has the time for it? Perhaps the American Express Company would not mind losing you as a Credit Card customer. Actually, with your sense of economy, you sound ready for a CapitalOne Debit Card. Much better for your transactional analysis that is about as deep as a water cooler's paper cup.

    Onwards & Upwards!

    Sincerely,
    Mr. Schiavone

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