• by Wayne Friedman , February 23, 2007

CBS has announced some highly anticipated retransmission consent deals with cable operators--which seem to give the network its first cash payments from the cable industry for its programming, per industry executives.

CBS didn't name any cable companies that it struck deals with--only saying they cover nine of the top 25 cable operators, affecting 1 million subscribers. The deal also included analog, digital, multicast and high-definition rights to programming on CBS owned-and-operated television stations.

Les Moonves, CEO of CBS Corp. said the deal represented a new "paradigm" in its business.

What does that mean? "I would guess digital channels, local cable avails to promote their programming and cash," says Larry Gerbrandt, senior vice president and general manager of Nielsen Analytics.

CBS had been looking for 50 cents a subscriber per month. By way of comparison, the cable network with the highest per sub fee is ESPN--which is believed to be around $3.00 a subscriber/month.

For many years, CBS has demanded cash for its retransmission consent deals--agreements with cable system operators that would allow them to carry CBS stations.

In past years, instead of direct cash for broadcast stations from retrans deals, big media companies got new cable channels. Those cable channels, in turn, gave media companies license fees.

For example, Disney/ABC got to launch ESPN2; News Corp. started up FX; and NBC pushed America's Talking, which become CNBC. When CBS and MTV were joined under the same company, it was MTV that got the benefits of better license fees and additional cable channels positions.

Smaller cable operators, with a lot less leverage in the marketplace, were believed to be the nine of the top 25 cable operators that signed up for CBS. Bigger MSO agreements are yet to be made--those with the bigger Comcast Corp, Time Warner Cable, and Charter Communications.

Previously, CBS also made distribution agreements with new IPTV services such as Verizon FiOS.