• by Wayne Friedman , March 7, 2007

CBS CEO Les Moonves may want cash for retransmission deals for his network's stations, but that won't happen with Comcast. And even then, he'll have to wait at least a few years for those discussions to begin.

Comcast says it has done some 600 retrans deals so far--with the earliest renewal occurring some five years down the road. Most, however, will happen six or seven years from now. "It is not a conversation we are having right now," says Brian Roberts, chairman/CEO of Comcast Corp., the largest cable operator, speaking at a Bear Stearns conference.

Recently, CBS made nine deals with cable operators it wouldn't name, amounting to 1 million cable subscribers. Talk has it that CBS did, in fact, get its proposed 50 cents per month per subscriber from those deals. But the bigger cable networks remain: Comcast, Time Warner and Charter.

Roberts reiterated what the company has said in the past: "We are not interested; we will not pay cash for retrans. I don't think anything has changed."

"I chuckle that perhaps there are other business motivations as to why this is being talked about by a big broadcaster," says Roberts. "We will be happy to sit down with folks and have a cooperative deal with comparable exchange."

How is that defined? Perhaps some of this is sharing duties in marketing each other's products. "With the deals with pure independent, smaller folk, we believe we have something other than pay," Roberts says. "We are going to market each other's businesses."