• Wired, Wednesday, May 16, 2007 10:46 AM

With all the Web TV hoopla, we tend to forget that TV is still the big business. Once the digital transition is complete, TV will likely still be big business, though in a different form. To that end, offline TV champ CBS Corp. recently unveiled a bold, broad distribution plan to cover its bases ahead of the inevitable Web TV shakeout.

CBS may be tops in prime time, but president Les Moonves understands his legacy will ultimately be judged by the way he led CBS through the digital transition, which includes rethinking how CBS produces and then judges its content as much as a distribution plan. Per that plan, Moonves said CBS decided to opt-out of the so-called YouTube killer devised by News Corp. and NBC because of its narrow-minded idea of exclusivity. "We would have had to funnel every piece of content through that mechanism," he said. "It didn't give us the freedom we wanted to make partnerships all over the place." It's also uncertain how effective it would be for the networks to band together demanding that everyone use their media player. What if consumers flock to more diversified Web TV programs like Joost?

Regarding the thorny YouTube question, Moonves said it's great promotional value for CBS if one-minute clips of its shows are uploaded and shared on the site. It's bad if whole episodes are cut up and then spliced together for free viewing. Then, CBS doesn't get compensated properly.

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