• by Wayne Friedman , November 2, 2007

CBS Corp. CEO Les Moonves says fourth-quarter TV scatter price advertising has soared 35% over upfront pricing set in June.

For the industry as a whole, much of this comes from less commercial inventory, due to last season's makegoods being put into the fourth quarter for the new TV season.

But Moonves says CBS was somewhat different: "We did not have a lot of makegoods. [Though] we did end up selling more in May... probably about 10% more inventory sold in the upfront because of higher CPM growth."

Moonves did say the switch to the new measurement metric, live commercial plus three days of DVR playback, made it "a transition year."

He added: "Advertisers would rather have 9 million watching their commercials rather than 10 million watching a TV program."

Regarding the seemingly imminent writers strike, Moonves sees "no material impact" on its financial results if there is a strike. He said the network had a full slate of programming ready to run should the Writers Guild of America stage a walkout--a move that could take place as early as Friday.

CBS, in reporting its third-quarter results, said net profit improved 8% to $343.3 million, with revenue sliding 3% to $3.4 billion. Overall television revenues dropped 3% to $2.08 billion during the third quarter. Much of that was due to lower television license fees, the impact of radio and television station sales, and the absence of UPN.

CBS noted that overall advertising revenue was off 4%--much of that against higher comparable numbers from advertising sales of the now-defunct UPN. In addition, results were lower because of the impact of TV station sales, and lower syndication program license fee revenues.

CBS did make some 5% gains in affiliate cable fees from its Showtime Networks and CSTV Networks.

CBS Radio--which took a hit of 12% in revenue to $445.7 million--noted that advertising sales were weak. Lower results were also due to the impact of ten radio stations' sales. Looking at like-to-like stations, however, radio revenues fell 7%.

CBS Outdoor noted a 3% increase in revenues to $552.2 million. CBS says advertisers are flocking to its outdoor business because of its new digital display technology.

Simon & Schuster noted a 9% gain to $214.2 million from higher sales including "Become a Better You" by Joel Osteen and "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne.