CBS CEO Les Moonves talks about CBS content coming to Apple TV – It’s all about the benjamins, baby

Wed, Aug 8, 2012

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During a recent CBS earnings conference call, company CEO Les Moonves was asked about his feelings regarding putting up CBS content on an Apple TV.

He responded that it’s about the Benjamin’s baby. Or as Badger from Breaking Bad might say, stacking benjis until the rubber band pops.

Look, Anthony, you’ve — we’ve had this discussion many times before. You’re right, it depends what the terms are, it depends what we get paid for. It depends on what effect Apple TV would have on either our advertising, our syndication or our retrans, which are our 3 main buckets of revenue for our content. So if it sits in well, like Netflix did and Amazon did, we’re happy to discuss it. If it doesn’t and we’re — they’re using our content to build a business, we’re not quite as favorable to that. So the devil is in the details. I know it sounds like a pat answer, but it’s really true.

And speaking of Moonves, remember that back in March, the CBS CEO relayed a story about he initially rebuffed an overture from Steve Jobs to work together on an Apple HDTV.

Moonves told a conference audience that he met with Jobs, the late Apple CEO, and heard a pitch for what was billed as a subscription content service, but ultimately he said he wasn’t interested in providing CBS shows or films to the venture.

“I told Steve, ‘You know more than me about 99 percent of things but I know more about the television business,’ ” Moonves said, citing his concerns about providing content to a service that could disrupt CBS’ existing revenue streams. Moonves said Jobs, in characteristic fashion, strongly disagreed with his assessment.

While some reports have pointed to an Apple HDTV unveiling sometime in late 2012, that’s increasingly looking unlikely, what with new iPod, iPhone, and iPad models apparently on the way.

via All Things D

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