Moonves Shines Over Auerbach As Stark Streams Debate

On the eve of this past Wednesday night’s prime time debate, the Ray Stark Theater held an intimate session of Q&A’s led by, non-other than Larry Auerbach, Dean Of Student Industry Relations for USC Cinematic Arts Society.  The theater room, was standing room only, filled with whispers of back to school eagerness from the student audience, and a fine group they were.  I felt like Pegasus,who bought lightning and thunder from Olympus, the audience was on fire. So was Auerbach as he introduced, the guest of the evening, the infamous, President & Chief Executive Officer of CBS Corporation, Leslie Moonves. Auerbach immediately and enthusiastically fired off a question, opening up the crowd with humor and a feeling of freedom to be.

LA.Now that you have twelve divisions under you and other businesses, how do you keep hands on and still be personally involved? And I know you’ve got terrific people working for you and yet you stay personally involved.  LM. Well, look, I have the greatest job in the world. I love what I do. I get the opportunity to be involved in entertainment, which I love. I get to be involved in the news division, which I love. I’m a sports nut!! and so, I get to talk to the commissioner of the NFL and tell him to get the referees back. I really do have a magnificent job, but you know, you hit it.  I mean, I get to work with an extraordinary team. I’m not just saying that , because they’re here in front.   Really, it is a big, big company. A lot of divisions. We have 20,000 people that work for us and we have radio, we have television stations.

We have Simon and Shuster, all of the areas that I’m fascinated by, but I couldn’t do this, as much as I’m hands on, without phenomenal division heads.  You know, I’m collaborative.  I like team work. I like the people that I work with. As I said, I have twenty-three direct reports and I genuinely like twenty-one of them, and so I’m very blessed and I’m blessed with a natural curiosity about all of our businesses. I wish that I had more time in the day, to read all of our offers and watch all of our shows.    Auerbach chimes in, nah, nah, that will change as the audience giggles, I even heard myself cracking up.  You don’t have time to read all of these things.  Just make the right decision.

LM, speaks eagerly, yeh, you’re right I have no time.  LA. And on top of that, you have two offices and you’re in either LA or NY.  So you’re really splitting your time and it’s terrific. You’ve got the best of both worlds. But that makes your job more fun.  LM. Yes, you’re right, I am bi-coastal and also fortunately, I have a beautiful wife, an SC Grad, and a three year old son, and that keeps me very busy as well.  My life is very busy.  It’s very hectic and with all that said, I’m a pretty lucky guy. I get up every day and I get to work with fabulous people.

Auerbach laughs, and interjects a strong dose of humor, that sends us all into crackles, giggles and nods, “everybody that works for him, now is the time to ask for a raise.” Auerbach continues, we got a lot of students here. Now you know and if you don’t know,  I’ll tell you, these students are trained and they’re writers, directors, cinematographers.  And they’re trained with the latest equipment and the newest way to go, so they are ready when they leave here; to step into the real world. We’re always looking for help in this industry. What would your advice be to these kind of people, who have talent but it’s a tough world out there.    LM.  It is a tough world and I don’t have to tell you guys that, you live in this community, You know my only bit of advice, is A. get in the door anyway that you can.

Work hard and have people notice you even if it’s getting coffee and delivering scripts. Uh, I can’t tell you how many people that have started that way, and just go on, and you know what, other than actors, cause I know a lot of actors who haven’t risen to the top.  But other than actors, I know of no one who is talented, and who didn’t work hard who eventually didn’t make it. It’s tough, but if you hang in there, you can make it.  Look, I was an actor until I was twenty-eight, twenty-nine years old.

I started budding in my career late and I was a mediocre actor. I’ll tell you that right now, but I love being in the business. I love being around the business, and sure enough that led me into producing and being and executive.  And you know I notice people around me. I think generally, the community, some people recognize, that, once upon a time, they were you guys, out there looking for an opportunity.  Look when I first came into the door, I got my first job in television.  I barely knew what I was doing, and I sort of had to fake it, but I was a quick study and I worked hard and fortunately, I impressed some people.   LA. You sure did, you sure did, opens the floor to student questions.   Victoria Wilbert, who interns for CBS, asked of Moonves, can you speak to the fact that a couple of times the DVR Hopper, www.pcmag.com and Dish Network, how it would impact or how that may be a trend, also do you think that studios will eventually look into selling to the consumer directly, being that theaters are starting to decline in sales?  LM.

Regarding the DVR and the Hopper and obviously we are dealing in a universe, wherein, the world is changing rapidly, and we’re only a week into new season.  More and more of our programs are being watched by time shifting. The DVR penetration, much higher and with a lot more people watching online, a lot more people watching video on demand, so it’s important for us to count all of those people, and get our commercials out there.  You have the Dish Network, located in Denver, Colorado, who said, “we have this mechanism whereby you can hit a button, and lose out on all of your commercials and everything else that you put on,” and we said, we can’t make any money that way, it cost me three and a half million dollars to do an episode of CSI, without advertisers, I can’t give you that for free. So we basically said, if you want to skip our commercials, we’re pulling our signal from you. We’ll send our people over to Direct TV or Time Warner, and that’s where the battle lies, if they want to put on our shows without commercials, then we’re not going to do the show, we can’t afford to do the show, and so, that’s what the dispute is all about.  They called me a bully, ah, but I guess what, I couldn’t do the type of quality program that we’re doing at CBS without doing that. The other model is Showtime, where we get paid a subscribers fee, that’s different that we can do without commercials, you want to pay me $9.95 per month,

I’ll take that for CBS too. It’s a different world, you want programming for free, you gotta watch the commercials on the studio system, obviously.   LA. Where does this situation sit right now?   LM. Well right now, the lawyers are all fighting it out in court and we’re saying they can’t do it, if per chance they win, then when our contract is up with them, which is in about two years, then we’ll pull our signal, as will, NBC, ABC and Fox.   LA. There is another guy out there called Aereo, www.gigaom.com/video/aereo-sues-to-squash-copycat-barrydriller , LM. Yes, Barry Diller’s company. Once again, it’s a contraption, its who can get the five over the air broadcast networks.  Basically, they will charge $12.50, per month to get them without sharing that money with us. Once again, that’s taking our content, which we produce and spend a lot of money for. Putting it through their device and charging for it. We’re saying, you cannot do that, ya know, and once again, that’s in the courts, and we think we’ll win the both of these things and if we don’t, it’s going to be a very different world, but we’re pretty confident we’re going to win.   Anothe rare stone, that refused to stay tucked up and quiet, and kept on shining even while networks ran the great debate.  “and that’s all we have to say about that.”, forest gump.