Moonves to Drive CBS to Compete With Streaming Video

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Les MoonvesCBS CEO Leslie Moonves, who’s now chairman as well, is pushing the Tiffany network to compete against streaming video providers.


Moonves was named as chair by the board last week to replace the ailing Sumner Redstone.

Moonves is planning more original content and wanting to take some titles off the air and distribute them on digital-only platforms.

The subscription-based CBS All Access service would compete with streaming video providers like Netflix and Hulu, reports Fortune.

All Access offers CBS programming on PCs, tablets and smartphones for $5.99 a month.

The move comes as media companies are re-thinking their business models and their relationships with streaming video providers — thinking of them more as competitors than allies, according to Fortune.

“When I started this job 20 years ago, advertising was everything to this company,” he told Reuters. “Advertising will still remain important, but it’s not nearly as important as some of these new ways of getting revenue, such as interactive.”