Les Moonves: Programmer for the common man

September 4, 2005
Giving Them What They Want
By LYNN HIRSCHBERG

After three decades in the TV business, Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS
and the person most responsible for taking the network from last place to
first in the ratings, has figured out a few things about what people want to
see when they turn on their televisions. ''Americans do not like dark,''
Moonves told me last May, before a scheduling meeting to select CBS's fall
2005 lineup. Moonves, who was wearing a gray suit, white shirt and
diagonally striped maroon and navy tie, was in a wood-paneled corner office
on the 35th floor of Black Rock, the longtime home of CBS on 52nd Street in
Manhattan. The office used to belong to William S. Paley, the legendary
tycoon who personified CBS for more than 60 years. Truman Capote once
remarked that Paley ''looks like a man who has just swallowed an entire
human being,'' and Moonves has that same sort of aggressive vigor -- an
almost palpable appetite and enthusiasm for the complications and constant
challenges of network TV.

On this particular Thursday, at 11 a.m., Moonves was considering which of
the network's current shows to cancel in order to make room for new
programs. He had decided to take a once-promising show called ''Joan of
Arcadia'' off the air. The show was about a teenager who receives directives
and advice straight from God. ''In the beginning, it was a fresh idea and
uplifting, and the plot lines were engaging,'' Moonves said, sounding a
little sad and frustrated. ''But the show got too dark. I understand why
creative people like dark, but American audiences don't like dark. They like
story. They do not respond to nervous breakdowns and unhappy episodes that
lead nowhere. They like their characters to be a part of the action. They
like strength, not weakness, a chance to work out any dilemma. This is a
country built on optimism.''

One key to running a successful broadcast network is understanding just this
kind of thing: what the audience wants -- sometimes even before it knows
that it wants it. Like a candidate seeking election, a network and its shows
are voted into prominence by the public. The people either tune in or they
don't. Unlike the movie business or the premium cable industry (of which HBO
is emblematic), which charge for their products and have much smaller, more
homogeneous audiences, broadcast TV aims to attract the tens of million of
Americans who might watch CBS (or ABC or NBC or Fox) on any given night. In
recent years, CBS shows like ''C.S.I.,'' ''Survivor'' and ''Everybody Loves
Raymond'' have enticed those multitudes, and as a result the network has
soared in the ratings. Moonves said that he hopes to have another success
(or several) of that magnitude this coming season.

''A hit show is like lightning in a bottle,'' he said as he glanced at a
large board in the corner of his office that listed 22 hours of prime-time
TV shows, network by network. The office was sparsely decorated; the only
really personal touch was a small ceramic dragon, which had been positioned
just so by a professional feng shui expert. ''It can't hurt,'' he said of
the dragon. ''My wife'' -- Julie Chen, an anchor on CBS's ''Early Show'' --
''believes in feng shui, and I can use all the luck I can get. Even with all
the changes at this company, creating a schedule with hit shows is still the
center of my job.''


Thinking about the fall TV season was something of a creative escape for
Moonves. Much of his time in the previous few months was taken up with the
complicated details of the business restructuring of Viacom, CBS's parent
company, which is trying to divide its vast holdings into two entities.
Viacom's assets include, among others, Paramount motion pictures and
television; MTV Networks and its international spinoffs; Infinity Radio; and
the third-largest outdoor-sign business in the world.

The proposed division of Viacom's properties represents a significant shift
in the business world -- away from large, supposedly synergistic media
megaliths and toward smaller, more closely aligned companies. ''Sometimes
divorce is better than marriage,'' Sumner Redstone, the chief executive and
majority stockholder of Viacom, explained during a recent phone call from
his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. Redstone conceived of the split earlier
this year, when Viacom's stock price was sagging. Five years ago, around the
time that Redstone created the behemoth that is Viacom, he boasted about the
unparalleled might of a media giant, but he has since changed his
perspective. ''We found out that bigger is not necessarily better,'' he
said. The split is likely to be finalized early next year, at which point
Moonves is expected to become the chief operating officer of one of the two
resulting conglomerates. His unit will consist of, among other entities,
Simon & Schuster, Showtime Networks, the United Paramount Network (UPN) and
CBS, the jewel of that crown.

When CBS became part of Viacom in 2000, it was not considered a terribly
valuable asset. At the time, the ever-declining market share of prime-time
network programming seemed to herald the slow, certain demise of broadcast
TV. The emerging conventional wisdom was that viewers were attracted to a
more customized menu of viewing options tailored to their particular
interests: specialized cable networks, like ESPN; interactive offerings on
the Internet; and, of course, HBO. But last year, network television began
surging back. This year, for instance, ABC has been reinvigorated by
''Lost'' and ''Desperate Housewives,'' and CBS's entertainment programming,
under Moonves, has garnered the No. 1 ratings in nearly every demographic.
An average of nearly 27 million people watch an episode of ''C.S.I.'' every
Thursday on CBS, numbers that advertisers thrill to (and move their billions
of advertising dollars toward). At a moment when the movie business is
anxious about a declining domestic box office and a downturn in DVD sales,
television is re-emerging as the place for commercially successful
mass-market storytelling.

There are some in the business who question the longevity of this network
revival. ''CBS is back because Les has done a great job,'' Chris Albrecht,
the chairman and C.E.O. of HBO, told me. ''But the broadcast audience will
continue to erode. Networks like CBS cast a wide net that attracts a vast
number of viewers, but eventually that audience will want something
specific, and they'll turn to cable or the Internet.''

Moonves, however, has never swayed in his belief that a broadcast network
can, with the right approach, attract huge numbers of diverse viewers. His
approach involves adhering to some rather old-fashioned verities about what
most people want to watch -- strong narratives, traditional heroes,
conflicts that can be solved -- and he has used these truths with great
success to shape CBS's entertainment programming. The next challenge for
Moonves will be whether his people-pleasing instincts can be applied to
CBS's nightly news show. Currently in last place, ''CBS Evening News'' needs
to be reinvented, and the problem is stark: how do you combine news with
entertainment? News stories are often dark, and Moonves would like to find a
way to make them light. ''There's a way to fix news,'' Moonves says
confidently. ''Just as there was a way to fix prime time. I never saw TV as
an ailing medium. There's no place else to get that kind of audience.''

In the meantime, Moonves is, as he has been for the last decade, still
intent on securing another victory for his entertainment division. ''One or
two little mistakes, and you're no longer No. 1,'' he said earlier this
summer when he was concentrating on the CBS schedule for the fall. Moonves,
who is 55 and has a booming voice and the classic good looks of a leading
man, sounded a little giddy, both excited and nervous. ''I'm always looking
at what can go wrong instead of what can go right,'' he said. ''In 2004, NBC
went from first to fourth place in just one year. You never really do know
what will work or not work. Most of your big hits come out of nowhere.''

This is only half true. Throughout his career, Moonves's sense of the
audience's tastes has been uncanny. When he arrived at CBS in 1995, it was
known as the ''geezer network.'' The successful CBS shows then were
''Murder, She Wrote'' and ''Walker, Texas Ranger''; the average viewer was
well outside the coveted 18-49 demographic; and the network had lost N.F.L.
football, probably the only guaranteed draw for American men of every age.
The big hits were virtually all on NBC: specifically, ''E.R.'' and
''Friends,'' which were shows that, as it happened, Moonves had developed
and sold to NBC in his previous job as president of Warner Brothers
Television.

''When I took the job at CBS,'' Moonves said one day at his office, ''it was
far more complicated and difficult than I thought. I didn't know what I
didn't know. CBS's reputation was that we couldn't put on a big hit -- no
one wanted to sell to us because our demographic was too bad.'' He paused.
''But in 2001,'' he went on to say, '''Survivor' and 'C.S.I.' first beat
NBC's Thursday night lineup, which included 'Friends' and 'E.R.' Those two
shows had been my babies, and they had haunted me for years, and then,
finally, we beat them. And we did it on Thursday night, the biggest night of
the week in television.''

No one predicted the immense success of either ''Survivor'' or ''C.S.I..''
''Before the start of the 2000 season,'' Moonves said, '''C.S.I.' wasn't
supposed to be the hit. We all thought it would be 'The Fugitive''' -- a
show that was based on the same plot as the successful movie (and earlier TV
show) of the same name. ''C.S.I.,'' which takes place in Las Vegas and
features a team of elite forensic scientists who solve murders, was the last
pilot that CBS commissioned that year. ''In the pilot,'' Nina Tassler, CBS's
head of entertainment, recalled in a recent conversation, ''there was a dead
body in a bathtub with a wound that was covered by maggots. We watch the
shows at lunch, and Les was eating coleslaw, and the maggots and the
coleslaw had a certain visual similarity. Les is very squeamish, and he
insisted that we trim the maggots. He was right: post-maggots, 'C.S.I.'
tested through the roof.''

Through it all, Moonves believed ''The Fugitive'' would be the hit. But by
the second week that the shows were on the air, the audience had spoken:
''C.S.I.'' was a big hit, and ''The Fugitive'' was in trouble. Today, there
are two ''C.S.I.'' spinoffs -- ''C.S.I.: Miami'' and ''C.S.I.: N.Y.'' -- and
''The Fugitive'' is long gone, lasting only one season. ''It's your best
judgment out there,'' Moonves said. ''But the bottom line is, you don't know
anything.'' He paused. ''Let me modify that, you don't know everything. It's
not like we passed on 'C.S.I.,' which others did. But in the end, the
audience always lets you know. If they watch, you win. And if they don't --
well, you figure out some way to get them to watch. That's the game.''


It was 11 a.m. on a very hot day in July, and Moonves was presiding over the
CBS network leadership staff meeting in the 19th-floor conference room at
Black Rock. Except for an eight-day vacation on a boat in Italy and France
with his wife and his three kids from his previous marriage, Moonves had
spent much of the summer campaigning for the Viacom division, currying favor
with Wall Street. He seemed relieved to be back in the office, discussing
the finer points of the network's shows. ''I can't believe I'm talking about
debt,'' he joked as he took his chair at the far center of the conference
table. ''I like casting better.''

The leadership meeting, which convenes about every month, brings together
the presidents of each of the network's divisions -- from Sean McManus, who
oversees sports on CBS, to JoAnn Ross, who manages sales for the network, to
Andrew Heyward, who is responsible for the news division. Nina Tassler and
Nancy Tellem, Moonves's top lieutenants in CBS entertainment, were
participating by conference call from Los Angeles, where production was
beginning for the new season. Aside from JoAnn Ross, the 15 people seated
around the oval table were all men, all in suits and ties. Moonves, who was
wearing a light-colored suit that accentuated his suntan, began by asking
each division president for an update on recent events.

He started with the core business: the shows that were already on, the shows
that would be on and the landscape across the dial. Each morning when he
gets out of bed, Moonves checks the ratings from the previous night. At that
point in July, it was clear that CBS's summer reality show, ''Rock
Star-INXS,'' in which contestants vie to become the new lead singer of the
famous Australian rock band, was underperforming. ''It's a narrowly focused
show,'' David Poltrack, the president of research, said.

''That's a nice way of putting it,'' Moonves countered.

''But many of the people who are watching 'Rock Star' have never watched CBS
before,'' Poltrack said.

''That's good, I guess,'' Moonves said, not sounding completely convinced.

The group ran through the status of the new fall shows. In May, the
''upfronts'' -- a weeklong event in New York put on by the major networks
for media buyers to introduce the fall schedule -- had been a solid success
for CBS. Moonves then asked Kelly Kahl, the head of scheduling, about some
changes to the lineup. ''Ghost Whisperer,'' a new CBS drama, was ''tracking
very well,'' Kahl said, ''and NBC flip-flopped two shows that are opposite
it.'' Moonves seemed pleased.

He then turned to McManus, who was sitting across from him. McManus
explained the new promotional campaign for CBS Sports, which will feature
the Dave Matthews Band and something called the Blimp Dudes, which are
animated stick figures. ''It's 'South Park' meets Atari,'' McManus said.

Moonves looked amused. ''When I saw those promos, I said: 'Sean approved
this? My friend from Connecticut?''' he said. Everyone laughed. The group,
which has worked together for years, radiates an easy familiarity of the
sort that comes from a shared history -- and shared success. ''I've worked
with Les for 16 years,'' Tellem told me later. ''And so has nearly everyone
at CBS in his inner circle. We have a collective memory, a backlog of common
information.''

The conversation jumped around the table. All the reports were positive:
sales were good, the affiliates were happy, the press tour could not have
been better. The mood darkened somewhat, however, when Moonves turned to
Andrew Heyward, the head of news. It has been a rough period in the
otherwise storied history of CBS News. Last September, not long before the
presidential election, Dan Rather reported on ''60 Minutes II'' that CBS had
documents suggesting that George W. Bush received preferential treatment
during his service in the National Guard. The documents turned out not to
have been properly authenticated, and the resulting controversy -- known as
Memogate -- would seem to have led to Rather's early retirement from his
post as anchor of the evening news. In May, Moonves canceled ''60 Minutes
II,'' and there were those who argued that Heyward, as head of news, should
have been fired, but Moonves disagreed.

Three executives and the producer of the news report had to be ousted
''because they didn't do their jobs,'' Moonves had told me earlier. ''As for
Andrew, he demanded things of his lieutenants, and being a boss myself, you
have to rely on people to do their jobs. I don't think he should have been
fired: he did his job; they didn't do theirs.''

CBS commissioned an independent panel -- led by *** Thornburgh, the former
attorney general, and Louis D. Boccardi, the former Associated Press chief
executive -- to prepare a report detailing the events at the network that
led to Memogate. When Moonves read a draft of the results, ''it made me
crazy,'' he said. ''Memogate was awful. News screwed up big time.'' Now that
Rather is no longer the network eminence at ''CBS Evening News,'' Moonves
says he intends to completely revamp the program. In January, he even
suggested that he might be willing to have Jon Stewart, host of Comedy
Central's mock-news program ''The Daily Show,'' play some part on the
evening news -- a sign of how drastically Moonves feels the news needs to
change. Every evening, around seven million people watch ''CBS Evening
News,'' which puts it in third place. The median age of the show's viewers
is 60. Moonves would like to enlarge that audience and lower its age, just
as he did with CBS's prime-time audience.

''We have to break the mold in news,'' Moonves had told me. ''We don't have
a choice.'' Moonves has expressed his frustration about the news division to
friends and colleagues -- sometimes with intentional hyperbole. ''I want to
bomb the whole building'' is one phrase he has used. Moonves genuinely likes
and respects Heyward, but has said to colleagues that Heyward may not be
able to ''lead a revolution.''

It might seem surprising that Moonves, given his approach to the genre of TV
drama, is so taken with reinventing the news. But then he is, as usual,
following his sense of what the viewers want. The audience, he imagines,
would like its news to be more like his entertainment shows: better stories
told by attractive personalities in exciting ways. To this end, Moonves
requested in June that Heyward shoot some prototypes of nightly news shows
using alternative formats. There were more than 10 meetings that followed in
which Moonves pushed Heyward to be less conservative in his thinking. ''The
news anchor Andrew wants to use is not surprising,'' Moonves had told me,
referring to John Roberts, the chief White House correspondent for CBS and
one of Heyward's leading choices. ''That's bothering me. On the one hand, we
could have a newscast like 'The Big Breakfast' in England, where women give
the news in lingerie. Or there's 'Naked News,' which is on cable in England.
I saw a clip of it. It's a woman giving the news as she's getting undressed.
And then, on the other hand, you could have two boring people behind a desk.
Our newscast has to be somewhere in between.''

At the staff meeting now, Moonves was eager for an update from Heyward.
''So,'' he said, ''how's the pilot?''

Heyward was matter-of-fact. ''We can show you something in a couple of
weeks,'' he said. ''It's more about the reporters, the feedback.''

Moonves nodded. ''It's not 'The Big Breakfast,''' he half-joked, but also
half-prodded.

The finished news prototype will probably have some nontraditional
features -- humorous segments, conversations between reporters and the
anchor, interactive elements involving the viewers. Throughout the summer,
the news division solicited ideas from a variety of sources: producers of
entertainment shows, MTV News and even a group of college-age interns who
were working at CBS. In the end, though, Moonves will be the judge. ''It's
like pornography -- I'll know it when I see it,'' he would tell me later.
''In the news business, right now is the changing of the guard. Tom Brokaw
has retired, Rather has left and then the horrible death of Peter Jennings.
In one eight-month period, network news has completely changed, and this is
an opportunity to redefine ourselves.''

The meeting was almost over. ''We have a very interesting six months ahead
of us,'' Moonves said as he got up to leave. ''Hopefully, by then, we'll be
an independent CBS.'' He paused, smiled and added, ''And with any luck,
we'll have a naked news show.''


Later that evening, around 7 p.m., Moonves was in a black Mercedes sedan on
his way to the New York Press Club, where his wife was moderating a panel on
female journalists. As the car idled in traffic, Moonves pointed out the
window. ''See,'' he said. ''That's synergy.'' An advertisement for
''Everybody Hates Chris'' -- a new show on UPN, which Viacom owns -- adorned
the side of a bus. ''That's our show,'' he said. ''And we own the sides of
buses.'' He sounded proud, which is how he usually sounds when he speaks
about CBS. ''This job is all-consuming,'' he continued. ''If you don't feel
passionately about the shows, the network, even the outdoor-sign business,
it would be impossible to continue.''

Wherever he goes -- a huge cocktail party given by the William Morris
agency, a small meeting in his office, a routine lunch at a Midtown
restaurant -- Moonves is usually the center of activity: talking, joking,
soaking up the scene, whatever it may be. He is never jaded or sarcastic
about his profession, and his zeal for the sport of show biz is apparent. He
rarely shows signs of insecurity or doubt, even when he's somewhat at sea --
as with the Viacom split, which will require him to take on responsibility
for a number of businesses that he knows almost nothing about. In the
previous week, for instance, he had met with Jack Romanos, the publisher of
Simon & Schuster, who gave him a three-hour tutorial on the book industry.
(After the Viacom split, Romanos will report to Moonves.)

This week he had visited Matthew Blank, the chairman and C.E.O. of Showtime,
which will soon also operate under the CBS umbrella. ''We had a
philosophical discussion,'' Moonves said as we turned on 42nd Street. ''I
asked him if he wants to have shows like 'Fat Actress' that attract new
viewers or water-cooler shows that win awards and are only interesting to a
small percentage of the audience.'' If Moonves wants Showtime to challenge
HBO, he may have to significantly alter his customary formula; flawed
characters in unconventional stories are what attract most new viewers to
HBO.

Part of Moonves's identification with a certain type of conventional leading
man and story line may have to do with his own background as an actor. In
his 20's, as he had explained to me in June over dinner at Mr. Chow in
Beverly Hills, he played characters like a Mexican pearl diver on an episode
of ''Cannon.'' He moved to Los Angeles to further his acting career in 1975,
but eventually decided that what he really wanted was to work on the other
side of the camera as an executive. Although he had no formal training in
the television business, Moonves was hired by Saul Ilson, a producer of
''The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,'' to work on developing shows for the
company. In 1985, Moonves joined Lorimar Television as a vice president.
Lorimar was known for shows like ''Dallas'' and ''The Waltons.'' Four years
later, Moonves was running the show. By 1993, Lorimar had been absorbed by
Warner Brothers, and Moonves was named president of Warner Brothers
Television, which developed and sold shows to the networks. Moonves was
responsible not only for ''E.R.'' and ''Friends'' but also for ''Lois and
Clark,'' ''The Drew Carey Show'' and others. In 1995, he and Warner Brothers
Television had an unprecedented 22 shows on the air.

Like many talented sellers in the TV business, Moonves longed to become a
buyer, to control the destiny of an entire network. Ten years ago, he got
his chance. NBC was in first place in the ratings, ABC was struggling and
CBS was in real trouble. In 1995, CBS held the announcement of its fall
schedule in the banquet room of the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square.
Perception is crucial at these events, and the other networks were holding
their presentations at tonier locations -- the Museum of Natural History
(for ABC) and Avery Fisher Hall (for NBC). The decoration at the Marriott,
by contrast, resembled a tacky disco: there was a giant mirrored ball
spinning, and it was hard not to think of CBS, which was trying to recover
from a disastrous 1994 season, as a faded beauty begging for a dance.

Moonves was sitting in one of the folding chairs at the Marriott that
afternoon. Though it was still a secret, he was in final negotiations to
become president of CBS Entertainment. He sat in the audience, stared at
CBS's schedule and wondered, Why did I decide to leave Warner Brothers? ''It
was exciting to get the job, but it was also awful -- CBS was not only
defunct; it was old,'' he told me. ''Agents didn't want to come to CBS. My
team was still under contract at Warner Brothers, and I did not have the
same relationship with the executives at CBS.''

After taking the job, he started prying away members of his old Warner
Brothers team. (One of Moonves's requests when CBS was ordering another year
of ''Murphy Brown'' from Warner Brothers Television, in fact, was that
Warner Brothers let Kelly Kahl, now CBS's head of scheduling, out of his
deal with the studio.) Moonves, in his first year at CBS, also moved the
network's upfront to Carnegie Hall. The following year, Moonves persuaded
Bill Cosby to star in a comedy for CBS called, simply, ''Cosby.''
''Carsey-Werner, who were producing the show, tried to talk Cosby out of
coming here,'' Moonves said as he took a bite of Peking duck. ''And I don't
blame them. If I were them, I would have sent him to ABC or NBC.''

The acquisition of Cosby, whose ''The Cosby Show'' spearheaded the
resurrection of NBC under Brandon Tartikoff in the 80's, sent a message to
the entertainment community: CBS could attract top talent. ''Cosby'' was
never a big hit, but it initiated CBS's psychic turnaround. ''Rebuilding a
network is a slow, brick-by-brick process,'' Moonves said. ''It's not just
creating a hit show -- it's building shows to back up that hit show; it's
creating an identity of success so that people want their shows on your
network. In the beginning, the town was not as supportive as I might have
expected.''

In 1998, the industry perked up when Moonves helped to bring N.F.L. football
back to CBS. Men started watching the network again. CBS had also been
running ''Everybody Loves Raymond.'' ''I have to be honest,'' Moonves
admitted as he speared a dumpling, ''Ray Romano was a 38-year-old stand-up
comedian who was fired by 'News Radio' when he was the fifth lead. The pilot
for 'Raymond' turned out well, but I wasn't expecting it to become one of
the most successful sitcoms of all time.''

About three years into the job, Moonves was put in charge of CBS's news
division. At the time, the newsmagazines were becoming very successful.
'''48 Hours' was a good utility player for us, but it's not a game
changer,'' Moonves said. '''60 Minutes' was the most successful news
magazine on the air, and I needed that force. I went to the news division
and suggested '60 Minutes II.''' He sighed. ''Mike Wallace and Don
Hewitt'' -- both legendary CBS newsmen -- ''told me that it was a bad idea.
Everyone objected. . . . What I also found surprising was that after my
first formal meeting with executives at CBS News, I returned to my office
and two of the papers called to say that they knew I'd been meeting with
news and what was the meeting about. That was an eye-opener. There was none
of that sort of leaking of information in the entertainment division. My
team would know better.''

''60 Minutes II'' became a battle between Moonves, who represented the
supposedly mercenary world of entertainment, and the old-guard CBS news
crew. But in the end, the news division didn't really have a choice: then,
as now, Moonves was the boss. (In light of the division's initial
resistance, the uproar from CBS News over the cancellation of ''60 Minutes
II'' this season is a peculiar twist.) ''The news division's outrage
bothered me,'' Moonves said. ''News is commerce, too. The news people are
all being paid lots of money. So it's a little hypocritical to claim that I
was turning news -- a sacred institution -- into commerce by putting '60
Minutes II' on the air. Well, you know what, guys? When your agent calls,
he's not being shy about asking for money. He views this as commerce.''

When ''Survivor'' came on in 2000, CBS had its first instant home-grown hit.
The show was a pop-culture sensation, establishing reality TV as a viable
genre. CBS had long been concentrating on the older 25-54 demographic, which
was a strategic decision, since NBC virtually owned 18-49 and CBS's shows
naturally skewed a little older in terms of content. But like all big hits,
''Survivor'' brought in every age and demographic. ''Finally, I could
mention a show on CBS, and my friends had seen it,'' said Kelly Kahl, who is
38. ''Before 'Survivor,' when I told people I worked at CBS, they'd say,
'Oh, my grandmother loves 'Touched by an Angel.''' ''Survivor'' lured
viewers from the other networks, and when ''C.S.I.'' was introduced later in
2000, the new viewers stayed. ''C.S.I.,'' its spinoffs and the other
procedural dramas of CBS, like ''Cold Case'' and ''Without a Trace,'' then
catapulted the network to the top.


An overarching sensibility began to emerge. If NBC had been, in its heyday,
the destination for the young and urban and ABC had been, when it was most
successful, the place for red states to find their favorite shows, CBS was
more in keeping with the current mood of the country: moderate conservatism.
Moonves, although a lifelong Democrat and a friend of Bill Clinton's, is
something of a throwback. In his shows, he likes the men alpha and handsome
and the women smart and beautiful, and he wants little personal complexity:
happy endings are imperative. If being the No. 1 network means that the
people have elected you, Moonves has constructed a Bush-like universe
(without the politics): in his dramas, there is a continuing battle for
order and justice, the team works together and a headstrong boss leads the
way.

Producers looking to sell shows to CBS either comply with this point of view
or take their shows elsewhere. ''With 'Hack,''' -- a show about a former
police officer turned taxi driver -- ''we sold the show to CBS although we
had a very strong offer from another network,'' says Gavin Polone, who also
produces the innovative ''Curb Your Enthusiasm'' on HBO. ''We made that
choice largely because Les is both a charismatic leader and probably the
best programmer in the history of TV. Subconsciously, I must have thought I
could persuade him to produce a dark show about a psychologically and
morally ambiguous cabdriver and a corrupt cop. It ended up as a show about
two good guys fighting crime. You have as much chance to change Les's
perspective on the kind of show that would work on CBS as you would in
winning an argument with the sculpture of George Washington on Mt.
Rushmore.''

Moonves wouldn't contest that characterization. ''This last season I was
worried about 'C.S.I.: N.Y.,''' he said as we prepared to leave the
restaurant. ''It was way too dark, both in story line and look. The morgue
looked like it was five stories below earth, and I said, 'This is not
''Batman.''' 'C.S.I.' is a great franchise, the No. 1 show on TV, and you
shouldn't revolutionize it, which is what 'C.S.I.: N.Y.' was trying to do.
So I called in Anthony Zuiker, the producer, and I said: 'You know those
sets? Burn them.' The morgue on 'C.S.I.: Miami' looks like a restaurant. It
may be an odd thing to say, but it looks like a fun place to be. Melina
Kanakaredes, the lead of 'C.S.I.: N.Y.' is beautiful. I want to see her
face. I want makeup on it.'' Moonves paused. ''Zuiker agreed with me. He
realized that he had tried to reinvent the wheel. And it ain't broke.''

Moonves told this story with evident conviction. He does not seek out the
unusual and the different, and neither, it would seem, does most of the
national television audience. For instance, despite winning the Emmy for
best comedy of 2004, Fox's ''Arrested Development'' has never garnered much
of an audience. The show is odd and hilarious but full of cold, manipulative
characters. ''It's too dark,'' Mooves said, repeating his mantra. As for
''The Sopranos,'' which he says he loves, Moonves once asked a convention of
Pepsi-Cola bottlers if they wanted to see ''The Sopranos'' on network TV.
Their response didn't really surprise him: they found the show too extreme.
''Tony Soprano is an unorthodox hero,'' he explained. ''The audience likes
someone they can identify with, someone they can believe in. Everybody's
looking for a family, for a hero, for a place where they fit in and, despite
all the complications, for everything to work out in the end. That's what
the audience wants. And that's what we try to give them.''


On Memorial Day last year, everything at Viacom changed. ''It was the
Memorial Day massacre,'' Moonves recalled recently over breakfast at the
Regency Hotel on Park Avenue. He eats there nearly every morning when he is
in New York, and there is a constant stream of well-wishers congratulating
him on CBS's success. When he worked at Warner Brothers, he became
superstitious about the Regency: he would always stay in a suite on the 18th
floor, and he came to believe that the tradition contributed to his success.
Last year, he bought an apartment in a building near the the hotel. He
commutes between the apartment and his house in Beverly Hills. True to his
wife's feng shui principles, wherever he sleeps, his head always faces east.

Moonves drank some orange juice. ''I don't shock easily,'' he continued.
''But last Memorial Day, when Sumner told me that Mel Karmazin was leaving,
I was genuinely shocked.''

Some background: Soon after Moonves's arrival at CBS in 1995, Larry Tisch,
the owner of CBS at the time, sold the company to Westinghouse for $5.4
billion. Then in 1996, Mel Karmazin, the president of Infinity Broadcasting,
accepted a lucrative offer from Michael H. Jordan, then the head of CBS, to
buy Infinity and fold it into CBS. Less than two years later, Karmazin
effectively pushed out Jordan and was named C.E.O. of CBS. But Karmazin had
bigger plans: in 2000, he sold CBS to Sumner Redstone and his company,
Viacom, in a deal valued at $37 billion. It was the largest media deal in
history.

>From the beginning, Karmazin and Redstone clashed. Both self-made men, they
each wanted to be in charge. ''They were supposedly coequals,'' explained
one longtime CBS employee, ''but their personalities were too strong and too
dominant to tolerate that kind of union. Something had to give, and it
did.''

The day after Memorial Day, Karmazin publicly announced that he was leaving,
and Redstone decided to replace him with two men: Moonves and Tom Freston,
who was then the chairman and C.E.O. of MTV Networks. Freston was one of the
creators of MTV and, unlike Moonves, has always been attracted to the
unfamiliar and innovative. Redstone, who is close to Freston, gave Freston
control of Paramount Pictures and all of Viacom's cable networks, including
MTV. Moonves was put in charge of the radio division, the
outdoor-advertising company, Paramount Television, UPN and CBS. Some
perceived that Moonves had been given the consolation prize. Although
Moonves and Freston were friendly, they were suddenly co-C.O.O.'s and
rivals. The winner of the ''bake-off'' would presumably get the top Viacom
job when Redstone, who is 82, eventually stepped down.

''First of all,'' Redstone said when I spoke to him, ''the conflict between
Tom and Les was overstated. And secondly, why did anyone think I was
stepping down?'' Moonves confided to friends that the situation was awkward,
that he would have rather been given Paramount Pictures than the headache of
Infinity Radio (whose programs include Howard Stern's talk show). But for
public consumption, he remains, as always, diplomatic.

''Tom and I never got competitive,'' Moonves maintained over breakfast. ''We
may have eventually, but we were too busy trying to get our arms around our
respective companies, and we didn't have the time. And then, nine months
later, Redstone decided to split Viacom.'' In January, Redstone conceived
the division: the Freston company, with all its MTV assets, would be an
entrepreneurial, fast-growth endeavor. Moonves's company, with CBS at its
center, would be a high-dividend, value company based in part on the
continuing financial success of the network. ''We just had a phenomenal
year,'' Moonves said. And yet Viacom's stock price has been consistently
down. It closed a little more than a week ago at about $34 a share; three
years ago it was trading at $40.45. Redstone said he is optimistic that the
division of Viacom will boost the price, but, then again, he is in selling
mode. ''The world of the conglomerate has passed,'' he repeated.

In April, it was reported that Redstone, Freston and Moonves together
received a total compensation last year of more than $60 million in salaries
and bonuses, plus a package of stock options valued at a total of $100
million. A Viacom spokesman said that the overall compensation was based on
the company's operating performance, not on the stock price. Still, since
Viacom's stock had declined 18 percent in 2004, the compensation packages,
valued at around $52 to $56 million for each, were surprising. The cash
compensation for Moonves was almost $20 million, although part of that
amount was deferred. Several insiders wondered if Redstone was trying to
take some of the financial sting out of his 2002 multimillion-dollar divorce
settlement. Moonves himself was divorced in 2004, from his wife of 25 years,
and remarried the same year. ''It was a momentous year in nearly every
way,'' Moonves said as he drank some coffee. ''There were lots of
separations and a few marriages.''


The heart of any network is its shows, and in May Moonves was still
deliberating over his final fall lineup. (''He schedules in his sleep,''
Julie Chen told me. ''He'll say, 'Should I move that show?''' When I
mentioned this, Moonves said: ''I told her to write it down! I might have a
great idea while I'm sleeping.'') This year, Moonves was characteristically
ebullient about the CBS pilots. ''This is my favorite part of the job,'' he
said as he headed out of his office at Black Rock on his way to preside over
the final scheduling conference for the 2005-6 season.

Moonves entered the conference room at 11:15 a.m. At one end was a
blackboard-size edition of the scheduling board in his office, propped up on
an easel with panels for each potential new CBS show. Around an enormous
oval table were the 14 members of Moonves's inner executive circle. ''The
reason I've been able to maintain my position of chairman of CBS in addition
to all the Viacom stuff is my team,'' Moonves said as we sat down.
Throughout his career, Moonves has always subscribed to a sports-inspired,
team-oriented view of the world. Sometimes he's the coach, sometimes he's
one of the players, but it's always about the group.

Curiously, most of CBS's successful dramas -- the three ''C.S.I.'' shows,
''Without a Trace'' and many of the new about-to-be-discussed drama
pilots -- revolve around a group of specially trained professionals who work
in unison and are headed by a dynamic, attractive middle-aged man. These
prime-time-TV teams -- much like Moonves's own -- are determined and
work-obsessed. They seem to think of their office as an extended family
while, together, they solve crimes.

Moonves started with a discussion of the shows that he and his team planned
to cancel. In addition to ''Joan of Arcadia,'' they wanted to ax ''Listen
Up,'' ''Judging Amy'' and ''60 Minutes II.''

''This is big, guys,'' he said from his seat at the head of the table.
''Everyone's going to think that we're canceling '60 Minutes II' because of
Memogate. But it is our oldest-viewing show. We will just have to answer the
question of its cancellation that way.''

The topic rapidly switched to some pilots that were still up for debate. One
of them, ''Love Monkey,'' is about a single guy who works for a record
company and his travails with his friends and in the dating world. Moonves
had said earlier that the show reminded him of ''Entourage,'' an HBO comedy
about four buddies set in the world of insider Hollywood, and that while he
likes that show, it may not be right for CBS, which is more conservative.
'''Love Monkey' didn't test great,'' he said.

CBS, like all networks, does extensive research on all its pilots. David
Poltrack, the network's longtime head of research, has created a testing
facility called Television City at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. ''What
you can do there is find any demographic group imaginable,'' Moonves
explained to me in one of our earlier meetings. ''Let's say we're looking
for black men, age 18 to 24, from Omaha, Neb. In Vegas, we can find 30 in 24
hours. This allows us to really get specific. Let's say I'm thinking of a
pilot for the slot after our comedy 'Two and a Half Men.' I can recruit
people who like 'Two and a Half Men' and see if they'll stick around to
watch this new show.''

There are famous cases in which testing has failed: ''Seinfeld'' didn't test
well, for instance, but became one of the most popular shows of all time.
''The scheduling and research guys didn't like 'Love Monkey,''' Moonves said
now, in the meeting. Nancy Tellem, one of the heads of entertainment, spoke
a few words in defense of the show. Moonves nodded, but said no. (Later, he
reconsidered and picked up ''Love Monkey'' for midseason.)

''Let's move on,'' Moonves said as he turned the discussion to the next
pilot, ''Old Christine,'' a comedy starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus. ''If you're
a working mother, you can relate to that show,'' Tellem said. ''I did.''
Moonves stared at her. ''Your children are grown,'' he said. ''But every
time we talk about men and situation comedies, we are wasting our time.
Women control sitcoms. Period. That's the audience.''

Throughout the discussion, the group looked periodically at the board,
especially at the NBC programs. Long the network to beat, NBC has been
severely weakened in recent years. But Moonves, ever competitive, seemed
propelled by the battle, even if his network is on top. ''Is 'Joey' really
going to open Thursday nights for NBC?'' he asked at one point. ''That's a
dream come true. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.''

Someone observed that new sci-fi shows are popping up on every network's
potential schedule. Perhaps this was a reaction to the success of ABC's
''Lost,'' which features mysterious supernatural elements, or it may have
something to do with the country's mood -- a free-floating post-9/11 fear of
a terrorist attack in the form of alien invaders. CBS's version is called
''Threshold'' and revolves around a team of investigators who look into
unexplained outer-space phenomena.

It was unanimously agreed that ''Threshold'' should go on the schedule at 9
p.m. on Friday nights, following a drama then called ''The John Gray
Project'' about a woman who sees visions of nearly dead people and heals
them before they perish. ''We need a new title for that show,'' Moonves
said. ''How about 'The Grateful Dead?''' Gil Schwartz, the communications
chief for the network, said. '''After-slash-Life,''' someone else said.
'''The Grateful-slash-Dead,''' Schwartz retorted. ''How about 'Breaking
Through'?'' Nina Tassler asked. ''No 'ings' in the title,'' Moonves said.
''They rarely work.''

Out of the nine possible pilots, the four dramas that were chosen were all
essentially similar in format to ''C.S.I.'' -- procedural crime shows in
which a mystery is solved. Moonves is aware that dramas that tell a complete
story in every episode tend to repeat and syndicate well, although
''C.S.I.'' loses nearly a third of its audience when it is repeated. Two of
the new dramas, ''Threshold'' and ''Criminal Minds,'' center on a team, and
the other two, ''Close to Home'' and ''Ghost Whisperer'' (as ''The John Gray
Project'' was eventually renamed), focus on a woman, perhaps to capitalize
on the fact that women are a dominant force in CBS's audience. '''Close to
Home' is about a woman who prosecutes the sort of crimes they commit on
'Desperate Housewives,''' Moonves said. ''It is a procedural drama, but the
procedural dramas always seem to work. When we have too many, the audience
will tell me.''

One new comedy that the team decided to schedule, ''How I Met Your Mother,''
departed from the usual CBS mold: the network currently has its share of
sitcoms on the air in which a large buffoonish man is married to a shapely,
tolerant woman. ''How I Met Your Mother'' is told in flashback as a father
tells his children how their parents met back in the year 2005. Comedies are
generally much harder to develop than dramas, and Moonves was particularly
proud of the show. His favorite UPN comedy pilot was ''Everybody Hates
Chris,'' which was originally optioned by Fox. Narrated by Chris Rock, who
is also a creator of the show, it is about a black boy who attends a
predominantly white school. It also happened to be the most highly praised
pilot on any network.

''Everyone in the press wants to know why that show is not on CBS,'' Moonves
had told me earlier. ''But if we put it on, that would destroy the
credibility of UPN as a network. 'Everybody Hates Chris' may put them on the
map.'' Moonves smiled. ''And anyway, Paramount TV made the show, so we
really own it. That's synergy for you: there are no shifting assets. If it's
a hit, it benefits UPN, which is our network, and Paramount TV, which is our
production unit.''

As the meeting ended, Kelly Kahl got up and rearranged the board by putting
all the new CBS shows in their new time slots. It was a slightly melancholy
moment. Although Moonves said he planned to work on the schedule next year,
his days would, in all likelihood, be monopolized by new challenges. In many
ways, his work had been completed: CBS was No. 1. The care and maintenance
of the network could no longer be Moonves's job: he simply has too many
other narratives to reorient.

''This is the earliest we've had the schedule locked in 10 years,'' he said,
staring at the board. ''It's getting a little too easy. I'll have to find
something else impossible to do.''

Lynn Hirschberg, editor at large for the magazine, last wrote about the
director Jim Jarmusch.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/magazine/04MOONVES.html


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