CBS

Hours after Jennifer Bresnan announces she’s stepping down, her former SVP of the division has been promoted.

Jennifer Bresnan, who has headed CBS’s alternative programming department since 2008, will be leaving the network. She is relocating to New York, where her husband, CBS Corp. COO and Leslie Moonves’ right-hand man Joe Ianniello, and family live. For the past few years, Bresnan had been shuttling back-and-forth between New York and Los Angeles where her job is based.

CBS chief Les Moonves couldn’t resist alluding to his tense retransmission consent negotiations with Time Warner Cable — even though he didn’t want to address the matter directly in a Wednesday conference call with analysts. “We will update you when we have more news,” he said in prepared remarks, adding that CBS will remain “resolute” as it faces a Friday deadline when its stations might go dark on TWC cable systems in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — The “social experiment” that is CBS’ “Big Brother” included appalling behavior this season but the network has responded appropriately, CBS Corp. CEO Les Moonves said […]

The two sides negotiated through the day Monday to avoid a programming blackout, then set a new deadline of Friday, Aug. 2, at 5 p.m. Eastern time. Late last night, Time Warner Cable briefly took down CBS stations, but quickly reinstated them at the broadcaster’s request and continued negotiations.

Time Warner Cable now says it has agreed to yet another extension with CBS “while we continue negotiations.” This moves the deadline to Friday, Aug. 2, at 5 p.m. Eastern time.

CBS and Time Warner Cable are still engaged in “very difficult negotiations” over how much TWC will pay CBS-owned stations per subscriber, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves told TV critics at TCA Summer TV Press Tour today. “The deadline is 5 p.m. ET today — I hope we don’t go dark.”

The parties again have set a new deadline to settle their retransmission consent battle: This time it’s 5 p.m. ET on Monday. The fight involves CBS-owned stations that reach some 3.5 million Time Warner Cable homes, primarily in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas.

Six all-new half-hour FCC Educational/Informational programs targeted to 13-16 year olds will premiere on the CBS Television Network on Saturday, Sept. 28.

The previous deadline of Wednesday has been moved to 9 a.m. ET Thursday. CBS boss Leslie Moonves says Time Warner Cable can afford to compensate CBS fairly without passing the cost on to customers. Meanwhile, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable says that it has offered CBS significant fees, but “their current demands don’t represent a good value for our customers.”

CBS and Time Warner Cable are waging a public war of words in a retrans dispute that threatens to knock 13 CBS-owned stations off TWC systems in eight major markets. But CBS is bolstered by another potent weapon in this fight: multiple top-tier radio stations in the three markets — New York, Los Angeles and Dallas — most affected by the contract wrangle. And those stations have added the spots on heavy rotation, judging from a quick survey of the L.A. dial on Friday morning.

As another television programming blackout looms, this time because of a high-stakes negotiation between the CBS Corporation and Time Warner Cable, there is a new wrinkle, courtesy of Aereo, the start-up that streams broadcast TV via the Internet. While Time Warner Cable does not seem ready or willing to deploy Aereo-like technology, a spokeswoman, Maureen Huff, said Sunday that it would recommend Aereo to its New York subscribers if CBS was blacked out.

In an effort to provide a more complete picture of all TV viewing, CBS now says it will periodically release audience data across all platforms for its TV shows — including video on demand and online streaming. The first program being offered by CBS is its summer hit Under the Dome.

CBS starts an ad blitz in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere claiming its stations are being held “hostage” as the cable provider bemoans the “unreasonable” 600% increase it claims the network’s seeking.

Although neither side is taking shots at each other publicly, there is an undercurrent of tension between Time Warner Cable and CBS Corp. as the two companies attempt to negotiate a new distribution deal. Time Warner Cable’s agreement to carry CBS-owned TV stations, the basic cable channels CBS Sports Network and Smithsonian, and the pay network Showtime expired at the end of June. Since then, there have been a couple of extensions, the latest one running to a few days before the end of the month.

The hit CBS series proves broadcasters can launch a scripted series in the summer. Here’s how the network pulled it off and what the others can learn.

CBS Corp. and Netflix Inc. extended the companies’ multi-year licensing agreement for certain content in the archives of programs CBS owns. Under the extended deal, new titles such as L.A. Complex, 4400 and CSI: NY will be available to Netflix subscribers. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Negotiations between CBS and Time Warner Cable to renew their four-year-old pact — covering retransmission of CBS owned-and-operated TV stations and carriage of cable nets including Showtime — are expected to take several more weeks to resolve, according to a source familiar with the talks.

Ratings for Under the Dome vindicate a decision by CBS to stop ceding the season to cable. The opening ratings for Dome last Monday qualified as spectacular: more than 13.5 million viewers for the premiere, the biggest audience for a summer drama in more than 20 years. The show added more than three million more viewers when three days of delayed viewing was counted, CBS announced Saturday.

The distribution deal between CBS and Time Warner Cable expired at midnight ET on Sunday, and reps for the two sides said negotiations covering the Eye’s O&Os and cable networks continued past the deadline. No blackouts of CBS-owned networks have been reported on Time Warner Cable systems.

TV is drawing ever closer to its streaming tipping point, with all four of the major broadcast networks beginning to launch streaming stategies that will bring their local and network programming to mobile devices. Now the networks are wading through rights issues and vendors as streaming comes ever closer to disrupting the traditional TV environment. “It’s just become so much part of the culture now in how people consume content,” Digital Rapids’ Mike Nann says. Part four of a four-part special report. Find the full report here.

The network will once again concentrate its premieres in the last week of September, with How I Met Your Mother getting a one-hour return and Survivor the only series getting an early start.

BOSTON (AP) – For the first time in more than 20 years, the July 4 Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular will not be televised nationally. The Boston Globe reports that CBS […]

CBS is virtually done with its upfront sales. The top-rated network’s haul is expected to be comparable to last year’s $2.5 billion-$2.7 billion, as is the share of the inventory offered, about 77%-78%. The network scored high-single-digit CPM increases in the 7.5% range.

NEW YORK (AP)  — A family member says Ed Hotaling, a network news journalist and author of several books including “They’re Off! Horse Racing at Saratoga,” has died. Greg Hotaling […]

So far, TV Everywhere has been mostly a video-on-demand service, a way for subscribers to cherry pick their favorite shows to watch on second screens. But with CNN and a handful of others leading the way, live-streaming of linear channels is starting to get traction. Even broadcasters are getting in on the act.

The network’s EVP, planning, policy and government affairs will step down at the end of September. “I am all too aware of the frailty of life, and having been lucky enough to find happiness for a second time, my non-CBS to-do list is long, and I want to turn to it while my wife Sherry and I still have a zest for exploring the adventures that lie ahead.”

The network may not follow ABC down the “TV Everywhere” road for local broadcasts on smartphones and tablets.

For the 10th time in 11 years, CBS was the nation’s most-watched network, Nielsen said Thursday. CBS’s margin of victory was wider than any other network in 24 years and it won among 18-to-49-year-old viewers, a group coveted by advertisers, for the first time in 21 years.