Leslie Moonves

“We could say fairly definitively, sometime in ’15, there will be some service from Showtime,” Moonves, president-CEO of CBS, said during the company’s earnings call with analysts.

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves told a Merrill Lynch conference that he’d “buy TV stations all over the country” if the FCC lifts its 40% coverage restriction on TV station ownership. He also said there’s a “very strong possibility” that Showtime will be offered directly to consumers over the Internet “and possibly with CBS as well.

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves yesterday took aim at its affiliates who negotiate bad deals, TV ratings measurement and marketers who don’t pay enough. “We the networks should not be penalized because you the station do not negotiate retrans properly,” he said. Moonves, who has a goal of reaping some $2 billion in retransmission fees by 2020, threw down the gauntlet to the leaders of non-owned CBS stations to get those dollars in his pocket — or else.

Senators Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) want to know specific reasons for CBS radio stations’ rejection of an ad by the American Television Alliance.

After dropping $275 million on a one-year deal to show NFL games on Thursdays, CBS CEO Les Moonves seeks big returns on the investment. The NFL is “the single best product on network television,” he says. “This is a sure thing.”

Leslie Moonves says CBS would be interested in buying the news channel if it is spun out of the possible 21th Century Fox-Time Warner merger. “We’ve always talked about doing things with CNN in the past,” he said at the TCA. “We’ll see. It’s something I’m sure we’ll look at if it becomes available.”

Leslie Moonves, Philippe Dauman, Robert Iger, David Zaslav,.Jeffrey Bewkes and Brian Roberts make the annual list.

CBS Corp. Chairman-CEO Leslie Moonves says his company is in the “early stages” of developing a 24-hour digital news network, an effort being overseen by David Rhodes. Moonves announced Thursday, via an interview with Bloomberg Television, that the digital channel would be “an exciting alternative to cable news.”

Les Moonves saw his total compensation for leading CBS rise more than 7% to $66.9 million in 2013, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing released on Friday.

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves continued to downplay the threat posed by Aereo — the Internet startup facing a showdown with broadcasters at the Supreme Court — saying the Eye could deliver its own “over-the-top” service.

CBS’s homage to the Sherlock Holmes myth, Elementary, is getting $2.7 million per episode in the aftermarket, according to the network’s top executive — the result of a demand for exclusive licensing windows from the emerging field of online-video streaming sites.

In an upbeat call with analysts after announcing record revenues and profits, the CBS CEO talks about new content agreements, Aereo, the big NFL deal and launching The Big Bang Theory on another night this fall.

At the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves also touched on CBS’s legal battle with Aereo and the carriage dispute with Time Warner Cable, saying, “We don’t view Washington as being an obstacle.”

CBS chief Les Moonves is taking Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen at his word after he said this week that there’s a way for broadcasters to benefit from his Hopper DVR, which automatically zaps ads on recorded shows. “We’re very flexible. We’re willing to negotiate,” Les Moonves told investors today at the Guggenheim Securities TMT Symposium.

CBS chief Leslie Moonves isn’t prepared to stop once he persuades advertisers to pay for viewers who watch commercials as much as seven days after a show airs — a change he expects to see next year from the current live-plus-3 days. “We’re pushing eventually for live plus 30,” Les Moonves told investors this morning at the RBC Capital Markets Technology, Internet, Media and Telecommunications Conference.

Less than a week after broadcasters petitioned the Supreme Court over Aereo, a New York-based federal judge on Thursday denied the Barry Diller-backed company’s second attempt at winning permission to depose CBS chief Les Moonves.

“You will see at our third quarter earnings that there was no harm done to CBS Corp.,”  company CEO Leslie Moonves told investors about the 32-day blackout on Time Warner Cable systems. “It didn’t hurt us one iota financially.”

CBS and its chief, Les Moonves, have given the broadcast world a shot in the arm by pushing distributors to pay broadcasters just as they do cable networks.

On Wednesday, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves indicated ad dollars are about to become platform neutral. No more analog-digital divide. Within three to five years, there will be parity pricing for ad positions in NCIS whether on CBS or streamed on CBS.com, he said in an interview on CNBC. So, “we won’t care where you watch the shows,” Moonves said.

In the ongoing legal battle over Aereo, the upstart digital TV distributor won’t be able to ask CBS CEO Leslie Moonves questions under oath about how Aereo’s presence in the marketplace has affected the network’s negotiations with cable and satellite companies.

Of the Big Four network honchos, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves is the only one who still seems to know how to program to mass audiences, even if it is a dwindling mass, and believes in what he is doing. Broadcasting has no greater or more ardent champion. This TV season, Moonves and CBS were finally rewarded for their single-minded commitment to broadcasting by capturing the 18-49 demo crown.

Les Moonves is out to get Aereo by any means necessary, but he “doesn’t lose sleep over it,” the CBS Corp. president-CEO told the Milken Institute’s Global Conference Tuesday.  The CBS chief did say that if the situation couldn’t be resolved in the courts, he is more than willing to take CBS to cable. “We can do it in a few days. If we go to cable, if we are forced to, then about 10% of America will not get our signal and I don’t think they will like that,”

During the TV upfronts, there’s one thing buyers have come to expect as much as star sightings, free-flowing booze and Fox-party shrimp: Chest-thumping over price increases by CBS’s Les Moonves. But this year, there’s been nothing but silence from the Eye Network head honcho.

Leslie Moonves, Al Michaels, Bob Schieffer, Dick Wolf,  Ron Howard and the late Philo Farnsworth, who invented electronic television, were honored at ceremonies Monday night in Los Angeles that drew a glittering industry crowd.

This was one of the points CBS chief Leslie Moonves made to investors Monday to promote his favorite message: that all’s well for CBS and broadcasting. He’s been lobbying to have advertisers pay for the viewers who see commercial spots on DVRs as much as seven days after they first air, up from today’s three days. And that’s “coming right around the corner, and that will be good for us,” he said at a wide-ranging Q&A session at the Deutsche Bank Media, Internet and Telecom conference.

CBS chief Leslie Moonves flipped the argument that Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt made yesterday when he said that he may drop pricey cable channels that generate hash-mark ratings. “That means for the channels that are getting viewers, he’s going to pay more,” Les Moonves told the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference Tuesday. “He should pay the most for the guy who’s the No. 1 network.”

The 63-year-old CEO redid his contract this week. The first installment of the new signing bonus was due Thursday, when he was to receive $7.5 million worth of stock options. In 2013, he is entitled to restricted stock units that will be valued at $14.5 million on the day they are issued.

The company extends the current contract with CBS Corp. President Leslie Moonves an additional two years, through June 2017, after which he has the option to set up his own production company under CBS.

Speaking at separate times at a Goldman Sachs media conference this week, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes and CBS CEO Les Moonves asserted that they deserved bigger shares of the $30 billion that cable and satellite operators pay out to programmers each year. Bewkes would like to see the money concentrated among the top 40 networks; Moonves, among the top four. “If you are really paying for eyeballs and ESPN is getting $5 and we are watched by four times as many people,” Moonves asked, “what do you think?… We are entitled to ask for more and we are starting to get more.”

CBS Corp. CEO Les Moonvees says he’d like to own a general cable net, but only at the right price. He also likes sports — but only deals that make money.

Don’t look for Showtime to offer an over-the-top alternative anytime soon. Speaking at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference in Beverly Hills on Wednesday, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves said: “We like the ecosystem as it is now.” Showtime is a unit of CBS.

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves says the company will ultimately drop its flagship network from Dish Network unless the satellite operator discontinues its Auto Hop ad-skipping device. CBS is in litigation, along with other broadcast networks, trying to thwart the device.

CBS chief Les Moonves diverted from the pack in this year’s upfront presentations by talking up the ad value of conventional television over digital media. “Everyone is still talking about the first screen, the TV screen.”

CBS Corp. and CEO Leslie Moonves have an arrangement that could provide him with at least $18 million for a production business after his contract expires. Under the arrangement, CBS would also have to order three series executive-produced by Moonves or pay him penalties.

Leslie Moonves’ pay package for 2011 rose 20% to $68.4 million from a year ago. The sum will likely rank Moonves among the highest paid American CEOs last year.

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves said Saturday that he was approached about a year ago by Steve Jobs to provide content for Apple’s long-rumored television service but he declined to participate.

CEO Leslie Moonves says CBS is just beginning to get its fair share of the programming fees that cable and satellite pay out, he said. “We are watched by a lot more people than a lot of cable networks that get paid a lot more than we do. But having started from zero three years ago, we are in a very good position.”

CBS Corp. CEO Les Moonves on Wednesday made a bold prediction about the broadcaster’s Super Bowl prospects, telling investors that his sales team will set an all-time unit cost record in 2013. Speaking on the media conglomerate’s 4Q earnings call, Moonves said he anticipates landing “a potential $4 million per spot” in Super Bowl XLVII, slotted for New Orleans on Feb. 3, 2013.