CBS News: We’ll Never Pay Casey Anthony, Apologize to Lance Armstrong

With ratings on Scott Pelley’s broadcast already up over Katie Couric, Jeff Fager and David Rhodes, in the new Hollywood Reporter magazine, talk about their aggressive plans to "restore" their division.

Jeff Fager and David Rhodes took the reins of CBS News at a tumultuous time: The entire Early Show on-air team had been replaced, and Katie Couric was mulling the end of her high-profile — if not highly rated — five years on the CBS Evening News.

In February, Fager, 56, became the first chairman of the news division, and Rhodes, 37, who spent many years at Fox News and a shorter stint at Bloomberg, was brought in as president, in part so Fager could keep his day job as executive producer of 60 Minutes. "I knew right away we had common sensibilities," says Fager, a married father of three.

They have given themselves a steep mandate: Get the network’s daily broadcasts out of the ratings basement. (60 Minutes lately has led the news curve, breaking news that Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson apparently embellished parts of his memoir; it also aired explosive accusations from former teammates that Lance Armstrong doped.) They’ve hired MSNBC’s Morning Joe executive producer Chris Licht as vp programming. Soon, Early will move from its drab digs on 5th Avenue near the Plaza Hotel to the broadcast center on West 57th Street.

read the entire article at "The Hollywood Reporter"

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ABC News, NBC News Snipe Over Paying Sources

NBC gloating over ABC’s policy change prompts return fire

As ABC News moves away from checkbook journalism, its competitors are starting to gloat—and distance themselves from similar practices. “We were happy to hear about this change in ABC News policy," a spokesperson for NBC News told Adweek. “We agree that their recent activity has been bad for journalism and the news industry. And we welcome them back to the practices that we work hard to uphold.”

An ABC News insider, flabbergasted by the NBC comment, fired back saying, "NBC News lies about its practices, does not disclose the habitual payments it makes for interviews, and then has the gall to get up on a high horse. Someone ought to remind NBC News that the higher they get up on that horse, the farther they will fall as their rank and recurring hypocrisy is exposed."

ABC had come under fire amid recent revelations that it was habitually compensating its sources by way of large “licensing fees”—cash payments ostensibly for the use of proprietary photo and video material in its news segments. The network’s news division paid Casey Anthony $200,000 for the use of photos in a story it ran in 2008 and promised $10,000 to the woman who claimed she regularly injected her child with Botox (though that cash offer was rescinded last May when the woman’s story began to unravel).

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CBS, ABC Staff Up for 2012 Election Cycle

Both CBS News and ABC News announced key staffing appointments for their political teams today, as the 2012 election cycle looms.

CBS News president David Rhodes announced in an email to staffers that Caroline Horn, who currently coordinates political coverage on “CBS Evening News,” has been promoted to senior producer for politics. The CBS political unit will also depend on senior political producers for the major broadcasts, including Ward Sloane for “Evening News” and former Fox News political producer Mosheh Oinounou for “The Early Show.”

ABC News also announced a new hire: Ron Brownstein, editorial director for The National Journal, will join the network’s political team, according to an email from ABC News president Ben Sherwood. Brownstein will contribute political analysis across all ABC’s platforms. He will also contribute to CNN as a senior political analyst.

read the entire article at "TVNewser"

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Amazon Sticks Another Knife In Netflix – Adds 2000 CBS Shows, Star Trek

Like Netflix didn’t have enough troubles on its plate, Amazon is heaping on more.

2000 more… and a whole Star Trek universe to boot!

Amazon Prime started out as a free-shipping membership program offered by Amazon. For $79 a year, Amazon members received free 2-day shipping and discounted 1-day shipping on items purchased from Amazon.

Amazon upped the benefits earlier this year – adding the ability for members to stream shows and movies from a library of 5000 titles. Last month, Amazon added 1000 more titles to the library, as we reported here: Amazon Prime Muscles Up – 1000?s More Streaming Movies/Shows Added.

Now, just a month later, Amazon is adding another 2000 titles into the mix. The new movies and shows include the entire Star Trek series, and 2,000 episodes of 18 CBS shows. The shows from CBS include: The Tudors, Medium, Numb3rs, Frasier,  Cheers, and more. Netflix acquired essentially the same package of shows from CBS in February.

read the entire article at "Sure Start Consumer News"

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"CSI" Creator Anthony Zuiker Dumps CBS for ABC Studios

Perhaps an upcoming episode of "CSI" can tackle the Case of the Disappearing Creator.

"CSI" franchise mastermind Anthony Zuiker has abandoned his 12-year working relationship with CBS Television Studios in favor of a three-year, first-look deal with ABC Studios, an individual with knowledge of the deal confirms to TheWrap.

Under the new deal, Zuiker and his Dare to Pass production company will develop scripted series with Brillstein Entertainment Partners.

Zuiker and new Brillstein Television president JoAnn Alfano will share executive-producer credit for joint projects between Zuiker and Brillstein. Under the new deal, Zuiker will work with ABC Studios’ creative head Patrick Moran.

Zuiker’s "CSI" franchise has been highly lucrative, generating more than $6 billion in revenue between "CSI" and its two spinoffs, "CSI: NY" and "CSI: Miami."

from "Reuters"

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Analysts: CBS Corp.-Amazon Streaming Deal Bodes Well for Sector Giants

"Digital media distribution is an incremental boon to core film/TV studio economics," says Barclays Capital’s Anthony DiClemente.

A streaming video deal between CBS Corp. and Amazon.com, which was announced earlier on Wednesday, is latest proof that entertainment giants stand to gain financially from online content distributors, according to analysts.
"We continue to see new entrants into the content ecosystem – first Netflix, now Amazon in the domestic market with potential for international sales and additional domestic entrants in the future – driving up the value of TV content," Morgan Stanley analyst Benjamin Swinburne said in a report.

He added: "While CBS is the most levered name to improving monetization of TV content (TV studio is roughly 25 percent of segment [operating profit] for CBS versus about 5 percent-15 percent of [operating profit] for large-cap peers), we view today’s announcement as a positive for the media industry, where improving content monetization is a key tenet of our "attractive" industry view."

In case of similar deals, Time Warner’s Warner Bros. TV studio "is likely the property with the most near-term upside" given estimated annual revenue from streaming agreements of less than $25 million, he added.

Lazard Capital Markets analyst Barton Crockett similarly called Wednesday’s deal news "positive for content, challenging for Netflix" as it "clearly suggests that Amazon is stepping up to be a more meaningful rival to Netflix in online streaming."

read the entire article at "The Hollywood Reporter"

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CBS Amazon Strike Streaming Video Deal

The agreement covers full seasons of 18 TV series, such as Showtime hit "The Tudors," "Numb3rs," "Medium," the "Star Trek" franchise, "Frasier" and "Cheers."

CBS Corp. has struck a non-exclusive TV library content licensing deal with Amazon.com that will provide more TV programming for the latter’s streaming video offers.

Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed, but some key terms are believed to be comparable to a two-year library content deal that CBS Corp. struck earlier this year with Netflix’s streaming service that analysts said is worth $200 million.

The agreement adds 2,000 TV show episodes to the subscription-based Amazon Prime streaming service to bring the total number of Amazon Prime instant videos to more than 8,000 movies and TV shows, the companies said. Included in the agreement, which will help make the service a more attractive alternative to Netflix, are full seasons of 18 TV series, such as The Tudors, Numb3rs, Medium, the Star Trek franchise, Frasier and Cheers.

Starting this summer, dozens of CBS shows will also become available to customers of the iTunes-type Amazon Instant Video service, which doesn’t require a subscription, they said. Amazon Instant Video offers more than 90,000 movies and TV shows.

"Amazon has created one of the most popular consumer marketplaces in the world, and we are very pleased to make these titles available to their Instant Video and Prime customers," said Leslie Moonves, president and CEO of CBS Corp. "This new agreement represents another meaningful way for us to realize incremental value for CBS’s content."

read the entire article at "The Hollywood Reporter"

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CBS Stock Hits New 52-Week High

CBS Corporation hit a new 52-week high Thursday

It is currently trading at $29.58, above its previous 52-week high of $29.36 with 2.6 million shares traded as of 10:36 a.m. ET. Average volume has been 9.3 million shares over the past 30 days.

CBS has a market cap of $17.5 billion and is part of the services sector and media industry. Shares are up 50.9% year to date as of the close of trading on Wednesday.

CBS Corporation operates as a mass media company in the United States and internationally. The company has operations in every field of media and entertainment, including broadcast television, such as CBS and The CW, a joint venture between CBS Corporation and Warner Bros. The company has a P/E ratio of 20.4, equal to the average media industry P/E ratio and above the S&P 500 P/E ratio of 17.7.

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TheStreet Ratings rates CBS as a buy. The company’s strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its solid stock price performance, impressive record of earnings per share growth, compelling growth in net income, good cash flow from operations and expanding profit margins. Although no company is perfect, currently we do not see any significant weaknesses which are likely to detract from the generally positive outlook.

from "The Street"

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CBS Stock Hits New 52-Week High

CBS Corporation hit a new 52-week high Thursday as it is currently trading at $29.16, above its previous 52-week high of $29.13 with 4.2 million shares traded as of 1:01 p.m. ET. Average volume has been 9.3 million shares over the past 30 days.

CBS has a market cap of $17.9 billion and is part of the services sector and media industry. Shares are up 49.7% year to date as of the close of trading on Wednesday.

CBS Corporation operates as a mass media company in the United States and internationally. The company has operations in every field of media and entertainment, including broadcast television, such as CBS and The CW, a joint venture between CBS Corporation and Warner Bros. The company has a P/E ratio of 20.9, equal to the average media industry P/E ratio and above the S&P 500 P/E ratio of 17.7.

TheStreet Ratings rates CBS as a buy. The company’s strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its solid stock price performance, impressive record of earnings per share growth, compelling growth in net income, good cash flow from operations and expanding profit margins. Although no company is perfect, currently we do not see any significant weaknesses which are likely to detract from the generally positive outlook.

read the entire article at "The Street"

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CBS Reruns Hold Court in Summer Ratings

There’s little secret to what entertainment choices viewers want from the broadcast networks this summer: reruns on CBS and competition or reality shows elsewhere.

Twelve of the 25 most popular prime-time programs last week were reruns of scripted dramas or comedies on CBS, the Nielsen Co. said. CBS’ one other entry in Nielsen’s top 25 was the newsmagazine "60 Minutes," which usually airs recycled material in the summer.

NBC, meanwhile, had six competition shows in the top 25, led by "America’s Got Talent" and the conclusion of "The Voice." Its new reality series "Love in the Wild" also got off to a strong start, and the network burned off a fresh episode from since-canceled "Law & Order: Los Angeles."

ABC had four non-fiction shows in the top 25 and Fox had one, Nielsen said.

Not all of the non-fiction shows fared well. Jerry Seinfeld’s "Marriage Ref" on NBC hasn’t drawn an audience despite a revamp, and ABC’s prime-time "Nightline" series is also off to a slow start.

read the entire article at "HUFFPOSTMEDIA"

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