Bold Play by CBS Fortifies Broadcasters

Leslie Moonves, the longtime chief executive of CBS, has heard the jokes about CBS being old and out of step because of the age of its audience and because it does not have enormous assets in the cable network world.

Les Moonves, the chief executive of CBS, has been pushing cable providers to pay broadcasters the same way that they pay cable networks.

But in one area, CBS and Mr. Moonves have led to a shake-up in the broadcast world that could be labeled revolutionary: the issue of compensation for retransmission rights. Before almost anyone else in the business, Mr. Moonves effectively pushed for distributors to pay fees to the broadcast channels just as they do to cable networks.

The result has been a windfall for all the broadcasters and a crucial lifeline as audiences continue to shrink.

“One of the things people misjudged about CBS was the growth potential,” Mr. Moonves said in an interview. “We were considered a low-growth company: how are they going to grow this business? This was one of our keys. We were going to get paid for retransmission, and that’s how we were going to grow.”

The most recent fight â€" a high-noon showdown between CBS and Time Warner Cable â€" ended this week the way all recent confrontations between big broadcasters and cable operators have ended, with the cable operator pulling out a checkbook instead of a gun.

The fight was longer â€" 32 days â€" and nastier than either side expected. The network had never before seen its stations go dark in a fee dispute. The two sides traded blows in full-page newspaper ads, and Time Warner Cable even offered some subscribers free antennas. (Time Warner Cable executives declined to comment.)

In the final deal, the cable provider will pay CBS a hefty increase in fees for the right to retransmit the signals of its stations in big cities like New York, Los Angeles and Dallas â€" a reported rise to $2 per subscriber over the next five years, more than double the network’s previous deal with Time Warner Cable.

At the same time, CBS rejected demands that it give up the opportunity to sell separately its content to digital outlets like Amazon and Netflix, insuring another bountiful revenue stream, likely to be worth hundreds of millions a year.

CBS projects that by 2017 it will take in $1 billion annually in retransmission payments. David Bank, an analyst with RBC Capital markets, said that the figure could easily go to $2 billion.

To further underscore the advantage for CBS, the company’s stock price shot up 6 percent in the first two days after the settlement. (The CBS network, along with the company’s television production arm, interactive division and a half-share of the CW network, made up about 55 percent of total revenue.)

“I just knew how valuable our content would be,” said Mr. Moonves, who last year received total compensation of $62.2 million, making him the country’s highest-paid media executive. “People kept saying cable is a better business because they have a dual revenue stream. I felt strongly we should be as well.”

Mr. Moonves credits Chase Carey, the chief operating officer from News Corporation, and the acquisition of NBC by Comcast, the nation’s biggest cable operator, for the move toward big fee increases for broadcasters. But Mr. Banks says that CBS has been the unquestioned leader.

“I do think the other broadcasters have a pretty big debt to pay to Les,” he said.

One longtime rival network executive, who asked not to be named, said, “If anyone was going to break the code on retransmission it was going to be Les and CBS.”

Their success is a culmination of a long campaign, which Mr. Moonves began in 2005. At that point, CBS had no cash compensation from cable operators. Viacom, then CBS’s corporate owner, had decided to split its television assets, sequestering its lucrative cable networks, like MTV and Nickelodeon, from CBS, then considered a low-to-no-growth burden on its stock price.

The plan to demand cash won Mr. Moonves a chorus of derision from cable executives, who had long pledged almost a blood oath never to pay broadcasters cash as compensation for retransmission rights. At one industry gathering, a senior cable executive, whom Mr. Moonves preferred not to name, approached him, angry, shaking his finger at him, telling him he would never get a penny for retransmission rights.

“They resisted it,” Mr. Moonves said. “There were a lot of people saying the same old thing: you’re a network, you should not get paid.”

Business Briefing | Legal News: Judge Rules Against Injunction in Effort to Buy Paper

Judge Rules Against Injunction in Effort to Buy Paper

A judge said he would not stop the company that owns The Las Vegas Review-Journal, Stephens Media, from trying to buy out the family publishers of the rival Las Vegas Sun. Judge James Mahan of Federal District Court in Las Vegas that it was too early in the process to issue an injunction blocking Stephens Media from offering to buy Sun newspaper and Internet interests from Greenspun family member trustees. Brian Greenspun, The Sun’s editor and publisher, said he would keep fighting to prevent The Review-Journal from ending their 1989 joint operating agreement.

If ‘Million Second Quiz’ Succeeds, NBC Gets the Grand Prize

NBC

The set for “The Million Second Quiz,” on a rooftop in the West 40s in Manhattan.

Pop quiz: what does broadcast television need right now?

Ryan Seacrest

Ask NBC, and the answer will be “The Million Second Quiz,” a groundbreaking competition that will start on Monday night and end 10 days later â€" the online component is 10 consecutive 24-hour days â€" with the presentation of what the network calls the biggest guaranteed pot of money in game show history. Whether that’s the right or wrong answer will be determined when the ratings start to come in.

At a time when shrinking network audiences are the norm, the “Quiz” is already winning attention for the scale of its ambitions, as symbolized by the three-story arena that has taken shape in the Clinton neighborhood of Manhattan, where the game will be played. In keeping with the million-second theme, it has the appearance of a gigantic hourglass; its sheer size almost says, “AMC and Netflix and YouTube can’t do this!”

After its debut on Monday, “Quiz” will be broadcast on NBC for an hour a night, every night, until Sept. 19, with one break for “Sunday Night Football.” In some ways, it is a throwback to a long-ago era when families would gather around the television set for big prime-time game shows. According to NBC, there hasn’t been a live game show scheduled in prime time since the 1960s.

Back then, though, viewers could only shout answers at the TV. Now, they can play along at home with an app. And when the game is not being played on TV, it will continue as a live, continuous stream on NBC.com.

Contestants, some of whom will be picked to compete on the basis of their Internet play, will take turns sitting in the “money chair,” where every second spent answering trivia questions is worth $10. Correct answers help them reach Winners Row, an area on the set where the five best players will live and sleep (and keep answering questions, lest they be kicked out of the top five) until the million seconds are up.

“This is the Olympics of quiz,” said Stephen Lambert, the British television producer who offered the idea to Paul Telegdy, NBC’s president of alternative and late-night programming. In the pitch, Mr. Lambert described the game “almost like a tennis match between two contestants.” After all, nothing attracts more viewers to broadcast television than big sporting events. That’s partly why the “Quiz” will try to look and feel like such an event, with its open-air setting.

Since the quiz show isn’t taped like, say, “Jeopardy,” some questions will be about the day’s news. “You might be asked, ‘President Obama signed what into law this morning?’ ” said the executive producer, David Hurwitz. Other questions will be asked by celebrities â€" inevitably, NBC celebrities. (“If there’s a question about the weather, who better to ask it than Al Roker?” Mr. Telegdy said.) On the final night, the final contestants on Winners Row will vie for a grand prize that could theoretically top out at $10 million, though it’s likely to be closer to $5 million.

Executives at NBC haven’t actually said this, but they clearly want the “Quiz” to be nothing short of a national event â€" the kind of big-ticket, must-see spectacle that turns up less and less often on the broadcast networks. To that end, the executives have hired Ryan Seacrest to host and have spent tens of millions of dollars to promote the game show this summer. They say that even some of their typical rivals might be caught rooting for it: Mr. Telegdy said a “competitive éminence grise from elsewhere in TV land” â€" he wouldn’t name the person â€" had sent him a well-wishing e-mail that said bluntly, “We all need this right now.”

The producers are aware that comparisons to the blockbuster ABC show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” are probably inevitable (though there is no phone-a-friend option on this show). “Millionaire,” hosted by Regis Philbin, wowed the television industry when it drew 10, 20 and sometimes even 30 million viewers in 1999 and 2000. It continues to chug along in syndication, now with Cedric the Entertainer as the host. One difference is that “Millionaire” was already a proven hit in Britain when it arrived in the United States; “Million Second Quiz” will start stateside first. If successful, it will spread around the world.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Telegdy said that “the line will probably go dead, and a robot will eject me from my seat” if he uttered a specific ratings prediction. But his noncommittal answer was telling in and of itself: the goal, he said, is to “get people talking about NBC.”

Once upon a time, that network didn’t have to try hard to achieve that; now it does. So its parent company, Comcast, is having all of its various properties support “Quiz” through ads, guest appearances, reports on newscasts and the like â€" a strategy that it calls “symphony” and that was previously applied to the singing competition “The Voice.”

Mr. Seacrest, who is best known for hosting Fox’s “American Idol” and who also has a wide-ranging contract with NBC, said that after he heard the initial pitch from Mr. Lambert and Mr. Telegdy, the NBCUniversal chief executive, Steve Burke, called him to reiterate how important the “Quiz” was going to be. Mr. Burke also did so in an e-mail to every employee of the company on Wednesday.

“There is already a lot of great buzz, and we think there is a chance ‘The Million Second Quiz’ could really break through,” Mr. Burke wrote.

NBC is hopeful that starting “Quiz” slightly ahead of the fall television season â€" which doesn’t officially get under way until Sept. 23 â€" will benefit both the game show and the new series that the network will introduce later. The logic works like this: there is relatively little competition next week, giving “Quiz” a better shot at being sampled by the public; if the show catches on, then all of NBC’s ads for new series like “The Blacklist” and “The Michael J. Fox Show” will be seen by many more people, and giving away $5 million or $10 million will feel like money well spent.

A version of this article appears in print on September 7, 2013, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: If a Quiz Show Succeeds, NBC Gets the Grand Prize .

Parliament Hearing to Focus on BBC Severance Dispute

LONDON â€" An increasingly bitter dispute between Chris Patten, the head of the BBC Trust, and Mark Thompson, the former director-general of the BBC, will get a public airing on Monday before a committee of the British Parliament.

Mr. Thompson, who left the BBC in 2012 and is now the president and chief executive officer of The New York Times, has challenged July testimony by Mr. Patten about how much the trust was told about a series of large severance payments to executives who left the corporation in an effort to reduce costs.

In a 25-page witness statement submitted to Parliament on Friday, Mr. Thompson has accused the trust, which represents the interests of ordinary Britons who pay an annual television fee that goes to the BBC, of misleading the committee and the National Audit Office.

In July, Mr. Patten expressed surprise at the details of important severance payments, which were larger than contractually mandated, according to the auditors, while Mr. Thompson insisted that the trust was fully informed and raised no objections. In particular, Mr. Thompson’s deputy, Mark Byford, was given a full year’s salary in lieu of notice despite having worked another eight months when the deputy’s job was eliminated.

One of the documents Mr. Thompson has presented is a briefing memo prepared for Mr. Patten explaining the payments, which were approved before Mr. Patten became chairman of the trust. He said that Mr. Patten’s testimony in July was “fundamentally misleading about the extent of trust knowledge and involvement.”

In a statement, the trust called Mr. Thompson’s submission “a bizarre document,” said “we completely disagree with Mark Thompson’s analysis,” and said that Mr. Patten and Anthony Fry, a trustee, had not misled Parliament. Mr. Patten had not had “a full and formal briefing on the exact terms of Mark Byford’s departure,” the trust said.

Mr. Patten has come under considerable criticism for the large severance given to Mr. Thompson’s successor, George Entwistle, who lasted only 54 days in the job. He resigned in November over a reporting scandal, but was given a full year’s salary in addition to a normal severance payment. The furor over that package has made the earlier payments more politically sensitive.

Both Mr. Thompson and Mr. Patten will appear before the Public Accounts Committee on Monday.

Judge Sets Final Restrictions for Apple on E-Books

As punishment for engaging in an e-book price-fixing conspiracy, Apple will be forced to abide by new restrictions on its agreements with publishers and be evaluated by an external “compliance officer” for two years, a federal judge has ruled.

Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president for Internet software and services, leaving a Manhattan federal court in June.

Document

But the judge, Denise L. Cote of Federal District Court in Manhattan, rejected some of the measures sought by the Justice Department, including extensive government oversight over Apple’s App Store.

In a filing this week, Judge Cote issued her final ruling on the penalties to be imposed on Apple after the long-running lawsuit against the technology giant filed by the Justice Department in April 2012.

The government accused Apple, along with five major book publishers, of illegally colluding to raise the price of e-books and of trying to curb Amazon’s influence in the publishing industry as Apple prepared to introduce its iPad in 2010.

All five publishers, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group and Penguin Group USA, have since settled, while saying that they did nothing wrong. Random House, which was not named in the lawsuit, merged with Penguin earlier this year.

But Apple, confident of its innocence and with the financial resources to fight in court, went to trial this summer. It defended itself with testimony from a string of high-ranking Apple executives, including Eddy Cue, the company’s senior vice president for Internet software and services, who led the negotiations with publishers.

In July, Judge Cote ruled against Apple in a nonjury trial, saying there was compelling evidence it had violated antitrust laws by conspiring with the publishers.

In her ruling this week, Judge Cote said that Apple may not enter into any agreement with the five settling publishers that “restricts, limits or impedes Apple’s ability to set, alter or reduce the retail price of any e-book.”

The ruling also said that Apple would be prohibited from discussing with any publisher its contractual negotiations with another publisher.

In addition, Judge Cote ordered that Apple cooperate with an external monitor who will evaluate and report on the company’s training reforms and antitrust compliance.

Bill Baer, the assistant attorney general, said in a statement on Friday that the Justice Department was pleased by the court’s ruling.

“Consumers will continue to benefit from lower e-books prices as a result of the department’s enforcement action to restore competition in this important industry,” he said. “By appointing an external monitor to ensure future compliance with the antitrust laws, the court has helped protect consumers from further misconduct by Apple. The court’s ruling reinforces the victory the department has won for consumers.”

Apple has said that it will appeal Judge Cote’s July ruling.

“Apple did not conspire to fix e-book pricing,” Tom Neumayr, an Apple spokesman, said in an e-mail on Friday. “The iBookstore gave customers more choice and injected much-needed innovation and competition into the market.”

At a hearing in United States District Court in Manhattan last week, Judge Cote said that she wished to “intrude as little as possible” on Apple’s business.

Knopf Acquires New Paolo Bacigalupi Novel

Knopf has acquired a new novel by Paolo Bacigalupi, the science fiction writer whose 2009 book “The Windup Girl” sold 200,000 copies and was considered one of the top novels of the year.

The new book, “The Water Knife,” is set in a lawless, water-starved American Southwest in the not-too-distant future. Knopf, the publisher of Toni Morrison, Robert Caro, Stieg Larsson and Helen Fielding, paid an advance in the high six figures.

For Mr. Bacigalupi, it is a leap from a tiny specialty press, Night Shade Books, to one of the most highbrow publishers in the business, with a reach that could broaden his readership well beyond the sci-fi world.

Tim O’Connell, the editor at Knopf who acquired the book, said he had been pursuing Mr. Bacigalupi for years, after reading “The Windup Girl” and becoming mesmerized by it.

Mr. Bacigalupi’s agent, Russell Galen, brought the new book to Mr. O’Connell, who said he believed it would attract a crossover audience beyond Mr. Bacigalupi’s core readers.

The book will be released in spring 2015.

Talk: Glenn Beck Wants to Know: Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Glenn Beck Wants to Know: Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

You left Fox News and started The Blaze, a TV station, Web site and subscription service. How is that working out?
Check back with me in 10 years. I think we’re just now entering the fields that I was hoping we would enter.

Glenn Beck

You’ve said The Blaze could put traditional TV news out of business. That’s a bold prediction.
I learned that when Barbara Walters came and did an interview with me. They had about 50 people in our studio for two days â€" more people in my offices than we had employees. All for an eight-minute segment.

But do you really think that will happen?
The nightly news is doing a fine job of putting itself out of business. Who watches it? I mean really, besides my grandparents, who are both dead, who is watching the nightly news? I think we’ll be ready to put them out of business in the next three to five years.

Is it true that you expressed interest in buying Current TV?
Yes. I didn’t speak to him, but I was told that Al Gore didn’t want to sell to me.

When you heard Al Jazeera was buying it, what did you think?
I thought that Al Gore saw me more as an enemy of America than Al Jazeera, which I found fascinating coming from the former vice president. Or maybe he doesn’t believe a word he says. He sold for twice the amount of what it was worth.

How did your fans respond to your support of gay marriage?
I don’t care. The point is that government shouldn’t be involved in marriage.

Did you hear any reaction?
Can we stop dividing ourselves? Do racists exist? Yes. Do bigots exist? Yes. But most of us are not. Most Americans just want to get along. Why can’t we do that? What has happened to us?

I think there’s a misperception that your show is more political than it actually is.
Unfortunately, because of the news of the day, we have spent most of our time on politics. What people don’t ever understand is this: I’m the guy who lives in Dallas who did not get an invitation to the George Bush Presidential Library opening. He didn’t like me. I had called for his impeachment. I didn’t call for Obama’s impeachment. People think I just hate this president. No, I hate power and those who do everything they can to hold onto it.

But you said you were going to hunt down progressives like an Israeli Nazi hunter.
Oh, I will. I think these guys are the biggest danger in the world. It’s the people like Mao, people that believe that big government is the answer, it always leads to millions dead â€" always.

Sometimes when you give a speech, you hold up a napkin stained with Hitler’s blood. Why?
It could be Hitler’s, I don’t know. It was from somebody present during the July assassination attempt. The point of it is: pay attention when the trouble is small. If you don’t pay attention to people who want to regulate every aspect of your life, it spirals out of control.

What was it like for you to live in New York?
Sad, because I think New York is one of the greatest towns in the world. I love New York. I wanted to live in New York my whole life, and I find it so unbelievably closed-minded.

You must feel more comfortable living in Dallas.
Yeah, but there are people that hate me all over the world. I went to South Africa, and people hate me there.

Why did you start your jeans company, 1791 Denim?
I wore Levi’s my whole life. I think they’re great. They’re making them in China now. Fine, whatever. But when they branded themselves the uniform for the progressive movement, instead of complaining, I started my own company. I don’t care if you’re a liberal and you want to wear them. I hope they’re comfortable. If they’re not, return them to me.

Are you still in touch with Sarah Palin?
No. In fairness, I don’t really stay in touch with really anybody. I’m a little busy.

INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED.

A version of this interview appears in print on September 8, 2013, on page MM12 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: ‘there are people that hate me all over the world’.

Talk: Glenn Beck Wants to Know: Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Glenn Beck Wants to Know: Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

You left Fox News and started The Blaze, a TV station, Web site and subscription service. How is that working out?
Check back with me in 10 years. I think we’re just now entering the fields that I was hoping we would enter.

Glenn Beck

You’ve said The Blaze could put traditional TV news out of business. That’s a bold prediction.
I learned that when Barbara Walters came and did an interview with me. They had about 50 people in our studio for two days â€" more people in my offices than we had employees. All for an eight-minute segment.

But do you really think that will happen?
The nightly news is doing a fine job of putting itself out of business. Who watches it? I mean really, besides my grandparents, who are both dead, who is watching the nightly news? I think we’ll be ready to put them out of business in the next three to five years.

Is it true that you expressed interest in buying Current TV?
Yes. I didn’t speak to him, but I was told that Al Gore didn’t want to sell to me.

When you heard Al Jazeera was buying it, what did you think?
I thought that Al Gore saw me more as an enemy of America than Al Jazeera, which I found fascinating coming from the former vice president. Or maybe he doesn’t believe a word he says. He sold for twice the amount of what it was worth.

How did your fans respond to your support of gay marriage?
I don’t care. The point is that government shouldn’t be involved in marriage.

Did you hear any reaction?
Can we stop dividing ourselves? Do racists exist? Yes. Do bigots exist? Yes. But most of us are not. Most Americans just want to get along. Why can’t we do that? What has happened to us?

I think there’s a misperception that your show is more political than it actually is.
Unfortunately, because of the news of the day, we have spent most of our time on politics. What people don’t ever understand is this: I’m the guy who lives in Dallas who did not get an invitation to the George Bush Presidential Library opening. He didn’t like me. I had called for his impeachment. I didn’t call for Obama’s impeachment. People think I just hate this president. No, I hate power and those who do everything they can to hold onto it.

But you said you were going to hunt down progressives like an Israeli Nazi hunter.
Oh, I will. I think these guys are the biggest danger in the world. It’s the people like Mao, people that believe that big government is the answer, it always leads to millions dead â€" always.

Sometimes when you give a speech, you hold up a napkin stained with Hitler’s blood. Why?
It could be Hitler’s, I don’t know. It was from somebody present during the July assassination attempt. The point of it is: pay attention when the trouble is small. If you don’t pay attention to people who want to regulate every aspect of your life, it spirals out of control.

What was it like for you to live in New York?
Sad, because I think New York is one of the greatest towns in the world. I love New York. I wanted to live in New York my whole life, and I find it so unbelievably closed-minded.

You must feel more comfortable living in Dallas.
Yeah, but there are people that hate me all over the world. I went to South Africa, and people hate me there.

Why did you start your jeans company, 1791 Denim?
I wore Levi’s my whole life. I think they’re great. They’re making them in China now. Fine, whatever. But when they branded themselves the uniform for the progressive movement, instead of complaining, I started my own company. I don’t care if you’re a liberal and you want to wear them. I hope they’re comfortable. If they’re not, return them to me.

Are you still in touch with Sarah Palin?
No. In fairness, I don’t really stay in touch with really anybody. I’m a little busy.

INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED.

A version of this interview appears in print on September 8, 2013, on page MM12 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: ‘there are people that hate me all over the world’.