This week CBS CEO Leslie Roy Moonves announced during its earnings call that it now has new deals with Verizon and Hulu.
The new Verizon deal covers CBS and CW stations along with Showtime and other cable networks and was “on terms consistent with our long term target of achieving $2.5 billion of annual retrans and reverse comp revenue by 2020.”
The details of the Verizon deal are limited right now, but it will for sure allow Verizon Fios to continue to have CBS-owned stations.
We already knew some of the details of the Hulu deal. This will allow Hulu’s upcoming live streaming service to have access to CBS content. During the call Moonves said this is “significant because it represents all of the skinny bundle entrants who are paying a premium to gain access to our content.”
It is interesting that CBS struck these deals because CBS is still not available on DIRECTV NOW or Sling TV. Moonves says he’s “still anticipating conversations” with the services.
CBS also mentioned a recently announced affiliation renewal with Meredith Corp, “one of our largest affiliate groups.” The new deal includes rights for the affiliates to participate in revenues from CBS All Access as well as future agreements with digital distributors.
Although not clearly stated, it is expected that this deal will allow Hulu to stream CBS stations that are owned by Meredith Corp. Moonves did say “These three deals give us increased flexibility.”
It also seems that CBS wants to buy more stations. During the call Moonves said he “would be interested” in buying additional stations if the FCC, under Trump-appointed Chairman Ajit Pai, raises the ownership cap.
“Would we go outside of the top 25 [markets]? Probably not,” he says—in part because the big markets tend to have NFL teams that attract lots of viewers. “We would be aggressive. But we’re not going to be stupid about it.”
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