Alright. David i dont consider myself a journalist. And nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . David you started out, you wanted to be an actor and you abandoned that. Have you thought that the country and world has missed having another deniro or pacino. Leslie no, i think it was a great benefit to america to get that up and go to the other side. Fairly early on, i was smart enough to realize three years or four years into my acting career, i was a mediocre actor. I was also tending bar more than i was acting during those years. I looked around and said, there are people who do this a lot better than i do. There is probably Something Else i can do in the business, where i can satisfy my creative juices and still be involved and it ended up being a good decision. David it worked out. You grew up in long island and went to college. Did you want to be an actor there . Leslie no, i started out premed because that is what every jewish kid from long island had to do when you went to school, you had to try to become a doctor. David what happens when you decided not to do it . Leslie active my first organic chemistry class and said, this is horrible. I am bad at the sciences, and it was a tough conversation with my parents, to tell them i did not want to be a doctor. David what did your father say . Leslie we were at a bar in pennsylvania, which is where to colleges, and it broke it to my father, who is a hardworking guy, he owned gas stations, worked with his hands, and i said, im deciding im not going to be a doctor. He said, what do you going to do . I said, im going to new york to become an actor. [laughter] he said, what do you want to do that for . I said, it is what makes me happy. He said, happiness . You think that is all there is to life . [laughter] so that is the typical response of that generation. When i finally became president of cbs, he forgive me. [laughter] david so you went from college to new york to be a stage actor and you did tv shows, correct . If somebody wants to watch 6 million man, you are there. Leslie there are two or three episodes where i play a bad guy being chased by the majors. Its all right. I think a touch of heat. I will just take him inside. He will be all right. David 6 million was not your compensation. Leslie no, it was not. David you said, im not going to be a doctor or actor, how did you decide to get into the production side of television . Leslie most of the time as an actor you are on set, virtually doing nothing. You are there are 16 hours and probably work 20 minutes. I was fascinated with what everybody else did and i did a quick study on what it was like to be on set and arent about what the visit and learn about what the business was about, so when an opportunity came to get to the other side of the camera as a junior executive in a production company, i jumped at it. David when you do that, you have to either be good at reading scripts or picking talent, so what was your skill set . Leslie being a mediocre actor, i knew who good actors were. I really did. I had very good creative instincts. I watched a lot of television. I saw what was and was not working, and i became good at it. I became good that taking shows. I became president of warner bros. Television you read soon after that, we had 23 shows on the air. We were leaving, and the next highest shows on, but not only did we have 23, but we had er and friends, so the hottest comedy and drama in the world on television, on nbc. David lets talk about er. Was it your idea, how did you green light . Leslie it was not my idea, it was based on a script written years earlier by Steven Spielbergs production company. By michael christ, the famous chton, the famous scifi writer, had written the script. We read the script, made a deal with nbc, and we produced the show. I think my major contribution to that was George Clooney. David you selected him . Leslie he was the guy i put on the contract for four years in a row. He was doing a lot of pilots, episodes, and he was not getting anywhere. I believed in him. I said, this guy is really goodlooking, charming, a great guy, so i was the one who talked the producer into using George Clooney in er. David did he thank you or he still calls and thinks you . Leslie believe it or not, he still calls and thanks me. We are close friends. He is the only one. Most actors, producers and directors, once they succeed, they forget anybody helps them. That is the way of the world, same in washington as in hollywood, where one to succeed, you forget anybody helps you along the way. George is one of the few people when ever given the opportunity, always thanks me. David friends, what about that . Writers whoired the put together the show. Every show you can write a whole novel about. Friends was sold first to fox. They wanted it, they did not want to pay an extra 100,000 for the script, so it flipped to nbc. That was only a decision that may have cost them 5 billion. [laughter] there are interesting stories. Csi was originally owned by abc, then it was sold to cbs and abc owned half of it, then they dropped out of owning that half of it. Csi up to now has made the Cbs Corporation in revenue of Something Like 6 billion, so those are big mistakes. [laughter] you are gambling with a lot of money. David when you are deciding on the show, you get picked by agents, do actors call directly, how do you make decisions . Leslie it is a little bit of both, it starts with the writers, the idea, the concepts. Occasionally, an actor will come attached to it. Most of the time not. You get a producer who says, i got this idea called csi, about a Crime Scene Lab in las vegas, blah, blah, and then we attach William Peterson and it grows from there. David if you are Leslie Moonves and go to the restaurant, does somebody come up to you and say, i have a script . My nephew is great for a show . Leslie it happens all the time. It happens consistently. People do not understand it is about the execution, not idea. You mention er, it is a hospital show, but it is what happens in the show. What is cheers about . It is about eight people in a bar. When a guy comes up and says, i podiatrist. You should see our office. It is so funny. Its a great idea for a show. You politely say, here is my email. David has anybody said private equity show would be good . [laughter] leslie well, i have seen you perform at the Kennedy Center for many years. You have potential. You do. David really . Well, i wonder on that, the Kennedy Center honors and the chairman goes out and makes a presentation at intermission but on television, a comes up five seconds. You do not broadcast it. Do you about broadcasting the entire 20 minutes . Is there a lot of demand for that . Leslie you are lucky we put on the five seconds. [laughter] David Companies like netflix and apple and facebook and amazon they are in the streaming business. Leslie money alone does not lead to good programs. It is tough. Were competing with companies that could eat us alive. David you obviously got a good reputation at warner, so somebody said, this man has the golden touch. Cbs recruited you. What shows reproducing that people would have heard of . Leslie our hit show was Everybody Loves raymond. We were desperately last place. We put on raymond and slowly began to build, brick by brick, and the couple of years later, we put on csi and survivor. That sort of changed the game. Those two games came on the same year. Nbc, which had dominated Network Television for two decades, we put them both on thursday night and we took down nbc for the first time in two decades on thursday, and we ended up beating them and we have now beat them for the last 14 or 15 years. David when survivor came, that was unusual at the time, did you of here,this guy out thats crazy, or did you say maybe there is something to it . Leslie the first time when my guys pitched it to me, i said that is the stupidest thing i have heard. That belongs on some bad cable network. 16 people on a Desert Island and one gets thrown out every week . Thats ridiculous. This Young Development executive was persistent and he brought mark burnett in to meet me. For those who do not know him, he is maybe the most persuasive person you have never seen. He subsequently after that date the show called the apprentice. We know what happened from there. David who was the star of that show . Leslie i do not remember. [laughter] mark burnett was a great producer. He put on survivor, and here we are 18 years later. Survivor is still on wednesday night at 8 00. David do you ever say, this show is going to be great and it turns out to bomb . Do you have any of those stories . Leslie all the time. Our batting average is better than most but still probably four out of 10. That is a hall of famer in television. That is the television business. You know you are playing for the few wins. David everything seems to be ratings. Are you sure the people who do the ratings are giving you accurate numbers . Leslie that is one of the questions, especially now ratings are linear not the whole ballgame like they used to be. You take a show that the initial viewing will not be that good, but when you count dvr is an online ratings, the numbers go up considerably. David on ratings, tv shows are judged by ages of 14 to 29, but 18 to 49 or 25 to 54 are watching. What about the people who have the money in their 60s, that are sophisticated . Leslie you are absolutely right. That is one of the things that have bothered me and it has changed. They used to do 18 to 49 and that is all that mattered. That has changed. The argument is, who has more money, a 50yearold or 19yearold . Who has the buying power . One year, nbc was out selling that they have the highest 18 to 25yearold upscale viewers, so i do my presentation and said, the only 18 to 25yearold upscale people i know are my case, and im deciding what kind of car they are going to buy, not them. [laughter] it was sort of a bogus statistic. You are right. The good news is more and more people who are a little bit older, the average age of the 60 overes fewer viewer is 60, but we make a lot of money on that show. We are selling a lot of pharmaceuticals during that show. [laughter] but we make a lot of money. David the shows i watch, they often have depends ads, catheter an ads leslie the we will not talk about ed. David wasnt viagra a big seller . Leslie it was but they change the patent laws. In all seriousness, viagra has gone down. [laughter] [applause] by the way, that was made up by the head of advertising. I will not steal that joke. David your career is moving forward. You are at cbs and all of a sudden, somebody wants to buy cbs and that is by a calm. Viacom. Leslie i became the copresident viacom. David a couple of years, decided it would be better to split the companys in two. Internet to be the opposite. Where did they get it wrong . Leslie i will not talk about viacom in a pejorative manner. At the time, we were the slow growth company. We owned a tv network, a bunch of radio stations, a billboard company, television stations. The other side at paramount pictures, they had mtv, they had nickelodeon. We liked being the underdog. We like to do ok. It is viagrow and viaslow, that is what they called it. We have grown a lot. We have done extremely well. Our stock prices have gone up considerably. I think we are very competitive and we have figured out the internet space and how to put our content online quickly, so it has been a good decade for us in terms of the growth. David going forward, many times people who get cable services, they had a cable contract. Now there is what they call cord cutting. They do not want to get all these cable channels. How does that affect you . Leslie there are a couple of things that have changed. Now, there are these things called skinny bundles. The average home gets 180 channels and they pay approximately 100 a month for that. Some of the operators said, people are paying for channels they never watch, so they do a skinny bundle. They put together the 30 best or 40 best channels and charge you one third, 35 or 40, and you buy that. We will always be a part of that, the skinny bundle. The third segment is we now have our online service, so for 5. 99, you can get cbs all access basically every show cbs , has produced and we are now doing original programming there. David a lot of this was done on streaming. Leslie correct. David now, Companies Like netflix, apple, facebook and amazon are in the streaming business. Is that going to cut into your ability to get these best talents because they have so much money and they can pay crazy prices . Leslie it is a challenge. They are very competitive. They are spending a lot of money. At the end of the day, we produce most of our own content. We have to be very competitive with them. Money alone does not lead to good programming. What we like to say is you cannot program by algorithm, which is part of what netflix does. They do a lot of programs, 75 original programs and they put them out there and they have a certain amount of hits. Our job is to be more concise in what we are producing for audience. Creatively, i think we are as good as anybody and that is what wins the day for us. It is tough. We are competing with companies that could eat us a life alive. David apple is gigantic financially, amazon, so forth, so you are now relatively modest in terms of capitalization compared to them. It is your talent and skill you think makes you able to compete . Leslie no question. In addition, broadcasting. Broadcast, people say is dead. It isnt. It is the only place you can get 20 Million People a week the big bang or theory. If you want to reach an audience, you still need the big guys. The broadcast. David do you have any announcements you want to make on who will replace 60 minutes . Leslie no, we are talking about what we will do in the future but no announcements. We are not making news today, david, no matter what you say. [laughter] david you wouldnt consider having a private equity person . [laughter] david you have the number one rated new show, 60 minutes. How do you keep it so lively and uptodate . Leslie i think 60 minutes is the gold standard. I still think people want to go there and a place for people get there news. I still think people want to go there as a place for people to get their most news. People know sunday nights, there is one place to go, 60 minutes. They remain in your top 15 shows in america. David you have the number one drama show, ncis. Where did that idea come from . Leslie it was a spinoff from a g, a navyed ja military show, which was sort of based on that tom cruisejack nicholson movie. I am blanking on it. David a few good men. Leslie thank you. Courtroom drama, jag, and we were successful with csi, so we took the jag formula and made it into a procedural drama. Now we have spun ncis off twice, like we did with csi. David what about the big bang . Leslie that came from chuck , who we chuck lurie worked with on two and a half men. He came to us with that idea and we put it on the air and it has been a success since. David lets talk about evening news shows. When we were growing up, people would watch the evening news and then it went to 30 minutes from 50 minutes and now there are so many news sources. Are they still as relevant as they were . Leslie the three Network Evening news combined are watched still by 23 million, 24 million a night. Thats not nearly what it used wase when Walter Cronkite doing it, where it was the only source of news. What you say is absolutely valid. People are getting their news all day long. I think the 6 30 news now gives you further insight into the news as opposed to just reporting the news, and i think they do well. They do better in times of crises. Obviously, during the hurricanes, people want to know what is going on. But with all you get online, they become a bit less important, but 23 Million People is still a lot of people. Of your cbsre head show 60 minutes, are there announcements you want to make on replacement . Leslie no, we are talking about what to do with the future but no announcements. We are not making news today, david, no matter what you say. [laughter] david you would not consider having a private equity person . [laughter] leslie maybe, there have been worse ideas. [laughter] why dont you buy cbs . Then you can put yourself as the anchor. David that is about the only way i would get in as the anchor. You broadcast football. Is that the most profitable thing on television for networks . Leslie its not the most profitable, but it is the most important. It is by far the highest rated. We pay a bit in rights fees, as do other networks. We make a profit, but you cannot live without those ratings, the best game in town. David the super bowl of the most expensive to advertise on television . Leslie yes, i think the last super bowl got 5. 2 million per second run on it. We only get it every third year, unfortunately, but when it comes, it is lucrative. David do you feel you are losing touch with the younger people making the decisions about what shows will be most popular . Leslie i have a Phenomenal Team of people. I think as the ceo of the corporation, the best thing you can do is hire good people. The cbs Interactive Division is made up of about 2000 people up in san francisco, who i visit with frequently, and their average age is, like, 24 or Something Like that. They are phenomenal. Ofy are phenomenal in terms there is a lot of dialogue. In this job, you have to be a good listener and observer to what is going on. Once again, i may be the final arbiter on what shows go on air, but there is a lot of input and i listen to good people. David what is the greatest pleasure . Leslie i get to meet the greatest people in the world. I get to work with some of them. When i think of the people i have met from politics, to athletes, entertainers, it is pretty cool. David how do you get away from it . Are you make offer, exercising, what golfer, exercise or, what do you do . Leslie i am a mediocre golfer. I exercise fairly regularly. I had a spectacular wife, who is also on a couple of cbs shows. I have four great kids who i do not get to spend enough time with, but three of them are out of the house. I watch a lot of movies,