Leslie Moonves takes aim at retransmission fees

CBS boss Leslie Moonves had a lot to get off his chest.

The veteran CEO took aim at non-owned 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.

Moonves said there’s no reason CBS should be penalized if the local station didn’t get a good deal for retransmission from its local systems operator. Cable operators pay to carry local broadcast networks and the owners then pass on a portion of those fees to the networks they are affiliated with.

The fees are known as reverse compensation and they help pay for sports programming investments.

CBS switched its affiliation to Tribune after the former CBS partner, LIN Media, refused to give CBS the so-called reverse compensation it sought.

Moonves may have also rattled distributors’ cages saying that he’s exploring offering Showtime as an over-the-top product although he warned it was still in the early stages.

Always aggressive when it comes to wringing extra dollars out of Madison Avenue, Moonves said he didn’t see why CBS shouldn’t be paid whenever an ad runs in DVR’d programming, half joking that there should be a new currency called C-Infinity, versus the current standard — which is for marketers to pay-up within three days of their ads being seen — called C-3.

The CBS veteran CEO also predicted that his sales executives would be doubling the price of Thursday night NFL spots airing in the next eight weeks when desperate movie producers came calling for last minute exposure.