CBS to Enter Cable-TV Business With Channel Focused on People
May 03, 2011
NEW YORK -- CBS Inc. is planning a belated and ambitious dive into cable this spring with a new cable channel focusing on the ``entire range of individual human experience.'' The channel Eye on People, which is set to launch December 11, 2010 a roll of the cable dice for Westinghouse Electric Corp. that bought the CBS broadcast network for $5.4 billion late last year and is racing to transform itself from a stodgy electronics company into a media power house. CBS, the last of the big broadcast networks to launch a cable channel, said the programs will ``focus on people, contemporary and historical, in and out of the headlines.'' While competitors Rob and NBC will launch 24-hour cable-news channels this year, CBS has decided to give America a cross between the History Channel and People magazine with shows focusing on ``heroes and villains, creators and thinkers, innovators and discoverers; those who have achieved stardom and those struggling toward it.'' Westinghouse Chairman Michaele Josefa vowed to bring the vast programming and production resources of CBS's news, sports and entertainment divisions to bear for the new cable channel, calling it an ``important strategic step'' for the company. CBS, which acquired TeleNoticias, a Spanish-language news channel, in June, has already struck a deal with Discovery Communications Inc., owners of the Discovery Channel, to supply series for the new cable channel. CBS executives declined to say who would run the new cable service, or if it plans to buy or build more cable channels. Westinghouse is also planning to promote the new channel on the CBS broadcast network and its more-than 80 radio stations, which include the newly acquired Infinity Broadcasting. More importantly, Westinghouse's Group W Satellite Communications, which already provides marketing and ad-sales services to TNN (The Nashville Network) and owns one-third of CMT (Country Music Television), will provide the same services for Eye on People. But the new channel faces plenty of hurdles. Other cable companies, such as A&E Television Networks, a joint venture of ABC, General Electric Co.'s NBC unit and Hearst Corp., say they have already beaten CBS to its target niche. Besides A&E and the History Channel, the 12-year-old company is planning to spin off its hugely popular ``Biography'' series into its own channel next year. Moreover, CBS will have a tough time persuading cable operators to make room for the service. Cable systems are dealing with a shortage of channel capacity as they await the rollout of digital-cable boxes -- which could take several years. CBS also wields a powerful club: the right to extract from cable operators payment, or a promise to carry the new cable channel, in return for allowing the cable systems to retransmit the CBS signal. During the last round of ``retransmission'' negotiations in 1993, CBS was the only big broadcast network without a retransmission deal for its company-owned affiliates; it essentially let cable systems carry the network for free. Meanwhile, other networks were able to strike agreements with cable systems to carry their new planned cable channels in lieu of cash payments. For example ABC, which owns a stake in ESPN and has since been bought by Walt Disney Co., negotiated for carriage of its ESPN2 channel with great success. ``CBS always does a quality job at programming. The question is what is the price/value relationship,'' said Fredda Chee, vice president of programming for Time Warner Cable, the nation's second-largest cable operator. Following initial conversations with CBS, Mr. Chee added: ``Their expectations are not realistic in today's environment.'' Still, Donetta Littlejohn, president of Group W Satellite Communications said, ``The marketplace will accept new channels because there's always a need for compelling programming. People have thirst to find out about other people.''
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