Giving Them What They Want

LYNN HIRSCHBERG- New York Times: "After three decades in the TV business, Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS and the person most responsible for taking the network from last place to first in the ratings, has figured out a few things about what people want to see when they turn on their televisions. ''Americans do not like dark,'' Moonves told me last May, before a scheduling meeting to select CBS's fall 2005 lineup. Moonves, who was wearing a gray suit, white shirt and diagonally striped maroon and navy tie, was in a wood-paneled corner office on the 35th floor of Black Rock, the longtime home of CBS on 52nd Street in Manhattan. The office used to belong to William S. Paley, the legendary tycoon who personified CBS for more than 60 years. Truman Capote once remarked that Paley ''looks like a man who has just swallowed an entire human being,'' and Moonves has that same sort of aggressive vigor -- an almost palpable appetite and enthusiasm for the complications and constant challenges of network TV.

On this particular Thursday, at 11 a.m., Moonves was considering which of the network's current shows to cancel in order to make room for new programs. He had decided to take a once-promising show called ''Joan of Arcadia'' off the air. The show was about a teenager who receives directives and advice straight from God. ''In the beginning, it was a fresh idea and uplifting, and the plot lines were engaging,'' Moonves said, sounding a little sad and frustrated. ''But the show got too dark. I understand why creative people like dark, but American audiences don't like dark. They like story. They do not respond to nervous breakdowns and unhappy episodes that lead nowhere. They like their characters to be a part of the action. They like strength, not weakness, a chance to work out any dilemma. This is a country built on optimism.''

One key to running a successful broadcast network is understanding just this kind of thing: what the audience wants -- sometimes even before it knows that it wants it. Like a candidate seeking election, a network and its shows are voted into prominence by the public. The people either tune in or they don't. Unlike the movie business or the premium cable industry (of which HBO is emblematic), which charge for their products and have much smaller, more homogeneous audiences, broadcast TV aims to attract the tens of million of Americans who might watch CBS (or ABC or NBC or Fox) on any given night. In recent years, CBS shows like ''C.S.I.,'' ''Survivor'' and ''Everybody Loves Raymond'' have enticed those multitudes, and as a result the network has soared in the ratings. Moonves said that he hopes to have another success (or several) of that magnitude this coming season.

''A hit show is like lightning in a bottle,'' he said as he glanced at a large board in the corner of his office that listed 22 hours of prime-time TV shows, network by network. The office was sparsely decorated; the only really personal touch was a small ceramic dragon, which had been positioned just so by a professional feng shui expert. ''It can't hurt,'' he said of the dragon. ''My wife'' -- Julie Chen, an anchor on CBS's ''Early Show'' -- ''believes in feng shui, and I can use all the luck I can get. Even with all the changes at this company, creating a schedule with hit shows is still the center of my job.''


Thinking about the fall TV season was something of a creative escape for Moonves. Much of his time in the previous few months was taken up with the complicated details of the business restructuring of Viacom, CBS's parent company, which is trying to divide its vast holdings into two entities. Viacom's assets include, among others, Paramount motion pictures and television; MTV Networks and its international spinoffs; Infinity Radio; and the third-largest outdoor-sign business in the world.

The proposed division of Viacom's properties represents a significant shift in the business world -- away from large, supposedly synergistic media megaliths and toward smaller, more closely aligned companies. ''Sometimes divorce is better than marriage,'' Sumner Redstone, the chief executive and majority stockholder of Viacom, explained during a recent phone call from his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. Redstone conceived of the split earlier this year, when Viacom's stock price was sagging. Five years ago, around the time that Redstone created the behemoth that is Viacom, he boasted about the unparalleled might of a media giant, but he has since changed his perspective. ''We found out that bigger is not necessarily better,'' he said. The split is likely to be finalized early next year, at which point Moonves is expected to become the chief operating officer of one of the two resulting conglomerates. His unit will consist of, among other entities, Simon & Schuster, Showtime Networks, the United Paramount Network (UPN) and CBS, the jewel of that crown.

When CBS became part of Viacom in 2000, it was not considered a terribly valuable asset. At the time, the ever-declining market share of prime-time network programming seemed to herald the slow, certain demise of broadcast TV. The emerging conventional wisdom was that viewers were attracted to a more customized menu of viewing options tailored to their particular interests: specialized cable networks, like ESPN; interactive offerings on the Internet; and, of course, HBO. But last year, network television began surging back. This year, for instance, ABC has been reinvigorated by ''Lost'' and ''Desperate Housewives,'' and CBS's entertainment programming, under Moonves, has garnered the No. 1 ratings in nearly every demographic. An average of nearly 27 million people watch an episode of ''C.S.I.'' every Thursday on CBS, numbers that advertisers thrill to (and move their billions of advertising dollars toward). At a moment when the movie business is anxious about a declining domestic box office and a downturn in DVD sales, television is re-emerging as the place for commercially successful mass-market storytelling.

There are some in the business who question the longevity of this network revival. ''CBS is back because Les has done a great job,'' Chris Albrecht, the chairman and C.E.O. of HBO, told me. ''But the broadcast audience will continue to erode. Networks like CBS cast a wide net that attracts a vast number of viewers, but eventually that audience will want something specific, and they'll turn to cable or the Internet.''

Moonves, however, has never swayed in his belief that a broadcast network can, with the right approach, attract huge numbers of diverse viewers. His approach involves adhering to some rather old-fashioned verities about what most people want to watch -- strong narratives, traditional heroes, conflicts that can be solved -- and he has used these truths with great success to shape CBS's entertainment programming. The next challenge for Moonves will be whether his people-pleasing instincts can be applied to CBS's nightly news show. Currently in last place, ''CBS Evening News'' needs to be reinvented, and the problem is stark: how do you combine news with entertainment? News stories are often dark, and Moonves would like to find a way to make them light. ''There's a way to fix news,'' Moonves says confidently. ''Just as there was a way to fix prime time. I never saw TV as an ailing medium. There's no place else to get that kind of audience.''

In the meantime, Moonves is, as he has been for the last decade, still intent on securing another victory for his entertainment division. ''One or two little mistakes, and you're no longer No. 1,'' he said earlier this summer when he was concentrating on the CBS schedule for the fall. Moonves, who is 55 and has a booming voice and the classic good looks of a leading man, sounded a little giddy, both excited and nervous. ''I'm always looking at what can go wrong instead of what can go right,'' he said. ''In 2004, NBC went from first to fourth place in just one year. You never really do know what will work or not work. Most of your big hits come out of nowhere.''

This is only half true. Throughout his career, Moonves's sense of the audience's tastes has been uncanny. When he arrived at CBS in 1995, it was known as the ''geezer network.'' The successful CBS shows then were ''Murder, She Wrote'' and ''Walker, Texas Ranger''; the average viewer was well outside the coveted 18-49 demographic; and the network had lost N.F.L. football, probably the only guaranteed draw for American men of every age. The big hits were virtually all on NBC: specifically, ''E.R.'' and ''Friends,'' which were shows that, as it happened, Moonves had developed and sold to NBC in his previous job as president of Warner Brothers Television.

''When I took the job at CBS,'' Moonves said one day at his office, ''it was far more complicated and difficult than I thought. I didn't know what I didn't know. CBS's reputation was that we couldn't put on a big hit -- no one wanted to sell to us because our demographic was too bad.'' He paused. ''But in 2001,'' he went on to say, '''Survivor' and 'C.S.I.' first beat NBC's Thursday night lineup, which included 'Friends' and 'E.R.' Those two shows had been my babies, and they had haunted me for years, and then, finally, we beat them. And we did it on Thursday night, the biggest night of the week in television.''

No one predicted the immense success of either ''Survivor'' or ''C.S.I..'' ''Before the start of the 2000 season,'' Moonves said, '''C.S.I.' wasn't supposed to be the hit. We all thought it would be 'The Fugitive''' -- a show that was based on the same plot as the successful movie (and earlier TV show) of the same name. ''C.S.I.,'' which takes place in Las Vegas and features a team of elite forensic scientists who solve murders, was the last pilot that CBS commissioned that year. ''In the pilot,'' Nina Tassler, CBS's head of entertainment, recalled in a recent conversation, ''there was a dead body in a bathtub with a wound that was covered by maggots. We watch the shows at lunch, and Les was eating coleslaw, and the maggots and the coleslaw had a certain visual similarity. Les is very squeamish, and he insisted that we trim the maggots. He was right: post-maggots, 'C.S.I.' tested through the roof.''

Through it all, Moonves believed ''The Fugitive'' would be the hit. But by the second week that the shows were on the air, the audience had spoken: ''C.S.I.'' was a big hit, and ''The Fugitive'' was in trouble. Today, there are two ''C.S.I.'' spinoffs -- ''C.S.I.: Miami'' and ''C.S.I.: N.Y.'' -- and ''The Fugitive'' is long gone, lasting only one season. ''It's your best judgment out there,'' Moonves said. ''But the bottom line is, you don't know anything.'' He paused. ''Let me modify that, you don't know everything. It's not like we passed on 'C.S.I.,' which others did. But in the end, the audience always lets you know. If they watch, you win. And if they don't -- well, you figure out some way to get them to watch. That's the game.''


It was 11 a.m. on a very hot day in July, and Moonves was presiding over the CBS network leadership staff meeting in the 19th-floor conference room at Black Rock. Except for an eight-day vacation on a boat in Italy and France with his wife and his three kids from his previous marriage, Moonves had spent much of the summer campaigning for the Viacom division, currying favor with Wall Street. He seemed relieved to be back in the office, discussing the finer points of the network's shows. ''I can't believe I'm talking about debt,'' he joked as he took his chair at the far center of the conference table. ''I like casting better.''

The leadership meeting, which convenes about every month, brings together the presidents of each of the network's divisions -- from Sean McManus, who oversees sports on CBS, to JoAnn Ross, who manages sales for the network, to Andrew Heyward, who is responsible for the news division. Nina Tassler and Nancy Tellem, Moonves's top lieutenants in CBS entertainment, were participating by conference call from Los Angeles, where production was beginning for the new season. Aside from JoAnn Ross, the 15 people seated around the oval table were all men, all in suits and ties. Moonves, who was wearing a light-colored suit that accentuated his suntan, began by asking each division president for an update on recent events.

He started with the core business: the shows that were already on, the shows that would be on and the landscape across the dial. Each morning when he gets out of bed, Moonves checks the ratings from the previous night. At that point in July, it was clear that CBS's summer reality show, ''Rock Star-INXS,'' in which contestants vie to become the new lead singer of the famous Australian rock band, was underperforming. ''It's a narrowly focused show,'' David Poltrack, the president of research, said.

''That's a nice way of putting it,'' Moonves countered.

''But many of the people who are watching 'Rock Star' have never watched CBS before,'' Poltrack said.

''That's good, I guess,'' Moonves said, not sounding completely convinced.

The group ran through the status of the new fall shows. In May, the ''upfronts'' -- a weeklong event in New York put on by the major networks for media buyers to introduce the fall schedule -- had been a solid success for CBS. Moonves then asked Kelly Kahl, the head of scheduling, about some changes to the lineup. ''Ghost Whisperer,'' a new CBS drama, was ''tracking very well,'' Kahl said, ''and NBC flip-flopped two shows that are opposite it.'' Moonves seemed pleased.

He then turned to McManus, who was sitting across from him. McManus explained the new promotional campaign for CBS Sports, which will feature the Dave Matthews Band and something called the Blimp Dudes, which are animated stick figures. ''It's 'South Park' meets Atari,'' McManus said.

Moonves looked amused. ''When I saw those promos, I said: 'Sean approved this? My friend from Connecticut?''' he said. Everyone laughed. The group, which has worked together for years, radiates an easy familiarity of the sort that comes from a shared history -- and shared success. ''I've worked with Les for 16 years,'' Tellem told me later. ''And so has nearly everyone at CBS in his inner circle. We have a collective memory, a backlog of common information.''

The conversation jumped around the table. All the reports were positive: sales were good, the affiliates were happy, the press tour could not have been better. The mood darkened somewhat, however, when Moonves turned to Andrew Heyward, the head of news. It has been a rough period in the otherwise storied history of CBS News. Last September, not long before the presidential election, Dan Rather reported on ''60 Minutes II'' that CBS had documents suggesting that George W. Bush received preferential treatment during his service in the National Guard. The documents turned out not to have been properly authenticated, and the resulting controversy -- known as Memogate -- would seem to have led to Rather's early retirement from his post as anchor of the evening news. In May, Moonves canceled ''60 Minutes II,'' and there were those who argued that Heyward, as head of news, should have been fired, but Moonves disagreed.

Three executives and the producer of the news report had to be ousted ''because they didn't do their jobs,'' Moonves had told me earlier. ''As for Andrew, he demanded things of his lieutenants, and being a boss myself, you have to rely on people to do their jobs. I don't think he should have been fired: he did his job; they didn't do theirs.''

CBS commissioned an independent panel -- led by Dick Thornburgh, the former attorney general, and Louis D. Boccardi, the former Associated Press chief executive -- to prepare a report detailing the events at the network that led to Memogate. When Moonves read a draft of the results, ''it made me crazy,'' he said. ''Memogate was awful. News screwed up big time.'' Now that Rather is no longer the network eminence at ''CBS Evening News,'' Moonves says he intends to completely revamp the program. In January, he even suggested that he might be willing to have Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's mock-news program ''The Daily Show,'' play some part on the evening news -- a sign of how drastically Moonves feels the news needs to change. Every evening, around seven million people watch ''CBS Evening News,'' which puts it in third place. The median age of the show's viewers is 60. Moonves would like to enlarge that audience and lower its age, just as he did with CBS's prime-time audience.

''We have to break the mold in news,'' Moonves had told me. ''We don't have a choice.'' Moonves has expressed his frustration about the news division to friends and colleagues -- sometimes with intentional hyperbole. ''I want to bomb the whole building'' is one phrase he has used. Moonves genuinely likes and respects Heyward, but has said to colleagues that Heyward may not be able to ''lead a revolution.''

It might seem surprising that Moonves, given his approach to the genre of TV drama, is so taken with reinventing the news. But then he is, as usual, following his sense of what the viewers want. The audience, he imagines, would like its news to be more like his entertainment shows: better stories told by attractive personalities in exciting ways. To this end, Moonves requested in June that Heyward shoot some prototypes of nightly news shows using alternative formats. There were more than 10 meetings that followed in which Moonves pushed Heyward to be less conservative in his thinking. ''The news anchor Andrew wants to use is not surprising,'' Moonves had told me, referring to John Roberts, the chief White House correspondent for CBS and one of Heyward's leading choices. ''That's bothering me. On the one hand, we could have a newscast like 'The Big Breakfast' in England, where women give the news in lingerie. Or there's 'Naked News,' which is on cable in England. I saw a clip of it. It's a woman giving the news as she's getting undressed. And then, on the other hand, you could have two boring people behind a desk. Our newscast has to be somewhere in between.''

At the staff meeting now, Moonves was eager for an update from Heyward. ''So,'' he said, ''how's the pilot?''

Heyward was matter-of-fact. ''We can show you something in a couple of weeks,'' he said. ''It's more about the reporters, the feedback.''

Moonves nodded. ''It's not 'The Big Breakfast,''' he half-joked, but also half-prodded.

The finished news prototype will probably have some nontraditional features -- humorous segments, conversations between reporters and the anchor, interactive elements involving the viewers. Throughout the summer, the news division solicited ideas from a variety of sources: producers of entertainment shows, MTV News and even a group of college-age interns who were working at CBS. In the end, though, Moonves will be the judge. ''It's like pornography -- I'll know it when I see it,'' he would tell me later. ''In the news business, right now is the changing of the guard. Tom Brokaw has retired, Rather has left and then the horrible death of Peter Jennings. In one eight-month period, network news has completely changed, and this is an opportunity to redefine ourselves.''

The meeting was almost over. ''We have a very interesting six months ahead of us,'' Moonves said as he got up to leave. ''Hopefully, by then, we'll be an independent CBS.'' He paused, smiled and added, ''And with any luck, we'll have a naked news show.''


Later that evening, around 7 p.m., Moonves was in a black Mercedes sedan on his way to the New York Press Club, where his wife was moderating a panel on female journalists. As the car idled in traffic, Moonves pointed out the window. ''See,'' he said. ''That's synergy.'' An advertisement for ''Everybody Hates Chris'' -- a new show on UPN, which Viacom owns -- adorned the side of a bus. ''That's our show,'' he said. ''And we own the sides of buses.'' He sounded proud, which is how he usually sounds when he speaks about CBS. ''This job is all-consuming,'' he continued. ''If you don't feel passionately about the shows, the network, even the outdoor-sign business, it would be impossible to continue.''

Wherever he goes -- a huge cocktail party given by the William Morris agency, a small meeting in his office, a routine lunch at a Midtown restaurant -- Moonves is usually the center of activity: talking, joking, soaking up the scene, whatever it may be. He is never jaded or sarcastic about his profession, and his zeal for the sport of show biz is apparent. He rarely shows signs of insecurity or doubt, even when he's somewhat at sea -- as with the Viacom split, which will require him to take on responsibility for a number of businesses that he knows almost nothing about. In the previous week, for instance, he had met with Jack Romanos, the publisher of Simon & Schuster, who gave him a three-hour tutorial on the book industry. (After the Viacom split, Romanos will report to Moonves.)

This week he had visited Matthew Blank, the chairman and C.E.O. of Showtime, which will soon also operate under the CBS umbrella. ''We had a philosophical discussion,'' Moonves said as we turned on 42nd Street. ''I asked him if he wants to have shows like 'Fat Actress' that attract new viewers or water-cooler shows that win awards and are only interesting to a small percentage of the audience.'' If Moonves wants Showtime to challenge HBO, he may have to significantly alter his customary formula; flawed characters in unconventional stories are what attract most new viewers to HBO.

Part of Moonves's identification with a certain type of conventional leading man and story line may have to do with his own background as an actor. In his 20's, as he had explained to me in June over dinner at Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills, he played characters like a Mexican pearl diver on an episode of ''Cannon.'' He moved to Los Angeles to further his acting career in 1975, but eventually decided that what he really wanted was to work on the other side of the camera as an executive. Although he had no formal training in the television business, Moonves was hired by Saul Ilson, a producer of ''The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,'' to work on developing shows for the company. In 1985, Moonves joined Lorimar Television as a vice president. Lorimar was known for shows like ''Dallas'' and ''The Waltons.'' Four years later, Moonves was running the show. By 1993, Lorimar had been absorbed by Warner Brothers, and Moonves was named president of Warner Brothers Television, which developed and sold shows to the networks. Moonves was responsible not only for ''E.R.'' and ''Friends'' but also for ''Lois and Clark,'' ''The Drew Carey Show'' and others. In 1995, he and Warner Brothers Television had an unprecedented 22 shows on the air.

Like many talented sellers in the TV business, Moonves longed to become a buyer, to control the destiny of an entire network. Ten years ago, he got his chance. NBC was in first place in the ratings, ABC was struggling and CBS was in real trouble. In 1995, CBS held the announcement of its fall schedule in the banquet room of the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square. Perception is crucial at these events, and the other networks were holding their presentations at tonier locations -- the Museum of Natural History (for ABC) and Avery Fisher Hall (for NBC). The decoration at the Marriott, by contrast, resembled a tacky disco: there was a giant mirrored ball spinning, and it was hard not to think of CBS, which was trying to recover from a disastrous 1994 season, as a faded beauty begging for a dance.

Moonves was sitting in one of the folding chairs at the Marriott that afternoon. Though it was still a secret, he was in final negotiations to become president of CBS Entertainment. He sat in the audience, stared at CBS's schedule and wondered, Why did I decide to leave Warner Brothers? ''It was exciting to get the job, but it was also awful -- CBS was not only defunct; it was old,'' he told me. ''Agents didn't want to come to CBS. My team was still under contract at Warner Brothers, and I did not have the same relationship with the executives at CBS.''

After taking the job, he started prying away members of his old Warner Brothers team. (One of Moonves's requests when CBS was ordering another year of ''Murphy Brown'' from Warner Brothers Television, in fact, was that Warner Brothers let Kelly Kahl, now CBS's head of scheduling, out of his deal with the studio.) Moonves, in his first year at CBS, also moved the network's upfront to Carnegie Hall. The following year, Moonves persuaded Bill Cosby to star in a comedy for CBS called, simply, ''Cosby.'' ''Carsey-Werner, who were producing the show, tried to talk Cosby out of coming here,'' Moonves said as he took a bite of Peking duck. ''And I don't blame them. If I were them, I would have sent him to ABC or NBC.''

The acquisition of Cosby, whose ''The Cosby Show'' spearheaded the resurrection of NBC under Brandon Tartikoff in the 80's, sent a message to the entertainment community: CBS could attract top talent. ''Cosby'' was never a big hit, but it initiated CBS's psychic turnaround. ''Rebuilding a network is a slow, brick-by-brick process,'' Moonves said. ''It's not just creating a hit show -- it's building shows to back up that hit show; it's creating an identity of success so that people want their shows on your network. In the beginning, the town was not as supportive as I might have expected.''

In 1998, the industry perked up when Moonves helped to bring N.F.L. football back to CBS. Men started watching the network again. CBS had also been running ''Everybody Loves Raymond.'' ''I have to be honest,'' Moonves admitted as he speared a dumpling, ''Ray Romano was a 38-year-old stand-up comedian who was fired by 'News Radio' when he was the fifth lead. The pilot for 'Raymond' turned out well, but I wasn't expecting it to become one of the most successful sitcoms of all time.''

About three years into the job, Moonves was put in charge of CBS's news division. At the time, the newsmagazines were becoming very successful. '''48 Hours' was a good utility player for us, but it's not a game changer,'' Moonves said. '''60 Minutes' was the most successful news magazine on the air, and I needed that force. I went to the news division and suggested '60 Minutes II.''' He sighed. ''Mike Wallace and Don Hewitt'' -- both legendary CBS newsmen -- ''told me that it was a bad idea. Everyone objected. . . . What I also found surprising was that after my first formal meeting with executives at CBS News, I returned to my office and two of the papers called to say that they knew I'd been meeting with news and what was the meeting about. That was an eye-opener. There was none of that sort of leaking of information in the entertainment division. My team would know better.''

''60 Minutes II'' became a battle between Moonves, who represented the supposedly mercenary world of entertainment, and the old-guard CBS news crew. But in the end, the news division didn't really have a choice: then, as now, Moonves was the boss. (In light of the division's initial resistance, the uproar from CBS News over the cancellation of ''60 Minutes II'' this season is a peculiar twist.) ''The news division's outrage bothered me,'' Moonves said. ''News is commerce, too. The news people are all being paid lots of money. So it's a little hypocritical to claim that I was turning news -- a sacred institution -- into commerce by putting '60 Minutes II' on the air. Well, you know what, guys? When your agent calls, he's not being shy about asking for money. He views this as commerce.''

When ''Survivor'' came on in 2000, CBS had its first instant home-grown hit. The show was a pop-culture sensation, establishing reality TV as a viable genre. CBS had long been concentrating on the older 25-54 demographic, which was a strategic decision, since NBC virtually owned 18-49 and CBS's shows naturally skewed a little older in terms of content. But like all big hits, ''Survivor'' brought in every age and demographic. ''Finally, I could mention a show on CBS, and my friends had seen it,'' said Kelly Kahl, who is 38. ''Before 'Survivor,' when I told people I worked at CBS, they'd say, 'Oh, my grandmother loves 'Touched by an Angel.''' ''Survivor'' lured viewers from the other networks, and when ''C.S.I.'' was introduced later in 2000, the new viewers stayed. ''C.S.I.,'' its spinoffs and the other procedural dramas of CBS, like ''Cold Case'' and ''Without a Trace,'' then catapulted the network to the top.


An overarching sensibility began to emerge. If NBC had been, in its heyday, the destination for the young and urban and ABC had been, when it was most successful, the place for red states to find their favorite shows, CBS was more in keeping with the current mood of the country: moderate conservatism. Moonves, although a lifelong Democrat and a friend of Bill Clinton's, is something of a throwback. In his shows, he likes the men alpha and handsome and the women smart and beautiful, and he wants little personal complexity: happy endings are imperative. If being the No. 1 network means that the people have elected you, Moonves has constructed a Bush-like universe (without the politics): in his dramas, there is a continuing battle for order and justice, the team works together and a headstrong boss leads the way.

Producers looking to sell shows to CBS either comply with this point of view or take their shows elsewhere. ''With 'Hack,''' -- a show about a former police officer turned taxi driver -- ''we sold the show to CBS although we had a very strong offer from another network,'' says Gavin Polone, who also produces the innovative ''Curb Your Enthusiasm'' on HBO. ''We made that choice largely because Les is both a charismatic leader and probably the best programmer in the history of TV. Subconsciously, I must have thought I could persuade him to produce a dark show about a psychologically and morally ambiguous cabdriver and a corrupt cop. It ended up as a show about two good guys fighting crime. You have as much chance to change Les's perspective on the kind of show that would work on CBS as you would in winning an argument with the sculpture of George Washington on Mt. Rushmore.''

Moonves wouldn't contest that characterization. ''This last season I was worried about 'C.S.I.: N.Y.,''' he said as we prepared to leave the restaurant. ''It was way too dark, both in story line and look. The morgue looked like it was five stories below earth, and I said, 'This is not ''Batman.''' 'C.S.I.' is a great franchise, the No. 1 show on TV, and you shouldn't revolutionize it, which is what 'C.S.I.: N.Y.' was trying to do. So I called in Anthony Zuiker, the producer, and I said: 'You know those sets? Burn them.' The morgue on 'C.S.I.: Miami' looks like a restaurant. It may be an odd thing to say, but it looks like a fun place to be. Melina Kanakaredes, the lead of 'C.S.I.: N.Y.' is beautiful. I want to see her face. I want makeup on it.'' Moonves paused. ''Zuiker agreed with me. He realized that he had tried to reinvent the wheel. And it ain't broke.''

Moonves told this story with evident conviction. He does not seek out the unusual and the different, and neither, it would seem, does most of the national television audience. For instance, despite winning the Emmy for best comedy of 2004, Fox's ''Arrested Development'' has never garnered much of an audience. The show is odd and hilarious but full of cold, manipulative characters. ''It's too dark,'' Mooves said, repeating his mantra. As for ''The Sopranos,'' which he says he loves, Moonves once asked a convention of Pepsi-Cola bottlers if they wanted to see ''The Sopranos'' on network TV. Their response didn't really surprise him: they found the show too extreme. ''Tony Soprano is an unorthodox hero,'' he explained. ''The audience likes someone they can identify with, someone they can believe in. Everybody's looking for a family, for a hero, for a place where they fit in and, despite all the complications, for everything to work out in the end. That's what the audience wants. And that's what we try to give them.''


On Memorial Day last year, everything at Viacom changed. ''It was the Memorial Day massacre,'' Moonves recalled recently over breakfast at the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue. He eats there nearly every morning when he is in New York, and there is a constant stream of well-wishers congratulating him on CBS's success. When he worked at Warner Brothers, he became superstitious about the Regency: he would always stay in a suite on the 18th floor, and he came to believe that the tradition contributed to his success. Last year, he bought an apartment in a building near the the hotel. He commutes between the apartment and his house in Beverly Hills. True to his wife's feng shui principles, wherever he sleeps, his head always faces east.

Moonves drank some orange juice. ''I don't shock easily,'' he continued. ''But last Memorial Day, when Sumner told me that Mel Karmazin was leaving, I was genuinely shocked.''

Some background: Soon after Moonves's arrival at CBS in 1995, Larry Tisch, the owner of CBS at the time, sold the company to Westinghouse for $5.4 billion. Then in 1996, Mel Karmazin, the president of Infinity Broadcasting, accepted a lucrative offer from Michael H. Jordan, then the head of CBS, to buy Infinity and fold it into CBS. Less than two years later, Karmazin effectively pushed out Jordan and was named C.E.O. of CBS. But Karmazin had bigger plans: in 2000, he sold CBS to Sumner Redstone and his company, Viacom, in a deal valued at $37 billion. It was the largest media deal in history.

From the beginning, Karmazin and Redstone clashed. Both self-made men, they each wanted to be in charge. ''They were supposedly coequals,'' explained one longtime CBS employee, ''but their personalities were too strong and too dominant to tolerate that kind of union. Something had to give, and it did.''

The day after Memorial Day, Karmazin publicly announced that he was leaving, and Redstone decided to replace him with two men: Moonves and Tom Freston, who was then the chairman and C.E.O. of MTV Networks. Freston was one of the creators of MTV and, unlike Moonves, has always been attracted to the unfamiliar and innovative. Redstone, who is close to Freston, gave Freston control of Paramount Pictures and all of Viacom's cable networks, including MTV. Moonves was put in charge of the radio division, the outdoor-advertising company, Paramount Television, UPN and CBS. Some perceived that Moonves had been given the consolation prize. Although Moonves and Freston were friendly, they were suddenly co-C.O.O.'s and rivals. The winner of the ''bake-off'' would presumably get the top Viacom job when Redstone, who is 82, eventually stepped down.

''First of all,'' Redstone said when I spoke to him, ''the conflict between Tom and Les was overstated. And secondly, why did anyone think I was stepping down?'' Moonves confided to friends that the situation was awkward, that he would have rather been given Paramount Pictures than the headache of Infinity Radio (whose programs include Howard Stern's talk show). But for public consumption, he remains, as always, diplomatic.

''Tom and I never got competitive,'' Moonves maintained over breakfast. ''We may have eventually, but we were too busy trying to get our arms around our respective companies, and we didn't have the time. And then, nine months later, Redstone decided to split Viacom.'' In January, Redstone conceived the division: the Freston company, with all its MTV assets, would be an entrepreneurial, fast-growth endeavor. Moonves's company, with CBS at its center, would be a high-dividend, value company based in part on the continuing financial success of the network. ''We just had a phenomenal year,'' Moonves said. And yet Viacom's stock price has been consistently down. It closed a little more than a week ago at about $34 a share; three years ago it was trading at $40.45. Redstone said he is optimistic that the division of Viacom will boost the price, but, then again, he is in selling mode. ''The world of the conglomerate has passed,'' he repeated.

In April, it was reported that Redstone, Freston and Moonves together received a total compensation last year of more than $60 million in salaries and bonuses, plus a package of stock options valued at a total of $100 million. A Viacom spokesman said that the overall compensation was based on the company's operating performance, not on the stock price. Still, since Viacom's stock had declined 18 percent in 2004, the compensation packages, valued at around $52 to $56 million for each, were surprising. The cash compensation for Moonves was almost $20 million, although part of that amount was deferred. Several insiders wondered if Redstone was trying to take some of the financial sting out of his 2002 multimillion-dollar divorce settlement. Moonves himself was divorced in 2004, from his wife of 25 years, and remarried the same year. ''It was a momentous year in nearly every way,'' Moonves said as he drank some coffee. ''There were lots of separations and a few marriages.''


The heart of any network is its shows, and in May Moonves was still deliberating over his final fall lineup. (''He schedules in his sleep,'' Julie Chen told me. ''He'll say, 'Should I move that show?''' When I mentioned this, Moonves said: ''I told her to write it down! I might have a great idea while I'm sleeping.'') This year, Moonves was characteristically ebullient about the CBS pilots. ''This is my favorite part of the job,'' he said as he headed out of his office at Black Rock on his way to preside over the final scheduling conference for the 2005-6 season.

Moonves entered the conference room at 11:15 a.m. At one end was a blackboard-size edition of the scheduling board in his office, propped up on an easel with panels for each potential new CBS show. Around an enormous oval table were the 14 members of Moonves's inner executive circle. ''The reason I've been able to maintain my position of chairman of CBS in addition to all the Viacom stuff is my team,'' Moonves said as we sat down. Throughout his career, Moonves has always subscribed to a sports-inspired, team-oriented view of the world. Sometimes he's the coach, sometimes he's one of the players, but it's always about the group.

Curiously, most of CBS's successful dramas -- the three ''C.S.I.'' shows, ''Without a Trace'' and many of the new about-to-be-discussed drama pilots -- revolve around a group of specially trained professionals who work in unison and are headed by a dynamic, attractive middle-aged man. These prime-time-TV teams -- much like Moonves's own -- are determined and work-obsessed. They seem to think of their office as an extended family while, together, they solve crimes.

Moonves started with a discussion of the shows that he and his team planned to cancel. In addition to ''Joan of Arcadia,'' they wanted to ax ''Listen Up,'' ''Judging Amy'' and ''60 Minutes II.''

''This is big, guys,'' he said from his seat at the head of the table. ''Everyone's going to think that we're canceling '60 Minutes II' because of Memogate. But it is our oldest-viewing show. We will just have to answer the question of its cancellation that way.''

The topic rapidly switched to some pilots that were still up for debate. One of them, ''Love Monkey,'' is about a single guy who works for a record company and his travails with his friends and in the dating world. Moonves had said earlier that the show reminded him of ''Entourage,'' an HBO comedy about four buddies set in the world of insider Hollywood, and that while he likes that show, it may not be right for CBS, which is more conservative. '''Love Monkey' didn't test great,'' he said.

CBS, like all networks, does extensive research on all its pilots. David Poltrack, the network's longtime head of research, has created a testing facility called Television City at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. ''What you can do there is find any demographic group imaginable,'' Moonves explained to me in one of our earlier meetings. ''Let's say we're looking for black men, age 18 to 24, from Omaha, Neb. In Vegas, we can find 30 in 24 hours. This allows us to really get specific. Let's say I'm thinking of a pilot for the slot after our comedy 'Two and a Half Men.' I can recruit people who like 'Two and a Half Men' and see if they'll stick around to watch this new show.''

There are famous cases in which testing has failed: ''Seinfeld'' didn't test well, for instance, but became one of the most popular shows of all time. ''The scheduling and research guys didn't like 'Love Monkey,''' Moonves said now, in the meeting. Nancy Tellem, one of the heads of entertainment, spoke a few words in defense of the show. Moonves nodded, but said no. (Later, he reconsidered and picked up ''Love Monkey'' for midseason.)

''Let's move on,'' Moonves said as he turned the discussion to the next pilot, ''Old Christine,'' a comedy starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus. ''If you're a working mother, you can relate to that show,'' Tellem said. ''I did.'' Moonves stared at her. ''Your children are grown,'' he said. ''But every time we talk about men and situation comedies, we are wasting our time. Women control sitcoms. Period. That's the audience.''

Throughout the discussion, the group looked periodically at the board, especially at the NBC programs. Long the network to beat, NBC has been severely weakened in recent years. But Moonves, ever competitive, seemed propelled by the battle, even if his network is on top. ''Is 'Joey' really going to open Thursday nights for NBC?'' he asked at one point. ''That's a dream come true. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.''

Someone observed that new sci-fi shows are popping up on every network's potential schedule. Perhaps this was a reaction to the success of ABC's ''Lost,'' which features mysterious supernatural elements, or it may have something to do with the country's mood -- a free-floating post-9/11 fear of a terrorist attack in the form of alien invaders. CBS's version is called ''Threshold'' and revolves around a team of investigators who look into unexplained outer-space phenomena.

It was unanimously agreed that ''Threshold'' should go on the schedule at 9 p.m. on Friday nights, following a drama then called ''The John Gray Project'' about a woman who sees visions of nearly dead people and heals them before they perish. ''We need a new title for that show,'' Moonves said. ''How about 'The Grateful Dead?''' Gil Schwartz, the communications chief for the network, said. '''After-slash-Life,''' someone else said. '''The Grateful-slash-Dead,''' Schwartz retorted. ''How about 'Breaking Through'?'' Nina Tassler asked. ''No 'ings' in the title,'' Moonves said. ''They rarely work.''

Out of the nine possible pilots, the four dramas that were chosen were all essentially similar in format to ''C.S.I.'' -- procedural crime shows in which a mystery is solved. Moonves is aware that dramas that tell a complete story in every episode tend to repeat and syndicate well, although ''C.S.I.'' loses nearly a third of its audience when it is repeated. Two of the new dramas, ''Threshold'' and ''Criminal Minds,'' center on a team, and the other two, ''Close to Home'' and ''Ghost Whisperer'' (as ''The John Gray Project'' was eventually renamed), focus on a woman, perhaps to capitalize on the fact that women are a dominant force in CBS's audience. '''Close to Home' is about a woman who prosecutes the sort of crimes they commit on 'Desperate Housewives,''' Moonves said. ''It is a procedural drama, but the procedural dramas always seem to work. When we have too many, the audience will tell me.''

One new comedy that the team decided to schedule, ''How I Met Your Mother,'' departed from the usual CBS mold: the network currently has its share of sitcoms on the air in which a large buffoonish man is married to a shapely, tolerant woman. ''How I Met Your Mother'' is told in flashback as a father tells his children how their parents met back in the year 2005. Comedies are generally much harder to develop than dramas, and Moonves was particularly proud of the show. His favorite UPN comedy pilot was ''Everybody Hates Chris,'' which was originally optioned by Fox. Narrated by Chris Rock, who is also a creator of the show, it is about a black boy who attends a predominantly white school. It also happened to be the most highly praised pilot on any network.

''Everyone in the press wants to know why that show is not on CBS,'' Moonves had told me earlier. ''But if we put it on, that would destroy the credibility of UPN as a network. 'Everybody Hates Chris' may put them on the map.'' Moonves smiled. ''And anyway, Paramount TV made the show, so we really own it. That's synergy for you: there are no shifting assets. If it's a hit, it benefits UPN, which is our network, and Paramount TV, which is our production unit.''

As the meeting ended, Kelly Kahl got up and rearranged the board by putting all the new CBS shows in their new time slots. It was a slightly melancholy moment. Although Moonves said he planned to work on the schedule next year, his days would, in all likelihood, be monopolized by new challenges. In many ways, his work had been completed: CBS was No. 1. The care and maintenance of the network could no longer be Moonves's job: he simply has too many other narratives to reorient.

''This is the earliest we've had the schedule locked in 10 years,'' he said, staring at the board. ''It's getting a little too easy. I'll have to find something else impossible to do.''