The right relationship is everything.
So when Sling Media CEO Blake Kirkorian and Entertainment Group President Jason Hirschhorn went looking to sign the television place-shifting company’s first content deal, they turned to CBS. After all, the friendship between Kirkorian and CBS Digital Media chief Quincy Smith goes back almost as far as Hirschhorn’s does with CBS boss Leslie Moonves.
Announced in a splashy display during Moonves’ keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show last night in Las Vegas, CBS has agreed to provide content to Sling for a new service called “Clip+Sling,” which allows consumers to cut and send to others on any device short segments of programming from live or recorded television.
By his own admission, Moonves said that technology such as Sling’s is “worrisome to a certain extent” but that it is in CBS’ best interest to experiment with ways to make its content available in as many forms as possible.
“It is silly not to align with these companies with certain caveats,” Moonves said, pointing to the protection of intellectual property, copyrights and getting paid for its content, among them.
In addition to the Sling venture, Moonves announced a slew of digital media initiatives during his keynote designed to showcase how CBS is recreating itself.
“Perception is beginning to change to the point where we aren’t considered the old fogy network anymore,” Moonves said, adding that he hasn’t received any pressure from Chairman Sumner Redstone to be more aggressive with digital media.
Redstone notoriously fired former Viacom CEO Tom Freston for supposedly not moving that half of the company into digital media fast enough, though observers are skeptical of that rationale.
Among CBS’ new initiatives is the creation of a virtual sports bar for CSTV that allows fans and former college basketball players to interact with each other during NCAA tournament games and a promotional deal with YouTube to air the best clip related to a contest from CBS’ “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson” before the broadcast of this year’s Super Bowl.
