Why CBS (Yes, CBS) Thinks It Can Survive the Streaming Wars

The failure of Hollywood studios to strike a timely deal with writers and actors last summer meant the traditional fall TV season was canceled in 2023. But while all of the Big Four broadcasters experienced some Nielsen pain as a result, none took a bigger hit than CBS. Its strength as TV’s most-watched network for the past 15 years was built on the back of comedies and dramas, and starved of those scripted staples, its ratings quickly fell off a cliff. It was predictable, but also painful: Fall viewership plunged a massive 31 percent vs. the previous year.

George Cheeks, the president and CEO of CBS and chief content officer for news and sports at Paramount+, does not attempt to sugarcoat his network’s fourth-quarter struggle. While he and his team had a plan in place to reboot the Eye early in 2024 once shows started production, the network started the year deep in third place, more than two million viewers behind longtime rival NBC. Cheeks knew ratings would jump once hits like Ghosts and FBI returned, but reclaiming its traditional mantle as the No. 1 network was hardly assured. “I was very concerned about that last fall. I mean, we were down a third,� Cheeks told me earlier this week. “We had a couple of bright spots, but our gap with NBC at the end of [the fourth quarter] was actually four times what it usually is.�

In theory, CBS could have started sprinkling its primetime lineup with a smattering of originals as early as January, stopping the bleeding immediately. It’s the approach ABC has taken, with its Thursday dramas only just now returning this week, well after comedies such as Abbott Elementary relaunched. But Cheeks and his heads of programming and scheduling instead opted to hold off and use some big tentpole specials — the Golden Globes, post-season football, the Grammys, and most importantly, the Super Bowl — to market the premieres of almost all the network’s scripted series as one big event rolling out week of Feb. 12. “Rather than rushing the shows back and premiering them scatter shot, we really wanted to go old school and launch a bonafide premiere week where the majority of the shows would launch that first week after the Super Bowl,� Cheeks explains. “We said, ‘Let’s take advantage of these huge marketing tentpole events to really drive awareness that these shows were back.’ And we were super targeted. In the NFL, we really focused on promoting Tracker, whereas with the Grammys, we focused on shows like Elsbeth.�

Opting for an everything, everywhere, all at once approach to the return of scripted appears to have paid off in a significant way, at least so far. The week of its February rollout, CBS claimed the top 16 most-watched series on linear TV, a feat no network has pulled off since Nielsen switched from paper viewing diaries to electronic people meters in 1987. It helped that NBC’s six Law & Order and Chicago series were all in reruns that week, of course, but even so, the season premieres of some of the Eye’s biggest hits got sampled by more viewers than they had in the fall of 2022, while Ghosts actually scared up its biggest same-day audience ever. All of this also benefited sibling streamer Paramount+, where CBS shows live digitally after their network debut: broadcast series made up 23 of the 30 most-watched titles on Paramount+ in February as measured in total minutes streamed.

Of course, one good month does not erase the many headaches facing CBS and every other linear network right now. The overall trends in viewership and ad dollars for legacy media companies remain gloomy, and that’s resulted in large cuts to both programming and staffing budgets everywhere — including CBS. Eye parent Paramount Global is also currently beset by rumors that it’s being shopped for sale, with no guarantee that a future buyer (or buyers) will want to keep every one of the company’s assets in the same corporate family. CBS might find itself sold off to some local TV station group, or end up part of a private equity group’s asset slate.

But during a wide-ranging, hour-long conversation with Buffering this week, Cheeks stayed focused on what he is able to control: his day-to-day job overseeing the CBS portion of the Paramount empire. He explained why he remains a true believer in the utility of broadcast TV even in the era of streaming, what lessons he learned from navigating CBS through a scripted-free fall, and, yes, what it’s like working at Paramount Global during such an uncertain time. The Yale and Harvard-educated CEO also offered updates on the Star Trek franchise at Paramount+, explained why CBS is serious about launching a new daytime soap opera revolving around Black lead characters, and gave a very direct answer about whether he wants the Golden Globes to return to CBS next year.

OK, so first off: You’re now just 30,000 viewers behind NBC. Are you going to be able to finish the season in first place?

I definitely think we will win the season.

Does being number one in viewers still matter in 2024? The overall gap between networks has shrunk, and so much advertising has left the network TV space. Is there a tangible benefit to being first, or is it just a point of pride?

I think the sales team would say it matters. I think it matters for us to remind ourselves of the importance of linear even in a multi-platform world, and how when we aggregate viewership across linear and streaming, that’s how we now define hits. Look, at the end of the day what matters is that we’re producing hit shows. What matters is that it just seems like every time we launch a new show, it becomes the next new number one broadcast series. And I think that momentum is critically important, because you know how hard it is to cut through the clutter now.

We spend a lot of time thinking about not just what’s working on CBS linear, but what is also working on streaming. What we’re finding is that the shows that we are calling hits– that get 7-plus million viewers live-plus-same-day–are then getting 1.5- 2 million viewers in streaming with an audience that’s 20 to 30 years younger. So it’s not the be-all, end-all, it, but it’s an important component of the story.

Long before you arrived at CBS, the network for years had messaged to advertisers and the press that it wasn’t trying to win the demographics game most networks play. Now we’re at a point where virtually no regular series scores above a 0.8 Nielsen rating among viewers under 50 and there’s virtually no difference in the overall demo averages of the Big Four. Are we finally at the point where demos just don’t matter and total audience reach is what counts in network TV? 
 
I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t think we can necessarily say that it’s now completely irrelevant, because there are sales that are still done on a demo basis. I do feel like we are in a period of transformation where reach and impression are going to be much more important than before. And obviously the ad sales dynamic drives everything in our business since ad revenue is such a big piece of it.

So advertisers still want to reach those younger viewers, but to reach those younger viewers through network shows, they need to look beyond the linear TV audience and take into account who’s watching those shows on Paramount+ or Peacock or Hulu?

That’s exactly right. And because of that, when we look at how we define hits and when we make greenlight decisions for subsequent seasons, we are looking at both. You see this when you look at some of the big shows, the SVUs, the NCISes, etc. These shows are finding these younger audiences in streaming who are loving them, but probably have no idea which linear network they’re on. My teenage nephews are huge fans of NCIS and FBI. They have no idea they’re on CBS. They only watch them on Paramount+. But the view is, that shouldn’t matter. What’s really important is that we’re reaching the audience wherever they want to consume the shows, and we’re producing the kind of shows they want to watch.

When your programming execs are deciding what shows to make or cancel, do they now give equal weight to the CBS and the Paramount+ viewership numbers? Or is it still mostly about what it does on linear?

I think we obviously always consider what is going to appeal to the CBS audience, because we’re initially programming for the CBS audience. But then yes, the second question is, is the kind of show that we think can also resonate with a decidedly younger audience in streaming? We try not to be super data-driven. It’s also the shows that the teams are passionate about, and we really try to be open-minded to it. But at the end of the day, are we going to put on a show that just feels super young that’s not going to connect with the CBS audience? We’d be hard-pressed to do that, because we still do want to maintain our [No. 1] status. Notwithstanding all the audience fragmentation and linear declines that you’re talking about, I still remain a firm believer in broadcast. The combination of broadcast and streaming is how you build the greatest reach.

Obviously the fact that you didn’t have your scripted hits on in the fall and early winter made programming the network a challenge. But are there any lessons you can take from these past six months, both in how CBS performed without its usual complement of shows, as well as the relaunch?  

We did learn some things. For example, we weren’t sure what was going to happen launching 90-minute versions of Survivor and Amazing Race. We were a little nervous about it. We had talked about it before the strike, but it really became the right timing when we had so much real estate to fill. And what we saw was how sustainable these episodes were, and how much the audience really was benefiting from getting 90-minute versions of these iconic franchises. But also, these are challenging times, and moves like that actually help you financially. We also had no intention of putting NCIS: Sydney on CBS; the plan was for it to be a Paramount+ show here. When we launched it on our network, it was staggering how well it did. So I think it just really did open our minds up to being more experimental, and I think that we will carry that forward.

Can we assume that you will most likely have two 90-minute reality shows on Wednesday night next season?  

We haven’t announced anything yet, but it’s a very fair conclusion for you to draw.

What about the overall number of hours of scripted on the CBS schedule — is that going to stay the same next year? You’re still doing all scripted on Friday nights, while your rivals are now mostly unscripted. 

Well, from the moment I came here in 2020, one of the things I did point out was that we needed to work on having a more balanced programming mix. CBS has always been very scripted-intensive. And we have made some moves. For example, we are now calling Wednesday our reality night. We’re locked into that. Friday is interesting because we’ve had so much success with scripted dramas. And I don’t just mean on CBS; I mean in streaming and in terms of international distribution. These shows are just doing well across all these different indices, so it’s making it a lot easier for us to stay in the scripted space on Friday.

That being said, there is a lot of pressure now to be more efficient in our spend, both with scripted and unscripted. So we’re constantly looking at more opportunities, particularly in unscripted or game shows. Price Is Right and Let’s Make a Deal in primetime do extremely well for us, so we launched a few game shows last year, and we’re still very much in that space.

Could you also use the CBS Stations group to develop some synergies between daytime and primetime games? You could launch a new game as a primetime series and then do a daily version on your stations.  

Couldn’t agree more. I will tell you that Wendy McMahon, the head of news and stations who is now running our syndication arm, is working very closely with Mitch Graham and the alternative team developing with exactly that in mind — looking at titles that could either start as daytime syndication game shows, and then if they work, upsell to primetime, or the other way around.

You mentioned the success of NCIS: Sydney. To me, it sort of proves the point that series which feel like “network� shows should have a network platform in addition to a streaming window. I wrote about this last year with regards to Frasier, which airs exclusively on Paramount+. It seems like you could make more episodes and get more viewers if it aired on CBS while also streaming on Paramount+. I think Kelsey Grammar would be up for that, too. Why not try it?

So I would say two things. I mean one is, we have two hour-long comedy blocks [on Monday and Thursday] that are immensely successful. There’s not a lot of available real estate for a typical 20- or 22-episode version. On your second point of why wouldn’t you run it on both: That is something we’ve looked at before. We obviously did it with Yellowstone. We just announced we’re going to run Tulsa King season one this summer. We’re always looking at that.

One of the challenges, as I’m sure you can imagine, is that the affiliates really expect that they’re going to get CBS premieres on CBS. And so there’s always a conversation with affiliates to make sure that they’re comfortable. You’re not wrong, but I would just say that at the end of the day, there are just these other sort of variables that we have to consider.

I’m not done lobbying you here, but we should move on. So clearly, network TV loves itself a franchise these days. You’ve got multiple versions of NCIS and FBI, and there’s potential offshoot of Fire Country brewing. Are these franchises about creating just more of the same, or are they more about branding and marketing? 

So on the latter part of your question, I do believe when you have built in awareness of a franchise, it does help you cut through the clutter and at least get your show sampled. But it’s a double-edged sword, because the other thing is when you have franchises that have passionate fan bases, if you just slap together a spin-off idea and it doesn’t really have its own independent reason to exist, you can have complete organ rejection.

I said this at Banff when I spoke there last year: One of the biggest misconceptions is that people think that franchise extensions are somehow easier. I think it’s a lot harder. Every single franchise extension you do has to have an independent reason to live. It is a very challenging thing to do. When you get it right, not only have you brought in an audience that is sort of a pre-existing fan base, but you’ve actually brought new people into the world. So there is a misunderstanding about how difficult it is to manage that. The number of spin-off pitches we’ve gotten on all these shows that we’ve rejected far outnumbers the ones we’ve pursued because of that.

Staying on franchises, you told me in 2022 that you wanted to build out the world of Ghosts. Any movement on that front? And would you be willing to spin-off other CBS comedies the way you and Warner Bros. TV have done with Big Bang Theory, Young Sheldon, and next season’s Georgie?  

I think we’re open-minded to all of it, and I think whether it’s a Ghosts or a Neighborhood or other shows like that, we’re definitely always looking at what would be the right way to extend that universe. But again, we just want to get it right. It doesn’t mean that there is not a focus on it, because you’re absolutely right. The logic around doing it clearly exists on the comedy side as well.

So no updates on a Ghosts spin-off?

Yeah, there’s no news to report.

I should ask about the Golden Globes. CBS stepped in at the last minute and agreed to air them on a one-off basis, and they actually did pretty well. Are you interested in airing the show next year, maybe under a longer-term deal?

Yes.

Let’s go back to more macro issues. Six years ago, before the reunification with Viacom, there was no doubt that CBS was the absolute center of its parent company’s universe. I’m wondering where CBS fits into the broader Paramount Global universe today? How important is a broadcast network in 2024?

I think CBS remains mission-critical to the larger Paramount Global strategy, because part of it is focusing on building franchises, which CBS has proven it can do time and time again, both in terms of what exists on CBS and shows we produce for Paramount+, like the Star Trek universe. I also think that if you look at the numbers, what CBS really does for Paramount+ is, it drives an incredible amount of engagement. When you look at engagement numbers, we can have upwards of 23 of the top 30 titles in terms of time spent on the service. And as I’m sure you’re well aware, the focus now is not just on subscriber acquisition, but really on churn reduction and engagement, and our shows do an incredible amount of work on the engagement front. So I think we are viewed as mission-critical. In any conversation I have with Bob [Bakish, CEO of Paramount Global] or Shari [Redstone, non-executive CEO], it’s very clear that they see it that way as well. I think it would be ill-advised for anyone to not see the role that broadcast plays in this larger linear-plus-streaming strategy.

And yet there are still shows with a lot of CBS in their DNA that get walled off on Paramount+, like the new NCIS spinoff you’ve announced with Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo. Especially after the success you had with NCIS: Sydney, why not put that on CBS, too?

Well, we also announced NCIS: Origins, which is going to be on CBS. The Weatherly project really felt more like a serialized streaming show, and also was an example of us trying to expand the aperture of NCIS, which is what we did with Criminal Minds on Paramount+. The whole goal here is to look at each potential creative execution and figure out where we think it ultimately should land. We had two really fantastic NCIS franchise extension ideas. One felt really right for broadcast, being more procedural, and one felt like a serialized streaming 10 or 13-episode idea. So when you’re trying to consistently expand what is the number one TV franchise in the world, why wouldn’t you want to develop both, and why not take advantage of the fact that one may creatively skew more towards a streaming environment versus the other?

You talked earlier about affiliate sensitivities when you put reruns of streaming shows like Yellowstone or Tulsa King on CBS. It’s one thing to do that in the summer or during a strike. Do you think affiliates would be OK if you regularly repurposed P+ series on the network?

I would not want to do that if they weren’t comfortable with it. The usual reaction is, “We really want exclusive content that premieres on CBS.� When we went to them with the Yellowstone option, no one pushed back and everybody was obviously very happy with Yellowstone’s performance. But I think it is sort of a critical component for affiliates to know that these shows are premiering on CBS. The ecosystem is evolving so quickly it’s hard to predict where that goes, but I do think there’s a hurdle to overcome to make affiliates comfortable with the idea of a block of programming in-season that is repurposed Paramount+ originals. I think that’s a tall request. But again, who knows where it all goes? ABC did it with Only Murders, and so I think everyone is kind of looking at dipping their toe into it. But we’re trying to make sure that the affiliates feel protected.

Let’s talk about the big hit out of your winter launch, Tracker. You obviously won’t have a Super Bowl to premiere shows out of most years, but the show was also produced outside the usual pilot cycle and you had a lot of time to promote it. Is this the template for how you approach new series launches now?

Yeah, we have completely taken a different view on the development cycle and development strategy. It started with COVID. We saw that it was possible to order things straight to series, like we did with Equalizer, which is why we’re doing no pilots this year. We’ve done a few straight to series orders with Watson and with NCIS Origins.

But I think Tracker is a great sort of case study for off-cycle [development]. We spent a lot of time with the team really talking about the show and what we wanted it to be. And then once we knew we had something special, we used the entire NFL season to start teasing the show out. We spent a lot of time on research, realizing that the things that the audience was really responding to out of the pilot were, obviously Justin Hartley, but also the action sequences. So we had all that time, as opposed to the old broadcast cycle of doing all your pilots at once, choosing them, and then you get three months to ramp up and launch, with no time for the show to find its voice. That sort of inefficient process just doesn’t make sense.

And the old system was not efficient financially, either. I’m not suggesting we’ll never do pilots again; Tracker actually was a pilot. But we look at all of this differently now, with a more long-term point of view. We look at where we think we’re going to have gaps, not just next season, but the season after, or the season after that. Or what shows feel like they are going to be close to their final seasons.

And there’s also the old-fashioned view of also looking at flow. I really believe Elsbeth is a phenomenal show, [and] by putting it behind So Help Me Todd and those two strong comedies, we’re really setting it up effectively. Some of the old-fashioned stuff that people who are so streaming-focused kind of pooh-pooh actually still does matter.

I want to get some clarity on one point. While you’re not getting out of the pilot business completely, it sounds like they’re not your preference anymore? I ask because there’s a school of thought that the streamers made a mistake by largely eschewing pilots. 

We don’t think walking away from pilots is the right idea. I think that Tracker and the success of it proves it benefited from having a pilot first. What we’re trying to say is, we don’t need hard and fast rules anymore. There are some shows where we feel like we really do want the opportunity to pilot it. There are some where we feel like we know the auspices really well, or maybe it’s part of existing franchise, and we feel confident enough that we’re better off getting into a writers room and getting the scripts banged out so that we have time to optimize before we start production, as opposed to the traditional pilot-directly-into-series-in-May structure. We want to be open to all it, because again, our goal is to create hit shows.

You recently announced that CBS was developing a new soap opera called The Gates that will focus on a Black family. It was sort of shocking, because soaps have been in decline for decades. Is this show actually something which has a chance of getting on the air, or are you still just thinking about the idea?

It’s super real. And just to give you a little bit of the backstory,  when we hired Sheila Ducksworth to run the NAACP venture, she and I had multiple meetings talking about what different genres she was going to lean into, and we talked a lot about daytime. One of the things that the data made very clear to both of us is that daytime soap operas over index with Black women, and yet when you look at soap operas, it’s usually sort of a white-led family with supporting characters that reflect more of our society. So we just thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to flip that and make the core anchor family a Black family, and then make the other characters reflect more the broader scope of society?

She found this great writer, Michele Val Jean, who’s been in the soap opera space for 30 years. She came up with a pitch, and we loved it. We brought Procter & Gamble into it as well, because if there were going to be [product] integrations, we could do it more holistically and organically. All of that is to say, we did a lot of work on the front end to put this together. So while yes, it’s development, it’s accelerated development.

When do you think you’d move forward with a formal greenlight then, and how long until it’s on the air?

The actual timeline and when we’re going to do it is still uncertain, because we want to get this right. I mean, there hasn’t been a new soap opera launch since I can’t even begin to tell you when. But we have great success with Bold and the Beautiful and Young and the Restless, and so we think we’re the right folks to be launching a new soap. I wish I could tell you more about exact timing, but we’re so focused on getting it right, and that will dictate when we’re ready to launch it.

Is it more likely to be a half-hour show or an hour?

It’s been being developed as an hour, but I can’t say for sure. I don’t know yet.

One of the other big things under your purview is the Star Trek franchise. Discovery is about to start its final season; you have Starfleet Academy in the works and the upcoming Section 31 movie, in addition to Strange New Worlds. But a lot of fans, myself included, are trying to understand why there’s been no greenlight for Legacy, the proposed spin off built from characters introduced in Picard. Is Trek still a priority for the company? 

Star Trek remains one of the most important franchises for Paramount Global, and Paramount+ specifically. There’s so much great opportunity with the franchise, and it’s really about the cadence and the timeline of it. We don’t want to offer up all these amazing premium drama series at once. We want to time it out appropriately. Luckily, we have this incredible partner in Alex Kurtzman, and we all work together to sort of manage long-range planning across many years, to figure out what’s the right cadence for dropping new Star Trek series. So there’s a lot we’re focused on, but it should not suggest to you [a scaling back]. There is a tremendous amount of focus and prioritizing of the Star Trek franchise.

Before we go, I have to ask about what it’s like working at CBS at a time when there is so much open speculation about your parent company being up for sale. There seems to be a good chance that within a year or two, CBS could be part of a very different company, or maybe not even in the same company. And yet, you’re trying to plan things out years ahead of time. 

Fair question. I would say what I and the team have really been focused on is just really blocking out the noise, working through it, and just focusing on our execution. I do believe that the success that we’ve experienced has sort of helped keep that focus. But it is challenging. The uncertainty is challenging. But even in spite of all of the swirl, the team is still able to laser focus and deliver day in and day out. Would I rather there be clarity? Of course. But at least I work with a group of folks who recognize that we can only do what we can do.