Exclusive Interview: CBS’s Armando Nuñez

PREMIUM: Armando Nuñez, the president and CEO of the CBS Global Distribution Group and chief content licensing officer for the CBS Corporation, talks to World Screen about the windowing of rights. 

WS: Back when you and I started in this business in the ’80s, distribution deals were relatively simple: studios licensed TV series for two years and two runs. It’s a little more complicated these days!
NUÑEZ: It was a simpler time back then. There wasn’t a multitude of platforms; there wasn’t the windowing of content that has become routine. It was a different business and has evolved into what it is today, and it’s been this way for many years—it’s a complicated world. The deals that we do are just as much driven by the holdbacks as they are driven by the rights granted. You have the complexity of language rights, multiterritory rights, holdbacks that affect potential windowing. It’s a much more complicated distribution pipeline.

WS: Would you give some examples of where you see demand for your product, and which shows have been selling where?
NUÑEZ: Our varied genres of content drive different types of business opportunities. FBI has been a very successful show on CBS, and we have licensed it in some 200 markets. It recently premiered on SAT.1 in Germany. It soldto Rai in Italy and Sky in the U.K. It’s a high-profile Dick Wolf show. The NCIS franchise continues to perform extremely well. The content that we have thrives in different ways on different platforms around the world.

It’s getting more difficult to cut through the noise and the clutter. There’s probably too much content in the marketplace now. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens over the next couple of years, assuming Disney’s direct-to-consumer plans come to fruition on a global basis, which one would assume would include the Fox studio content as well. There have been rumblings about a WarnerMedia direct-to-consumer global offering, and Comcast has made noise as well. So it’s going to be interesting to see the direction those companies take, how they are going to utilize their content and what that means in terms of availability and potential scarcity for that content in the global marketplace. That’s a fascinating potential evolution of how the business works.

WS: I have spoken with buyers who are concerned about the prospect of less product on the market if these entities keep their content for their streaming services.
NUÑEZ: For those companies who are not yet quite ready to flip a switch on a global direct-to-consumer offering, it bodes well for them if there is a scarcity of content. As it relates to CBS, our ambitions are to do both, [sell our content and manage CBS All Access], but we simply aren’t big enough to launch CBS All Access globally. We’ve started quite modestly in two territories, Canada and Australia, with plans to expand into other territories,but we also continue to monetize our content to third-party platforms. We’re looking at this evolution in an opportunistic way and more on a territory-by-territory basis or a regional basis, as opposed to making just one huge decision about a global direct-to-consumer offering.

WS: How has CBS All Access been doing in Canada and Australia?
NUÑEZ: All the U.S. media companies have direct-to-consumer ambitions. The issue for each is, How do you effectuate that strategy? How are you going to monetize whatever your offering is? When we launched in Australia, we had the benefit of owning Network 10, which we utilize as a launch platform to market and promote 10 All Access. We’re a bit ahead of what our expectations were there, and the same in Canada. We’re in this for the long haul. We don’t have unreasonable subscriber projections at the very beginning. There is going to be an evolution in terms of the volume and type of content that we put on these services and how we window that content through other platforms, no differently from how we do it now. We’re off to a good start, with plans to do this in other markets.

WS: Would you give some examples, taking any shows, of how you maximize their exposure and window through different outlets?
NUÑEZ: One example is NCIS in the U.K. We are on seven different outlets, depending on the season. First, [it’s on] FOX, with seasons 11 to 16; followed by Channel 5, seasons 5 to 14; Universal, seasons 1 to 5 and 8 to 10; our channel, CBS Justice, seasons 1 to 12, and then Amazon, iTunes and Google Play each have seasons 1 to 15.

Another example is Elementary in Germany, where ProSieben is first, with seasons 1 to 7; then maxdome, season 6; iTunes, seasons 1 to 6; RTL, seasons 1 to 5; Netflix, seasons 1 to 6; Amazon, seasons 1 to 6; and Sky, seasons 4 and 5.

WS: There are so many entities producing scripted programming. What does a studio offer clients these days that they can’t get elsewhere?
NUÑEZ: What studios still have—it varies from studio to studio, but I would put us at the top of this category—is infrastructure. We have a rolodex of writers, showrunners and producers that are part of CBS. The ability to execute on any concept obviously comes out of good casting and good directing, but so much of this comes down to the showrunners and writers, whether you are talking about Showtime or CBS Television Studios under David Stapf. They have the knowledge and the database from which to execute.

WS: They have your input, too.
NUÑEZ: Yes, we all work closely together during the process, but as I often say, first and foremost, the show has to work in this country. We know when we go into the development process that there are going to be some shows that are more U.S.-centric and less tailored for a global audience, and some other shows that will be U.S.-centric but have potential to appeal to a global audience.

WS: We have talked about scripted series. What other aspects of your business would you like to highlight?
NUÑEZ: We continue to see change in the global marketplace. It was evident at the panel I did at NATPE with Amy [Reinhard, the VP of content acquisition] from Netflix and Brad [Beale, the VP of worldwide content acquisition] at Amazon Prime Video. At the end of the day, as much as we talk about technology, the sophistication of platforms and all the different ways that people consume content, the one thing that hasn’t changed since we started in the business is, it’s still about the content. It always comes down to producing compelling content that people are going to watch.

WS: With all the attention and use that data and algorithms get, I sometimes wonder if gut instinct and human creativity are being sidestepped.
NUÑEZ: I don’t think creativity is being sidestepped. Technology affords an additional level of metrics by which content creators can make more informed decisions, but it still comes down to the creative process. That’s nothing new. We’ve kidded here that over the course of the history of CBS, and without getting into individual shows, sometimes our highest-testing shows are the first ones to get canceled! Ultimately, metrics are meant to give guidance and insight, but you shouldn’t utilize these metrics to make the decisions for you.