TRANSCRIPT FROM WSJ VIDEO dated 6/1/07 "Saying Goodbye to Jericho"
Guy in audience: There's a show you had on recently that was called Jericho. And I understand that hundreds of thousands of people have written to CBS and that you've been shipped 20,000 lbs. of nuts in protest. How big a protest ... if the Internet is as important to you as you say it is, would you consider responding to the audience? I understand it sets a precedent, but given how passionate people have been about this show, I'm curious how you feel about it.
Moonves: That's a very good question. There has been an unbelievable number of emails to us and unfortunately because the audience of that show is very Internet savvy, they've learned to get around the blocking, so I'll get thousands (of emails) a day complaining about the cancellation of Jericho. You know, previously I just could just block it and it would go to a file [Mossberg laughs] and do it ...
Mossberg: Yeah, why listen to the viewers? [pats Les on the knee]
Moonves: I listen to my viewers every day. I get up at 5:00 in the morning and look at ratings and we do a lot of research.
Mossberg: Yeah, but that's kind of an indirect way ....
Moonves: Look, it's unfortunate. The show Jericho started off being successful and its numbers dropped considerably. There has been an unbelievable amount of attention. May I add that last time I had so much attention is when I cancelled the show Touched by Angel after its 13th year, which is a very different sort of audience than the Jericho audience. Now, Touched by Angel didn't send me nuts. You know, in certain ways it was worse than that. But .. ahh ... [laughs] it is something we're obviously spending a lot of time talking about. We feel bad that we have cancelled the show. It's a tough decision. Obviously I love the passion with these shows. I wish I would have seen more of this passion in the last two months the show was on the air as its ratings were going down like that [pushes hand downward].
Mossberg: Ok, but can I ask a question. I havent followed the controversy, I
know about it but I haven't read deeply on it. Um, why not just put it,
why not keep producing it and distribute it on the Internet where maybe
you don't need that that kind of huge amount of viewership. When you
got this tool available.
Moonves: Its well and good to say that, but when you spend the kind of money
it would cost to do that, you would be losing a considerable amount of money.
Mossberg: Is there no way...
Moonves: By the way...
Mossberg: that a creative guy like you to think about...
Moonves: Doing it in a different way...
Mossberg: doing it in webisodes or doing it in someway that its more economic?
Moonves: It's one of the things that is being talked about now because of the
attention that its got.
Mossberg: And I would point out to you that eons ago before any of this Internet,
email, any of this stuff, there was this kinda cheesy show called Star Trek
that they cancelled which people got all agitated about it being cancelled
and I think it wound up earning billions of dollars as a franchise...
Moonves: Yes it did.
Mossberg: I never watched Jericho I don't know, but...
Moonves: Very good show.