MIPCOM, CANNES: Leslie Moones, MIPCOM’s Personality of the Year and CEO of CBS Corporation, delivered the keynote address on Monday. While acknowledging that traditional broadcasters were being forced to accept many changes by the fast unfolding digital landscape, without good content “all these new platforms are empty shells’.
He poked fun at those people who called broadcasters dinosaurs by pointing out that some dinosaurs survived because they were “fast, lean and smart’. Some thrived on the tough challenges and some scientists report that “they evolved into birds’.
Speaking to a packed audience of 750 attendees, Moonves seized the opportunity to drum home that for broadcasters and companies which know how to produce content that will be watched by big audiences, “things have never looked better’.
“We the broadcasters are the guys who feed the world what it wants to watch.” He added that the multiple platforms that emerge are “always going to need us’.
CBS, he pointed out had made “mass appeal content’, shows like CSI which had added $2bn to the company’s coffers.
“CBS Corporation is a powerful content machine with a growing digital footprint. We are striking back against the narrow view that traditional businesses have no future.’
- We will run a full report on this keynote speech in the Nov/ Dec isssue of Screen Africa
