So, I was checking out headlines on The Hollywood Reporter's website when I came across an article that discussed CBS (NYSE: CBS) CEO Leslie Moonves and his comments regarding pilots and the TV development process in general; these comments were made during CBS' earnings call. Moonves believes that developing a network series is more expensive than it needs to be, and he was quoted in the piece as describing the generation of multimillion dollar pilots as "vastly overrated." He said that the writers' strike actually saved CBS about $70 million. And, he seems to question the correlation between expensive sums thrown into the development of a series and the odds of success.

All I can say is -- thank you! Finally, the religion is starting to spread (I hope). It's not popular to state this, but I just don't think media companies such as Disney (NYSE: DIS), News Corp. (NYSE: NWS), Viacom (NYSE: VIA) and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) need to bid up the compensation of talent to be effective at assembling a valuable library of entertainment product. Let's face it -- we've always known that big salaries for stars and/or an expensive development process never guaranteed a good return on invested capital on an entertainment project -- there are just too many variables, too many vagaries involved in the acceptance or rejection of a project by the public at large. I truly hope that CBS, Fox, ABC, General Electric (NYSE: GE)'s NBC, and the CW start to cut development costs as aggressively as possible following the lessons learned from the writers' strike.

I'm not holding my breath, however. I know that whatever lessons have been learned will be forgotten soon enough. Shareholders in media companies need to pressure their CEOs into reducing costs spent on the creation of entertainment. Execs like Moonves should have had the guts to call pilots overrated a long time ago; I don't think a writers' strike was necessary to bring this issue to the forefront. Please, don't forget your current sentiment -- a lot of shareholders are counting on you.

Disclosure: I own shares in Disney and General Electric.

I love this guy Moonves: Pilots are 'vastly overrated' originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

CBS Corporation (NYSE: CBS) option implied volatility at record levels:

Reasons for the volatility:

1) Chairman Sumner Redstone, the largest shareholder, publicly feuding with her daughter and heir apparent, Shari Redstone.

2) CBS Radio facing increased competition if the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allows Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) and XM Satellite Radio Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: XMSR) to merge. The leader of the combined SIRI company would be current SIRI CEO Mel Karmazin, a past leader of CBS Radio and Viacom, Inc. (NYSE: VIA).

3) Decreasing broadcasting revenue growth guidance.

4) The expectations of a CBS News and Katie Couric partnership-spin-out.

CBS has a market cap of $18.8 billion with long term debt of $7 billion. CBS had September 2007 quarterly total income of $3.2 billion. CBS over all option implied volatility of 31 was above its 26-week average of 25 according to Track Data, suggesting non-directional price fluctuations.

Daily options Update is provided by Stock Specialist Paul Foster of theflyonthewall.com.

Options update: CBS volatility at record on Redstone, ad growth, possible news spin-out originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 13 Nov 2007 16:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.