When CBS lost the right to broadcast professional football, it seems to have made almost all of its young male viewers disappear as well.
According to the network’s president and CEO, the loss cost CBS viewers in time slots ranging from the evening news to the “Late Show With David Letterman.”
Now that the NFL has returned, CBS won’t let anyone forget it. As CBS President Leslie Moonves explained at the Television Critics Association press tour Thursday, football fans will be bombarded with “6 billion impressions” of CBS products and programming during game telecasts this fall.
The promotions will target young male viewers who, Moonves hopes, will be lured back to CBS by the NFL and such new shows as “Buddy Faro,” which stars Dennis Farina as an L.A. private eye.
This increase in the testosterone level at CBS may not impress women viewers, especially those angry about the cancellation of “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.”
But Moonves defended the decision by saying CBS wasn’t abandoning its rural female audience, pointing to the new drama “L.A. Doctors,” starring Ken Olin and Sheryl Lee, as a show women will like.