Page 72 - How To Get Rich

eliminate the middleman and pay a lower license fee while, in theory, the
network, as an owner, would look to maximize all promotional
opportunities.
The partnership was a great concept, but after five years, it had not

gone as planned. CBS was not willing to promote the shows to my
satisfaction. As more and more cable competition ate into the network’s
market share, on-air promotion became all the more important to sustain
viewership, but it just wasn’t happening. To make matters worse, CBS
tried to change the shows drastically by making them MTV-style music
specials and dramatically cutting the time allotted to show the women
competing. I am not a network programmer, but it seemed to me that

people might be tuning in to a beauty competition to see beautiful women.
I am not saying a television musical performance is a bad thing; there
have been some great ones over the years. A perfect example was the 1999
Miss Teen USA pageant: A year earlier, the teen show had introduced a
little-known boy band called ’NSync. By 1999 they were the biggest band
around. As a sign of appreciation, they agreed to appear on the Miss Teen

USA pageant again. In the middle of their summer tour, ’NSync rented a
jet and flew in for eight hours the day of the show, performing two songs.
They were terrific. Unfortunately, no one knew about it because CBS had
chosen not to run a single promotion for the show.
So in February 2002 we were all reevaluating how we wanted to
approach the network license renewal. Citing the current ratings, which
were caused by the lack of promotion and the fact that CBS would always

air the pageant against the toughest competition, Les Moonves, the head of
the network, said he was not willing to begin negotiations until the end of
the season. Obviously, with the season ending in August, the network
schedules would be set and there would be absolutely no room for
negotiation with any other network.

I sent a letter to Les telling him I wanted an option to buy CBS out of
the partnership, exercisable up until a week after the broadcast of the Miss
Universe pageant in May. I feigned disinterest in continuing with the
pageants and told him if I did not exercise the option, we would
commence with selling or dismantling the company. A few days later, I
believed we had a deal.
I immediately signed with Jim Griffin of the William Morris Agency
to begin shopping the pageants to other broadcasters. I also called my