CBS gave up its 40-year lock on NFL broadcasts because the alternative was losing up to $800 million, president Howard Stringer said.
Fox Broadcasting Co. last month agreed to pay nearly $1.6 billion for a four-year deal covering the 1994-97 NFC games."It was never a question that we were going to pay that kind of money," Stringer told a Television Critics Association gathering on Thursday.
CBS, which currently loses an average of $100 million a year on the broadcasts, would have been soaked for $160 million to $200 million a year under those terms, Stringer said.
The tradeoff is considered to be increased viewership and identity for a network, a strong plus for still-young Fox. But CBS knew how painful an expensive sports contract could be because of its money-losing baseball deal.
Stringer declined to speculate on what Fox's losses might be.
He denied that CBS, the No. 1 network last year, was at risk of losing its dominance without football: "Sixteen Sundays does not a season make," Stringer said.
It's too early to know how CBS will fill the Sunday time that was devoted to football and which gave a strong lead-in to the network's powerhouse Sunday night programs "60 Minutes" and "Murder, She Wrote," he said.