5Qs with Bob Rose, evp, distribution, CBS College Sports

You recently added 4mln subs. How did you do it? It’s creative deal making, which is built on recognizing that each distribution partner has its own competitive challenges and would like to differentiate their video from what their competitors offer. It’s de-commoditization. The worst thing you can hear from any client is that you’re a commodity. So, client by client, we’re trying to offer a unique product. This is localization? Right. We’re able to tap into the sports rights that we [or CBS ] own and work out various sub-licensing and production agreements with our clients to give them marketplace advantage. For example, Bright House wants to be the home of U of Central Fl. We sub-licensed our UCF content to them [in the Conference USA deal]. With college endowments down amid the bad economy, will athletics suffer, and might that extend to your network? It will make investments that networks are making in college sports programming more important than ever since [college sports] is a huge driver of revenue [for the schools]. You’re constantly seeking additional carriage. Has the economy made it tougher to get meetings? I don’t see a difference… the minute you begin a conversation with an MSO, you’re negotiating. They want to spend less money, we want to bring in more money. That’s hidden between the lines of every conversation… but if you have something that’s unique and they feel creates a competitive advantage for them, they’re going to listen. You know [MSO’s businesses] seem pretty good right now. I’m not hearing them say, ‘Oh, my God, people aren’t paying their bills, and they’re downgrading and buying less.’ That pipe into the home may be more valuable than it’s ever been when you look at the cost of going out of the home for entertainment… Compare your old gig, selling Court TV, with selling CBS College Sports TV. The sameness approach to doing business isn’t going to work. Certainly we’ll carry forward some fundamentals in the way we sell and manage, but the tactics are different, we’ve added a lot of pages to the playbook we used at Court TV. We have to be smarter and listen more than we ever have…You have to constantly come up with new ideas. That’s what motivates me in this business…And we have to do all this with a much leaner organization. I had about 30 people on my team at Court. We have 7. [Rose’s comments on sports tiers can be found at cable360.net/blog]