Ryan Murphy just left Fox for enormous Netflix money, and reigning broadcast kingpin Les Moonves says he would have done the same thing.
“I’ve been doing this a long time,” Moonves began on Thursday when asked about the Murphy deal and its possible implications for other broadcast super-producers. “Previously, there was very little competition, and then [TV] expanded to cable and people started going to HBO.”
“Look, Ryan Murphy is an extraordinary talent, one of the greatest creators out there,” the CBS chief continued on his earnings conference call. “They offered him hundreds of millions of dollars and he had to take it.”
“But then you look at a Chuck Lorre. Chuck Lorre has three shows on CBS, and he also has a couple of shows over on Netflix,” Moonves said. “So, we have a lot of the talent, there’s a lot of room. The landscape does change but we find new talent. We also continue to be in business with the best talent.”
“Netflix is another competitor as well as a supplier,” he concluded. “So, it doesn’t concern me.”
Read CBS’ fourth-quarter and full-year earnings here to find out if Moonves should be concerned.