CBS No Longer Talking To Apple About Streaming TV, Report Says

Last year, CBS Corporation (NYSE: CBS)’s CEO Les Moonves made several declarations regarding his company’s relationship with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL).

On repeated occasions, he assured that the mass media firm was in conversations with the tech behemoth, about the latter’s streaming services. "Apple is having conversations with everyone about doing their own streaming services," he stated back in October.

However, in a new interview with CNNMoney, Moonves disclosed that the chats had stopped. "We had conversations a while back, and we haven't had recent conversations with them," he explained. And his comments make sense, as Apple has reportedly taken a step back from its TV initiatives.

When questioned about other players, like Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) or Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB) that could be interested in the streaming TV service game, the Chief Executive responded: “Every one of those companies is looking at content.”

Moonves went on to point out that Amazon “made a big impact” at the Sundance Film Festival last month, same as Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX). He assured both were buying plenty of new programming then.

“We are in constant conversations with all of them about partnerships, about licensing our content… and they are going to be very important to our future,” he added.

A Rapidly Changing Business

Finally, CBS’ CEO went into the rapid changes in the company’s business. “If you look at where we were five years ago, we didn't even know half these companies. And now... something like 40 percent of the revenue that CBS is getting didn't exist five years ago,” he concluded.