Hasta La Creative!

With just hours to go before CBS kicks off its third season of “Thursday Night Football” in Buffalo, Les Moonves told investors he was confident that the network eventually would be able to work out a deal to simulcast NFL games via its OTT service, CBS All Access.

In a Thursday morning Q&A session at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications and Entertainment Conference, the CBS Corp. chairman and CEO suggested that conversations over live-streaming NFL games are ongoing. “I anticipate before too long that we’ll be able to make a deal with the NFL,” Mr. Moonves said. “We talk to them a lot. They know our desire to get [the games] on our service, and we think a deal will happen in the not-too-distant future.”

As part of a wide-ranging discussion with Merrill analyst Jessica Reif Cohen, the CBS chief said the network would likely break even on its slimmed-down new Thursday night NFL package, which features three fewer games than the 2014 and 2015 slates. “We had eight games last year. I like that better, although we lost more money,” Mr. Moonves said, before acknowledging that CBS ultimately had little choice but to split the broadcast schedule with NBC. “You never like seeing a competitor getting a part of what you do, but such is the NFL. They’re the 800-lb gorilla, and when the NFL says ‘jump,’ you say, ‘yes sir.'”

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