Businessmodel of CBS Corporation

Customer Segments

CBS has a mass market business model, with no significant differentiation between customer segments. The company targets its offerings at all consumers who want to view media.

Value Proposition

CBS offers two primary value propositions: accessibility and brand/status.

The company creates accessibility by offering a wide variety of options. It presents its content on a broad range of platforms, including television, film, radio, the Internet, and publishing.

The company has established a powerful brand due to its success. It owns one of the largest libraries of content in the world and controls many prominent brands, including Showtime and Simon & Schuster. Its content is licensed to over 200 markets in over 30 languages. It operates the most-watched TV network in the U.S., CBS Television, which has been #1 in overall viewership for 13 of the past 14 years. The network broadcasts TV’s top-rated drama (“NCIS”), top-rated comedy (“The Big Bang Theory”), and top-rated news program (“60 Minutes”). Lastly, CBS Interactive, the firm’s online content network, has over 280 million monthly worldwide visitors.

Channels

CBS’s main channel is its television network, through which it acquires most of its customers. The company promotes its offering through its website, social media pages, and advertising.

Customer Relationships

CBS’s customer relationship is primarily of a self-service nature. Customers utilize its programming through its various platforms while having limited interaction with employees. The company’s website provides information such as program scheduling and answers to common questions. That said, there is a personal assistance component in the form of phone and e-mail support.

Key Activities

CBS’s business model entails creating much of its content and programming and maintaining a wide variety of robust platforms on which to distribute them.

Key Partners

CBS’s key partners are the production companies and other program creators that provide the content for its various platforms.

Key Resources

CBS’s main resource is its intellectual property, which includes logos, trade names, trademarks and related trademark families. They represent significant assets for the company as they provide brand identification. The company also depends on physical resources in the form of facilities for the production of some of its programming.

Cost Structure

CBS has a cost-driven structure, aiming to minimize expenses through significant automation and low-price value propositions. Its biggest cost driver is sales/marketing, a fixed cost. Other major drivers are in the areas of product development and administration, both fixed costs.

Revenue Streams

CBS has three revenue streams:

• Advertising Revenues – Revenues generated from fees charged to third parties for promoting their products and services on the company’s various platforms.
• Content Licensing and Distribution Revenues – Revenues generated from fees charged for the licensing of internally-produced TV programming and the distribution of third-party programs, and from the publishing and distribution of consumer books.
• Affiliate and Subscription Revenues – Revenues generated from MVPDs (multichannel video programming distributors) for carriage of the company’s cable networks (cable affiliate fees), as well as for authorizing the MVPDs’ carriage of the company’s owned television stations (retransmission fees); fees received from TV stations affiliated with the CBS Television Network (station affiliation fees); subscription fees for online content; and revenues received for the distribution of pay-per-view boxing events.