Leslie R. Moonves, as president and chief executive officer of Viacom’s CBS entertainment division, changed programming for U.S. network television during the 1990s. Moonves found that alternative television shows, when mixed into a traditional schedule of situation comedies and dramas, could succeed against the emergence of burgeoning competing media.

Moonves has made a career of creating successful programming for broadcast television. Often, network executives in the 1990s ascended to their leadership positions after climbing a ladder of successive jobs inside one company. For many of Moonves’s contemporaries, such as Robert Iger of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the path to upper management included earlier jobs at one network in program development, show scheduling, daytime programming, or production administration. Moonves, however, worked at studios that produced series for network airing. The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) recruited him to become its entertainment president when Moonves presided over Warner Brothers television division. At the time, Warner Brothers was a chief supplier for ABC, CBS, and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), with more than 20 programs on prime-time schedules.

Moonves began his tenure at CBS at a time when new media technologies had caused the erosion of broadcasters’ audience shares. After Congress passed the Cable Communications Act of 1984 and videocassette recorders became standard household appliances, marketplace competition forced television programmers to accept smaller audiences. To lead CBS, Moonves had to create a new identity, find a younger audience, and yet still entertain a mass audience that would seek out CBS for news, sports, entertainment, and children’s programming.

Moonves’s reinvention of CBS blended unscripted reality programs such as Survivor and The Amazing Race into a nightly prime-time lineup dominated by stalwarts such as Everybody Loves Raymond, Touched by an Angel, and 60 Minutes. This mix has kept CBS ahead in the ratings race in the face of challenges by ABC’s fad game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, FOX’s younger focus, and NBC’s aging lineup of quality programming. Where other broadcast programmers attempted to deal with lost audiences and advertising dollars by finding fast fixes or by staying loyal to old programming concepts, Moonves succeeded by trailblazing with new show concepts, pretesting most show episodes with audience focus groups before those episodes aired, and closely managing staff, including personally evaluating contestants before casting completed for CBS’s unscripted adventure programs.

Moonves had initially chosen acting as a career path. He attended Bucknell University. As a senior, he became interested in acting. In 1971, after graduating with a degree in Spanish, he moved to New York City and studied with Sanford Meisner at New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. When Moonves’s acting career was not immediately successful, he moved to Los Angeles, where he won roles in television programs such as Gemini Man, Cannon, and The Six Million Dollar Man.

Eventually, he became a development executive with Gregory Harrison’s Catalina Productions. The company operated the Coast Playhouse and later produced movies for television. In 1981 Moonves and Catalina produced a stage version of “The Hasty Heart.” The production moved to the Los Angeles Music Center’s Ahmanson Theatre. That year, the play won several Los Angeles Drama Critic Circle Awards, including Best Production of the Year. Showtime filmed and cablecast the play.

Through his friendship with Warren Littlefield, Moonves changed his emphasis to television production and became a development executive at Saul Ilson Productions. Moonves served as vice president for development before moving to 20th Century-Fox Television as vice president of movies and miniseries. Next, Moonves joined Lorimar as executive vice president for creative affairs and was promoted to president of television production. In 1988 Lorimar merged with Warner Brothers Studios. While at Lorimar, Moonves was responsible for the development and production of the shows, overseeing Dallas and Knots Landing while developing dramas such as the critically acclaimed but viewer-ignored I’ll Fly Away and Max Headroom and the sitcom Full House.

Moonves left the presidency at Warner Brothers Television for the entertainment president position at CBS in July 1995. He was promoted to his current post in April 1998.

While keeping his network ahead, Moonves has found time to devote to television’s future. In November 1999, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) reported that television characters do not emulate national racial and ethnic diversity. Moonves represented CBS at those hearings and testified that he recognized the problem and would work to correct it. In February 2000, Moonves signed a contract with the NAACP, promising to create a greater numbers of realistic roles for African Americans and to expand the roles of African Americans at CBS. That year, CBS went forward with the medical drama City of Angels, with a predominantly African-American cast and production team. CBS aired 23 episodes of the hospital series before its cancellation.

President Clinton appointed Moonves cochair of the Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters (also known as the Public Interest Council). The committee was designed to study and make recommendations on the public interest responsibilities accompanying broadcasters’ receipt of digital television licenses. The committee completed its recommendations in 1998 and advised broadcasters to meet digital public interest obligations by voluntarily airing nightly, five-minute candidate discourses beginning a month prior to every election.

When Viacom merged with CBS, Moonves’s influence grew, as he was promoted to chief executive officer. Next, Viacom merged its Paramount Studios television production unit with CBS, placing it under Moonves’s command. In December 2001, Viacom placed a second television network under Moonves’s control. After the Federal Communications Commission changed its dual ownership rules in April 2001, the company had the right to operate Paramount’s TV network, the United Paramount Network (UPN), alongside CBS. Moonves now oversees UPN as well.

Moonves serves on the board of directors of Viacom, Americans for the Arts National Policy Board, the Los Angeles Free Clinic, and the board of governors of the annual Banff Television Festival. He is a member of President Clinton’s Advisory Committee on the Arts, the board of directors of the Los Angeles Free Clinic, and both the executive committee and board of governors of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He serves on the board of trustees of the Entertainment Industries Council, the Motion Picture Association of America’s Executive Committee on Television Violence, and the board of governors of the UCLA Center for Communications Policy. He is a trustee of the National Council for Families and Television and is past president of the Hollywood Radio and Television Society.