‘Reality’ behind his rise & fall
He’s the man credited with kicking off America’s reality TV craze in the 2000s — but now reality is catching up to Les Moonves.
The CBS chairman’s spectacular fall from grace amid the #MeToo movement ended a legendary career that began in the bowels of the TV network’s empire and ended with him rising to the top of the company.
Moonves was a homegrown New Yorker, who spent his childhood on Long Island. He kept one foot in the suburbs and the other planted in New York City while growing up, soaking in Broadway and the city’s entertainment culture with his mother while cultivating his competitive spirit playing sports on bucolic Long Island with his dad.
He went to Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, planning to become a doctor. But an epiphany in Organic Chemistry class sent him packing for the bright lights of New York City after graduation.
For six years, he took classes at Greenwich Village’s Neighborhood Playhouse and paid his bills slinging drinks at the Central Park mainstay Tavern on the Green.
“So here you are in a thirdfloor walk-up, struggling and tending bar and going to acting school. It was one of the greatest periods of my life,” he once said.
By 1977, he left New York for the West Coast, doing stints producing theater before taking a gig as a low-level executive for Columbia Pictures Television.
Moonves married first wife Nancy Wiesenfeld in 1978, and the couple raised three kids before splitting in 2004.
He spent two years at Columbia and another two years developing movies and miniseries for Twentieth Century Fox.
In 1984, he took a job with Lo- rimar Productions, which was later bought by Warner Bros. Television — where Moonves rose to the rank of president.
He caught a huge break in 1994 when his team developed hit shows “E.R.” and “Friends,” which he said were “career changers.”
By 1995, he had landed at CBS as president of entertainment. Three years later, he was named president and CEO of CBS Television.
That’s where, in 2000, he reluctantly ordered up “Survivor” — the 18-years-and-running program that sired countless spin-offs and regional variations while also cementing “reality TV” as a household phrase. “Big Brother” soon followed. He began dating current wife Julie Chen — a CBS reporter and host of “Big Brother” — before his divorce with Wiesenfeld was finalized. In 2004, he got a court to put a rush on the split and married Chen less than two weeks after it was finalized in December 2004.
When CBS split off from Viacom, he was named CEO of the newly formed CBS Corporation in 2006 — a post he would maintain for more than a decade.
In 2017, he was among the highest-paid executives in the nation, with his annual salary reaching $69.33 million, Reuters reported.