The finished news prototype will probably have some nontraditional features — humorous segments, conversations between reporters and the anchor, interactive elements involving the viewers. Throughout the summer, the news division solicited ideas from a variety of sources: producers of entertainment shows, MTV News and even a group of college-age interns who were working at CBS. In the end, though, Moonves will be the judge. “It’s like pornography — I’ll know it when I see it,” he would tell me later. “In the news business, right now is the changing of the guard. Tom Brokaw has retired, Rather has left and then the horrible death of Peter Jennings. In one eight-month period, network news has completely changed, and this is an opportunity to redefine ourselves.”

Of course, writer Lynn Hirschberg does point out earlier that Moonves has been wrong before about both CBS failures and successes. Whether or not it’s good to always give the people what they want — and that’s highly debatable — bread and circuses, anyone? — how far can Moonves trust his instincts to do that? How far can anyone? Leaving aside all the inherent problems in the ratings system and whether or not the networks should be focused on airing quality programs instead of winning each and every time slot, who’s to say that, when Moonves sees what he thinks the people want, he won’t be hopelessly, cluelessly wrong?

Often, the people don’t know what they want, and what they do want continues to change. When you start looking at what you think will be the big hit and devote your energy to that exclusively instead of what you think will be the good show, you’re going to wind up with a landscape littered with failures, hundreds of Fugitives for every CSI. (And even when the people do want C.S.I., do they really want three?

Hirschberg also points out that

There are famous cases in which testing has failed: “Seinfeld” didn’t test well, for instance, but became one of the most popular shows of all time.

Moonves has turned CBS around in the ratings game, and I do think he’s better at his job than some, but there’s a difference between giving the people what they want and giving them what you think they want. You can wind up just giving them what you want. As Hirschberg writes:

In [Moonves’] shows, he likes the men alpha and handsome and the women smart and beautiful, and he wants little personal complexity: happy endings are imperative….in his dramas, there is a continuing battle for order and justice, the team works together and a headstrong boss leads the way.

Producers looking to sell shows to CBS either comply with this point of view or take their shows elsewhere. “With ‘Hack,'” — a show about a former police officer turned taxi driver — “we sold the show to CBS although we had a very strong offer from another network,” says Gavin Polone….”Subconsciously, I must have thought I could persuade him to produce a dark show about a psychologically and morally ambiguous cabdriver and a corrupt cop. It ended up as a show about two good guys fighting crime.”

Which might go at least some of the way to explaining why it wasn’t much of a hit and failed after only two unremarkable seasons.

Bur wait, you say. Doesn’t that just prove that Moonves is right when he says, “Americans do not like dark”? And doesn’t two years qualify as “time to develop”? What I think it actually proves is that Americans don’t like dark when it’s strong-armed into the light, when a show that doesn’t fit the Moonves mold of what’s a hit is re-worked until it does. And when a non-hit is kept on for more than a few episodes, it’s usually to languish more than develop.

Now, I admit, there’s no wisdom in putting on shows that nobody wants to watch, no matter how good they are. But — and this not an area where CBS stands alone or is even the worst of the offenders — there’s almost no chance for a show to develop an audience if it doesn’t perform better than everything else right out of the gate. Often, it won’t even make it to the air if a focus group doesn’t like it.