Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) The first question comes from Jessica Reif-Cohen - Merrill Lynch.
Jessica Reif-Cohen - Merrill Lynch
I was just wondering can you talk about the tone of the scatter market in the fourth quarter and is there any benefit to the ratings growth you have enjoyed in the new season? Second, on Showtime are you scaling back at all on the films or can you comment on what is going on there? Then I wanted to ask Sumner since I know he is on the call, I know you don’t want to talk about anything but if Viacom stock continues to go down how can we be sure you won’t have to sell?
Leslie Moonves
Let me answer the first two questions that you talked about. The scatter market once again is not booming like in past years. There is some of it. The good news is because of the rating situation we feel like we are going to be the beneficiary of it. There is some, but as I said it is not what it has been in previous years. The great news is in the up front we sold a major large percentage of our inventory so we had a lot of volume. The good news is obviously no make-good’s for us. With the scatters coming in they are targeting for CBS and the CW.
Showtime, as you know we made a deal with the Weinstein Company. We will have some movies from CBS film. Remember our deals with MGM and Lionsgate continue through the end of this year. We have all of those movies including the James Bond movie that is opening this week belongs to us. There are plenty of movies available. Once again our main focus for Showtime and our growth is in original programming. You will see an increase in original programming and probably somewhat of a decrease in the number of movies that we need to fill out what we are doing. There are plenty of available movies and we are going to be fine in our movie production.
Adam?
Adam Townsend
With respect to the NAI situation if you can just appreciate the sensitivity of that and we will steer away from that for now if we can.
Fred Reynolds
On the scatter market, right now we are selling slightly above where we were up front and I think we are getting to Leslie’s point the credit that we are the place to be if you want to advertise. So far scatter pricing is hanging in there.
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