George and Jorja are no longer on CBS exec Leslie Moonves’ mind

We can already picture the opening scene for the fifth-season premiere of CSI this fall. Lifeless prosthetic versions of George Eads and Jorja Fox will be laid out on the examining table in the morgue. Robert David Hall will shake his head as he writes down the cause of death: breach of contract.

Eads and Fox are the first victims in Viacom co-president Leslie Moonves’ war on rising programming cost. Eads and Fox didn’t report for work for start of production on CSI, so Moonves went Donald Trump on them last week.

“We offered them more money after Season 4,” said Moonves at CBS’s Sunday session at the Television Critics Assoc. press tour. “And it wasn’t enough. This behavior has to stop if the people in network television want to stay in business. The lawyers, agents and managers have to realize if we’re going to be in business for a long time, things have to change. It’s time that people realize that we can’t be the whipping boy.”

The agents for the two actors probably thought history was on their side. Last year, the supporting cast members of Everybody Loves Raymond staged sick-out until CBS agreed to renegotiate their deals for a bigger payday.

Big mistake. Not all CBS stars are created equal. Raymond is a character-driven situation comedy. It has made a gazillion dollars for CBS in syndication, and keeping the tight-knit ensemble together on the show was worth it. Even as a loss leader for a season or two, Raymond had value as a lead-in into the network’s new hit Two and a Half Men.

CSI is a procedural drama that rarely follows the characters home after work. Just ask the many Law & Order actors who’ve gotten their walking papers from that show’s producer Dick Wolf when their contracts were up. The cast members are cogs in the self-contained storytelling machines these shows and their spin-offs have become.

Moonves pointed out that Eads and Fox, who had seven-year contracts with CSI, received raises after the show’s first season. The increases offered for the fifth season apparently weren’t enough. Eads’ agents must think that Evel Knievel cable movie their client made is really good.

Moonves declined to comment on whether he would take Eads and Fox in if they come crawling back. Reporters at the TCA seemed to take that as a sign that forgiveness is a possibility (The Biz is betting yes for Fox and no for Eads). But Moonves said the network has already started looking at other actors. Production will be shut down this week, he added, so that the first episode can be rewritten.

But this is also an opportunity for Moonves to make a larger point. While CBS’s ratings are strong, the long-term outlook for the broadcast network television business is challenging at best. The slow but continuing loss of audience share to cable and the growth of digital video recorders that make expensive network TV commercials easier for viewers to skip will eventually take its toll on ad revenues.

“There comes a point where we all have to look out for the future of the network television business,” Moonves said. “It’s no secret that four of the six television networks lost money last year &#151 we are one of the two that didn’t. NBC is the other one.”

Moonves’ hard-line approach could also be a byproduct of his new role at Viacom, which puts him in direct competition with former MTV Networks head Tom Freston for the chairman’s job. Moonves is already known as a talent-friendly showman. Now he could be out to show he’s a tough business operator as well.