While CBS has inked pacts to stream its content on such new media players as Netflix and Amazon, the network head said that the company needs to be certain that any deal is mutually beneficial before signing on the dotted line.
"The devil is in the details," Moonves said on a conference call with analysts Thursday shortly after CBS released its second quarter financial results.
"It depends what the terms are," he added.
Moonves said that before agreeing to show CBS' programs, he had to be reassured that a deal with Apple TV would not interfere with what he called the "three main buckets" of his business -- advertising, syndication and retransmission fees.
His remarks come during the same week that Hulu Plus announced it would be offered on Apple's set-top box. In addition to the streaming service, Apple TV allows users to stream movies from their iTunes library.
This isn't the first time that Moonves has expressed skepticism about a deal with Apple TV. In a speech at the UCLA Entertainment Symposium in March, he revealed that Steve Jobs had approached him about joining the service, but he had turned down the late Apple founder.
"I told Steve, 'You know more than me about 99 percent of things but I know more about the television business,' " Moonves said.
Shares of CBS were down .04 percent to $33.03 in after hours trading. During its most recent quarter, CBS reported that net income climbed over 8 percent to $427 million from a year earlier. The revenue picture was not as robust, however, falling to $3.5 billion from $3.6 billion in the same period last year.
