Jennifer Beals, star of the Showtime series "The L Word," YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley, Sling Media CEO Blake Krikorian and radio shock jocks Opie and Anthony took part in the hour-long event.

CBS has signed deals with Google, YouTube, Apple, Verizon and more in the past year alone, Moonves said. His company is attempting to satisfy "the exploding demand for high-quality interactive content" through these pioneering partnerships.

"Whether it's CSI or C++ we're all playing on same big digital field," Moonves said. CSI is the name of the network's highest rated show franchise and C++ is a computer programming language.

Moonves and others in the video business are learning from the music industry's early resistance to the changing marketplace. Record labels "suffered a lot from not initially listening," he said, but now they are "coming back digitally." The moral of Moonves's story: "Those who don’t get in front of the parade, end up marching behind it."