Now CBS Is Selling Web Subscriptions to Its Shows, Too
October 16, 2014, 6:00 AM PDTBy Peter Kafka
Yesterday,
HBO announced plans to sell Web video subscriptions. Today, CBS.
CBS?
Yup, CBS. The broadcaster is also getting into the digital video subscription business, with an offering that will let users watch almost any show it airs, live or on demand, on a variety of devices.
And like the HBO plan, this one doesn’t require users to have a traditional pay-TV subscription: All you need is an Internet connection and $6 a month.
But there are several big differences between CBS’s Web video service and the one HBO talked about yesterday.
For starters, CBS is selling access to shows that are technically available for free to anyone with a broadcast antenna. And unlike HBO’s service, this one isn’t theoretical: CBS is selling “CBS All Access” right now, via its
CBS.com site and its mobile apps.
Think of the service as part Hulu, part Aereo, with tweaks: Like Hulu, the service powered by CBS competitors Fox, NBC and ABC, CBS All Access will give viewers a big library of old shows, as well as ones that have appeared as recently as the night before.
And like
Aereo, the startup CBS successfully sued, CBS All Access will let viewers stream shows live, via the Web, to phones, tablets and computers.
The live streams are designed to be counted by Nielsen, and will run with the same ads that appear on regular TV. Some of the newer on-demand shows will also have ads, though for now CBS says it will cut down the frequency of those spots by 25 percent. Shows that are no longer on the air will run ad-free.
Like most digital media offerings, the service also comes with gaps and caveats. The biggest one is that the service can’t show the NFL games that CBS broadcasts on Sunday afternoons and Thursday nights, because it doesn’t have streaming rights to those.
For now, the shows CBS will livestream are only available in the 14 cities where CBS owns the local CBS station, including New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. And the depth of CBS’s on-demand access to recent shows varies depending on whether it owns the program it aired, or if an outside studio like Warner Bros. made the show.
Read more here:
http://recode.net/2014/10/16/now-cbs-is-selling-web-subscriptions-to-its-shows-too/
