CBS All Access May Become a Major Player in Online Streaming After CBS & Viacom’s Merger

CBS All Access May Become a Major Player in Online Streaming After CBS & Viacom’s Merger

With the merger of CBS and Viacom being greenlit yesterday, a potential big player has entered the over-the-top subscription video on-demand services world. I would say a “new” player has entered the online streaming world but CBS All Access has been around for almost three years. Previously, CBS All Access has been a minor player with Star Trek: Discovery and Twilight Zone being its most notable programming. Netflix is the current king of online streaming with Disney+ set to possibly usurp the house that House of Cards, Daredevil, and Stranger Things built.

Now that CBS and Viacom have merged to form ViacomCBS Inc, an educated guess is that the new company is going to keep its marquee online streaming  – CBS All Access. That online streaming service is now going to have access to a far greater array of programming than it has had-to-date, including: Nickelodeon, MTV, BET, Comedy Central, and Paramount Network.

For clarity, that’s: Shameless, Ray Donovan, Homeland, You Can’t Do That on Television, The Real World, Yellowstone, South Park, Chappelle’s Show, Futurama, The Man Show, and many other TV shows.

Then there are the films (owned by Paramount Pictures, which Viacom owns): Titanic, Footloose, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Braveheart, Ghost, The Truman Show, Mean Girls, Psycho, Rocketman, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Days of Thunder, Rosemary’s Baby, Nebraska, Sunset Boulevard, Forrest Gump, Super 8, Coming to America, World War Z, Babel, The Conversation, The Fighter, Interstellar, Team America, Terms of Endearment, and A Quiet Place to name a small amount of them.

This deal potentially allows ViacomCBS Inc to offer more than 140,000 TV episodes and more than 3,600 movies within one, all encompassing streaming service – if ViacomCBS Inc were so inclined.

Showtime has its own streaming portal and up to this point, CBS has seen fit to keep Showtime’s content within Showtime’s exclusive streaming service. This mode of thinking may change now that the merger is complete.

Another option would be for CBS and Showtime to emulate Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ and offer a bundle (CBS + Showtime) at a discounted price. In this way, CBS All Access and Showtime could share their unique viewers across platforms and gather valuable marketing data on viewership habits.

If ViacomCBS Inc puts all of its eggs in one basket, namely CBS All Access, CBS All Access will be a much better value to cord cutters buck in the competitive streaming services marketplace.

A third option would be for a brand new online streaming service to be created but with Disney+ launching in November 2019 and Apple TV+ soon behind it, putting the 140,000 TV episodes and more than 3,600 movies, less the Showtime material, on CBS All Access would be the most expedient move and the least costly. That streaming service’s infrastructure has already been created, tested, debugged, and placed online.

Starting from scratch would take valuable time and there are only so many over-the-top subscription video on-demand services that a person can afford and is willing to shell out money for in the digital age.

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