Sponge Bob Square Pants
Source: Viacom | Wikipedia
ViacomCBS will add 70 TV series to CBS All Access on Thursday and will continue to move shows from Viacom’s cable networks to the company’s flagship streaming service in the coming months before officially changing its name in 2021.
The new name for CBS All Access will be chosen soon, according to Marc DeBevoise, digital director at ViacomCBS. ViacomCBS is also changing the CBS All Access user interface to accommodate searching and discovering new content, including creating icons with old Viacom networks, such as Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, and MTV, to find programming.
The renowned service will join rivals like Disney’s Hulu and Disney +, NBCUniversal’s Peacock and WarnerMedia’s HBO Max as traditional media companies embrace the broadcast. CBS All Access is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Amazon Fire TV and Roku.
That’s different from Peacock and HBO Max, which are in protracted transportation disputes with both platforms, serving 70% of the broadcast market. The ViacomCBS service also differs from competitors’ products by including all of the live sports events that air on CBS, including National Football League games and local news from CBS affiliates.
ViacomCBS will not change the price of the service even though it is adding more than 10,000 episodes of new shows in the next six months, DeBevoise said in an interview. ViacomCBS will officially relaunch in early 2021 with 30,000 TV episodes and movies from the company’s library, including Paramount Pictures movies. CBS All Access costs $ 5.99 a month with ads and $ 9.99 a month without them, though all of the service’s live programming includes commercials.
“We are adding a lot of new content, but we think the difference for us really comes in live offerings,” said DeBevoise.
Additional shows that will be available on CBS All Access on Thursday include BET’s “Real Husbands of Hollywood”, MTV’s “Laguna Beach”, Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants” and Comedy Central’s “Chappelle’s Show”.
There are no plans to license content
The company will rebuild a CBS-only app after it changes the content to CBS All Access, DeBevoise said. It will also keep Noggin, its preschool app, operational due to its unique interactive functionality and access to games. Video content on Noggin, which includes popular Nickelodeon children’s programming such as “Dora the Explorer” and “Paw Patrol,” will eventually roll over to All Access, DeBevoise said.
While ViacomCBS recently entered into an agreement to license some of its content to NBCUniversal’s Peacock, the company has no plans to purchase content from other media companies to integrate with its own library. DeBevoise noted that ViacomCBS ‘30,000 hours of content will be a larger catalog than Peacock (which advertises 20,000 hours) or HBO Max (10,000 hours).
“Where we were with CBS All Access, the average age of a user was 43 or 44 years old,” said DeBevoise. “Now we are expanding with children’s programming, family content, the live component – it’s bigger and more diverse. We’re working on all of our brands.”
The ViacomCBS service will also add new original programming in the coming months, including the third season of “Star Trek: Discovery”, which will premiere on October 15, and “Kamp Koral”, a spin-off of “SpongeBob SquarePants” that will focus on 10 years. SpongeBob and his friends at summer camp. “Kamp Koral” will debut in early 2021.
The new CBS All Access brand will also be the exclusive broadcast destination for “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run,” which will also be available in early 2021.
Disclosure: Comcast is the owner of NBCUniversal, parent company of CNBC and CNBC.com.
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