CBS All Access will stream NFL games starting this weekend
Starting Sunday, December 4th, CBS All Access subscribers will be able to stream weekend and Thursday night NFL action through the service. The network announced today that it agreed to terms with the league on a multi-year deal for live access via its $6 monthly option (or the pricier commercial-free tier). The slate of games not only includes the Sunday schedule, but Thursday night action that CBS broadcasts as well as preseason and postseason slates.
In addition to live and on-demand streaming from CBS’ catalog of shows and events, All Access will also be the exclusive home of the upcoming Star Trek series and a spin-off of The Good Wife. If all of that seems too good to pass up for a few dollars a month, the service is available through the CBS app for Android, iOS and Windows 10 in addition to Amazon Fire TV/Fire TV Stick, Android TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, PlayStation 4, Roku, Xbox One and Xbox 360. If none of those work for you, watch All Access via the web at CBS.com.
Google rumor hints at ‘Unplugged’ streaming TV service
Since rumors about Apple’s TV attempts are in their ebb phase, now it’s time for Google to take the stage. In a pattern that seems very familiar, sources tell the Wall Street Journal, Reuters and CNBC that Google has cut a deal with CBS to include its channels in a streaming “skinny bundle.” The rumored service is apparently planned for launch in 2017 under the name “Unplugged.” While Apple’s long-rumored service has yet to appear, we have seen similar efforts appear in the form of Dish Network’s Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, and the upcoming DirecTV Now.
The unnamed media executives that have apparently heard the pitch say Google wants to offer a bundle priced between $25 and $40 per month, that’s separate from YouTube, although execs from that company are overseeing the project. Fox and Disney/ABC are said to be in negotiations as well, while the WSJ report mentions that one sticking point has been YouTube’s desire to add data overlays (like sports stats) to the channels it’s streaming.
Of course, negotiations between tech companies and the entertainment industry can be difficult, and the latest Apple rumors suggest it will go in a different direction entirely. If the service is meant to launch in the first quarter, then maybe we’ll hear more about it at CES in January.That could be particularly poetic, since at CES 2006, CBS exec Les Moonves joined Larry Page — Google co-founder and current CEO of its parent company Alphabet — to announce a content partnership for Google Video.
Source: Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNBC
Candy Crush is becoming a game show
Candy Crush, the once ubiquitous mobile game behemoth that’s now played almost exclusively by my aunt, is getting its own game show. CBS announced on Tuesday that it is teaming up with King Games and Lionsgate to produce the hour-long series. Details on game mechanics are still sparse but the network did explain that 2-person teams will “use their wits and physical agility to compete on enormous, interactive game boards.” The series will be executive produced by Matt Kunitz, the guy behind Fear Factor and Wipeout, however there’s no word yet on who will host or when the series will premier.
This move follows the recent successes of retro-style game shows like Celebrity Family Feud as well as mobile game crossovers like the Angry Birds movie and the upcoming Fruit Ninja feature. This is what we get for complaining about how Hollywood was only interested in rebooting existing franchises.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: CBS
CBS All Access starts streaming on your PS4
Relax, American PlayStation fans, you don’t have to worry about missing out on Star Trek: Discovery when your Xbox One-toting friends start watching. CBS has rolled out All Access on the PS4, giving you a way to check out the network’s shows in between rounds of Battlefield and Rez. As before, how much you pay depends on your tolerance for ads. Spend $6 per month and you’ll get “reduced” commercials, while $10 per month lets you watch in uninterrupted bliss. Whichever way you go, this is a big step for All Access. The streaming TV service is now available on virtually every major device platform, so you don’t have to be picky about where and how you watch.
Source: CBS
How to watch tonight’s US presidential debate
So you’re determined to watch the first of 2016’s US presidential debates, but you don’t subscribe to TV… or you live in a country that won’t have a live broadcast. What to do? Relax. This year, there are more choices than ever for watching online, and not just in the US. We’ve rounded up the main internet viewing sources for Clinton versus Trump, including the kind of commentary you’ll get. Whichever option you choose, you’ll probably want to keep our guide to the candidates on hand when things kick off at 9PM Eastern — the odds are that the grand speeches and spirited arguments won’t answer all your technology policy questions.
This is the first American presidential debate where Facebook Live will play a part, and you’ll have no shortage of choices for streaming the event on the world’s largest social network. ABC News has a deal with Facebook to livestream the debate ad-free, complete with commentary before and after (including responses to viewer questions) as well as extra details on its Facebook page. You can also expect BuzzFeed, CNBC, C-SPAN, Fox News, the New York Times, PBS, Telemundo and Univision to stream on Facebook as well, although you won’t necessarily get a TV-like broadcast.
Twitter was a go-to place for live discussion of the national conventions, and it wants to be the cornerstone of your debate viewing, too. It’s allying with Bloomberg to stream the debate both at debates.twitter.com on the web as well as through its official mobile apps. Bloomberg will logically handle the on-air analysis and commentary, but the real star may be the flood of tweets from everyday viewers.
YouTube
YouTube is already big on live video, so you’d expect it to have plenty of streams, right? Sure enough, you’re getting a smorgasbord. Bloomberg, Fox News, NBC News, PBS, Telemundo and the Washington Post are all using Google’s video service to air the political showdown. You can also expect YouTube-oriented producers like Complex and The Young Turks to have on-the-ground reporting if you’re not as interested in the raw event.
Conventional media outlets
Old-school media sources may still revolve around TV, but they’ll have their share of online viewing beyond the partnerships we’ve already mentioned. ABC will offer free streams through its ABC News apps, and access for some TV subscribers through the regular ABC app. CBS will offer feeds through CBSNews.com as well as its myriad mobile and set-top apps, while Reuters will show the debate through both its Reuters TV site and its own mobile clients.
Images: AP Photo/John Minchillo; AP Photo/Julio Cortez; AP Photo/J. David Ake
After Math: The final frontier
We saw some significant developments in the field of space exploration this week. Jeff Bezos unveiled his latest heavy lift rocket. The Gaia satellite has mapped its billionth Milky Way star. China launched another piece of its Heavenly Palace into orbit. And Galaxies just can’t seem to stop exploding. Numbers, because how else are you going to accurately measure your insignificance against the infinite voids of space?
CBS delays streaming ‘Star Trek’ debut until May 2017
CBS said its new Star Trek series would debut in January, but since it’s September and we still haven’t even heard about the cast, that date seemed to be in doubt. Today CBS confirmed a delay, essentially swapping debut windows between Star Trek: Discovery and its upcoming spinoff of The Good Wife, which will both be available exclusively in the US on the streaming CBS All Access service (outside the US and Canada, it will be on Netflix).
Star Trek: Discovery will launch in May 2017, while the new The Good Wife show will launch with a CBS TV broadcast in January, before jumping to All Access streaming. There’s also a new streaming edition of Big Brother called Over the Top that will launch on September 28th.
Executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Bryan Fuller said in a statement that “We aim to dream big and deliver, and that means making sure the demands of physical and post-production for a show that takes place entirely in space, and the need to meet an air date, don’t result in compromised quality. Before heading into production, we evaluated these realities with our partners at CBS and they agreed: Star Trek deserves the very best, and these extra few months will help us achieve a vision we can all be proud of.”
If it aims to convince more skeptical viewers to sign up — and maybe grab that $4 commercial-free option — a delay to make sure everything is working could be a good idea.
Source: CBS
Bloomberg: Amazon wants live sports streaming rights
Bloomberg believes that Amazon is considering buying the rights to a variety of live sporting events as a way of bringing more people into Prime. According to the site’s anonymous sources, the firm has made discreet enquiries about picking up licenses for global sports including tennis, golf, soccer and car racing. The company is believed to have a beady eye on domestic sports like baseball and basketball, although knows that traditional broadcasters have that sewn up for the next few years.
The report explains that Amazon hired a former Sports Illustrated executive, James DeLorenzo, to head up a sports division earlier this year. In addition, the company poached a former YouTube executive, Charlie Neiman, to look into partnering with sports companies and build new business opportunities. Amazon has refused to make a public comment, but these preliminary negotiations could be the start of a whole new broadcasting platform.
One of the existential problems that both Amazon and Netflix suffer from is that their audience has to make an effort to reach them. If you’re not that interested in highbrow dramas about the modern family, classical music or the political machinery in a bizarro-world White House, you won’t bother signing up. Netflix and Amazon have taken two very different routes to broaden their appeal beyond a hardcore audience — since both are believed to have around 50 million subscribers.
Netflix, for instance, is going for pure populism, and has broadened its outreach beyond blue-chip consumers who enjoy shows like Orange is the New Black. Shows like Fuller House and the deal it signed with Adam Sandler demonstrate how Netflix is attempting to move beyond its traditional customer base. Amazon, meanwhile, is hoping that bundling its own platform with Prime means that its retail customers are, invariably, going to want to check out its more populist original shows.
The rights to live sports broadcasts are likely to be the most lucrative, and expensive, things that broadcasters can buy. For instance, each of the big three networks spends around a billion dollars each year for the right to air NFL Games. In return for that outlay, they can expect audiences of between 18 and 21 million, which would be eye-gougingly high for a company like Amazon.
It’s not just Amazon or Netflix which are looking to sports to help break its apparent ceiling in subscriber numbers, either. Twitter signed a deal with the National Football League to stream 10 Thursday night games that are currently broadcast on NBC and CBS. Facebook, meanwhile, has considered joining the fray for sports rights, and has experimented with showing live soccer games on its own video platform.
Admittedly, every hurdle between audience and channel reduces that figure — so ESPN, which requires a cable subscription to access, only gets audiences of 13 million. Given the current extra layer of complexity required for consumers to get Instant Video on their TVs, it’s likely that the potential audience would be less that than ESPN can expect.
Of course, the big three networks can afford to spend billions on sports because they make that money back with ads. Amazon doesn’t air commercials, and would probably have to charge a pretty penny for an ad-free sports tier on Prime. Then again, if it did air commercials, it’d suffer a similar backlash to the one Netflix suffered at the mere rumor that it would bring ads into its shows.
Millennials, unfortunately, hate ads, and this has even affected NBC, a show that relies entirely upon promotional spots for revenue. Earlier this year, it conceded that such breaks are hostile to users and will reduce the amount of marketing clips in Saturday Night Live to win back younger audiences.
Source: Bloomberg
CBS All Access commercial-free option costs $4 more a month
CBS announced that its All Access streaming service was making the leap to Xbox One last week and now the network has another subscription option. If you like to watch the likes of Madam Secretary, Blue Bloods and more without the interruptions of commercials, you can pay more to get rid of them. CBS now offers a $10 monthly subscription that will allow you to stream all of that on-demand content commercial-free. That’s $4 a month more than the regular option that has been available since late 2014.
While paying monthly for a single over-the-air network’s shows may not be too enticing, there are a couple of originals that may get you to bite. The upcoming Star Trek: Discovery series will only be available on All Access alongside an unnamed The Good Wife spinoff. However, both of those shows won’t debut until next year. In addition to Xbox One, the CBS streaming service is available through Android, iOS and Windows apps or in your living room via Roku, Apple TV, Xbox 360, Chromecast, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV and the Fire TV Stick.
Source: CBS All Access
CBS All Access hits Xbox One
If you have been patiently waiting to try CBS All Access on your Xbox One, there’s good news. CBS has announced that its streaming service is now available on Microsoft’s console. It’s perfect timing for Xbox fans, as the anticipated January, 2017 premier of the All Access-exclusive Star Trek series is only months away.
CBS All Access is similar to Netflix and Amazon Prime in that it offers thousands of on-demand episodes from the network’s old and new shows, including The Good Wife, for $5.99 per month. So far, the company’s heavy focus on All Access is paying off as it announced last month that its streaming service has one million subscribers. Xbox One’s large consumer base will surely further add to that number. But, the only people that are still missing out on CBS’ on-demand online content are PlayStation 4 fans, and hopefully that gets rectified soon.
Source: CBS
AIVAnet 