CBS and Showtime have two million internet-only subscribers

While CBS is busy licensing content to Netflix for display outside of the US and Canada, here its own streaming services are off to a good start. On today’s earnings call, execs said CBS All Access and the streaming version of Showtime have combined to reach more than two million subscribers, with the number “about evenly split” between the two.

$CBS Moonves: “CBS All Access and Showtime OTT streaming services have surpassed two million subscribers”

— CBS IR (@CBSInvestors) July 28, 2016

This is all well ahead of the upcoming All Access-exclusive Star Trek series, and in response to questions, the company stated that its service is helping to reach customers who get their TV only over the internet. The demographic is apparently “younger, skews slightly female…and consumes double the amount of content” as traditional viewers. The CBS digital news channel wasn’t included in those numbers, but still had “record” views in June. CEO Les Moonves claimed Star Trek: Discovery will be profitable “even before it launches,” which makes it less likely we’ll see any changes made to the current strategy.

Source: CBS Q2 2016 Earnings

Netflix will air the new ‘Star Trek’ series outside the US

Netflix has announced that it’ll be the exclusive home of the brand-new Star Trek TV series, and will broadcast the show globally next year. When it was announced, CBS revealed that only the first episode would air on TV, with the rest of the episodes exclusive to the network’s own streaming service. But since CBS has no digital footprint outside the US and Canada, Netflix will bring the show to the rest of the world. It wasn’t long ago that Netflix also won the rights to all six existing Star Trek shows, which will be available in 188 countries around the globe. Each episode will arrive on the service within 24 hours of its arrival in the US, mirroring the distribution strategy for other high-profile shows where spoilers are a constant threat.

When CBS announced that the only way to get the new series was by coughing-up $5.99, it was slammed as a corporate cash-grab. It also raised concerns as to how users outside the US and Canada would be able to watch the show, if at all. Netflix’s presence allays those fears, and saves everyone else in the world from having to sign up to yet another streaming service. The fact that Bryan Fuller and Nicholas Meyer — who was involved with all the good Trek films — are now involved with the show means it’s time to be hopeful. Much like Star Trek: The Next Generation pioneered the first-run syndication model, it looks like the show will, once again, circumvent old broadcast models.

Source: Netflix

CBS News Launches New Apple TV App Designed Exclusively for tvOS

CBS today announced the launch of an all-new Apple TV app that will center around the network’s always-on, 24-hour “CBSN” streaming network and has been designed exclusively for tvOS. In addition to the live stream of CBSN, the app curates news stories and video playlists for each user based on previously watched videos.

The new app will also take advantage of the 4th generation Apple TV’s deep Siri integration, allowing users to tell Apple’s personal assistant that they want to “Watch CBS News” to immediately start a full-screen broadcast of CBSN. While the stream is playing, users can interact with other parts of the app to browse related videos, bookmark some to watch later, and begin subscribing to specific playlists and topics.

“Our Apple TV app represents the future of how viewers will consume and interact with video,” Christy Tanner, senior vice president and general manager of CBS News Digital, said. “We are taking advantage of the platform’s cutting-edge, interactive technology to offer a customizable experience.”

“The CBS News app on Apple TV delivers the full breadth of our original reporting and live, anchored streaming coverage combined with a layer of editorial curation, giving news consumers unprecedented flexibility and access to the stories they care about,” Nancy Lane, senior executive producer of CBS News Digital, said.

The launch of the news-focused app is timed to get users ready for coverage of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, according to CBS, which begin on July 18 and go through July 28. The network’s new tvOS app isn’t only politically-focused, however, with its daily coverage spanning most popular topics from entertainment and any currently breaking news.

Tags: CBS, CBS News
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CBS and Paramount release ‘Star Trek’ fan film guidelines

While Paramount and CBS’s lawsuit against Axanar Productions is still ongoing, the two studios have finally produced a set of guidelines meant to govern fan-made Star Trek productions in the future. While the guidelines might be a good start, and a sign that studios could be warming up to community input, they are still extremely limiting.

“[W]e want to show out appreciation by bringing fan films back to their roots,” the two studios wrote in an announcement. “The heart of these fan films has always been about expressing one’s love and passion for Star Trek. They have been about fan creativity and sharing unique stories with other fans to show admiration for the TV shows and movies. These films are a labor of love for any fan with desire, imagination and a camera.”

However, according to the guidelines themselves, Paramount and CBS would like those fans to keep their creativity limited to “less than 15 minutes for a self-contained story” or no more 30 minutes for a truly epic two-parter. Also: no sequels or additional seasons are allowed, so aspiring Trek writers will have to be careful about reusing their own original characters. Also, the material “must be family friendly” and cannot include “profanity, nudity, obscenity, pornography, depictions of drugs, alcohol, tobacco, or any harmful or illegal activity,” or basically anything else that might hurt the brand. (Which makes one wonder how “The Naked Now” ever got the green light at CBS.)

Aside from those creative restrictions, the new guidelines also limit fundraising to $50,000 and require indie filmmakers to use only officially licensed merchandise “and not bootleg items or imitations” as props and set pieces. Any fan films that make it through those production hoops will also have to distance themselves from the official productions with an obligatory disclaimer.

The guidelines, which have already been called “onerous” and “super uncool”, would obviously kill a production like Axanar, which pulled in $1 million in funding from a kickstarter campaign. But the production team remains unfazed. Today, the group fired back with another teaser trailer that flies in the face of these restrictions:

CBS names an exec to develop shows for its streaming service

Like it or not, CBS will be creating more series for its year-old streaming service. CEO Les Moonves promised the addition of “three to four original series per year,” starting with a new Star Trek show and a spinoff of The Good Wife. To keep things running smoothly, CBS has moved Julie McNamara from drama development at CBS Television — where she was already overseeing the two original All Access series — to a newly created position: Executive Vice President, Original Content, CBS All Access.

CBS won’t catch up to Netflix’s pace at this rate, but it does have a deep library of content that it owns to back the $6 per month service, plus live TV (in some areas). Adding a few originals could make it a very interesting competitor to the other streaming services — especially if back episodes of older series become harder to find elsewhere.

Source: CBS

Paramount and CBS are still suing the ‘Star Trek’ fan film

Although J.J. Abrams and Star Trek: Beyond director Justin Lin lobbied hard for the movie studio to drop their lawsuit against the crowdfunded Star Trek fan flick Axanar, Paramount is apparently ready to engage their lawyers once again. As the Hollywood Reporter notes, Paramount and CBS have told a California federal judge that their legal action against the makers of Axanar is still pending despite earlier statements indicating the two groups were close to reaching a settlement and guidelines for future fan films.

“Within the next few weeks it will be announced this is going away and fans will be able to work on their projects,” J.J. Abrams announced during a promotional event in May for the latest, official film in the franchise. Nearly a month later and both sides appear to still be locked in a legal standoff. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Axanar Productions filed paperwork seeking relief from the lawsuit just days after Abrams made his announcement, going so far as to include Abrams’ statements in their motion to dismiss. However, instead of filing an extension while they worked out the details, Paramount and CBS have filed a response to the production team’s counterclaim indicating the lawsuit is still moving forward and included a full accounting of every single one of the fan film’s individual copyright infringements.

Those lawsuits and countersuits might simply turn out to be legal maneuvering, but Paramount and CBS have been open about squeezing fans for money in the past. In an extensive longread about Star Trek’s complicated relationship with its fanbase Buzzfeed reporter Adam B. Vary notes that CBS head Les Moonves was upfront about why he was putting the forthcoming TV series on the network’s own $5.99-per-month streaming service. “[We] know there are so many millions of Star Trek fans that will pay for this,” Moonves told a media conference in February.

In the same piece, Vary also points out that the guidelines for fan-produced films that Paramount and CBS had promised are still “unclear” and the future of Axanar seems uncertain. On the other hand, Axanar Productions seems content to keep boldly going forward. Yesterday, the team dropped a new exclusive teaser on Facebook featuring some impressive special effects built before Paramount’s legal team hit them with the cease-and-desist. While a voiceover in the teaser promises to fight on against the “scourge of Klingon aggression,” the teaser itself ends with a disclaimer that the production is “not endorsed, or sponsored by, or affiliated with CBS/Paramount Pictures or the STAR TREK franchise.”