As 2023 wound down, the trade press was abuzz with news that Shari Redstone, heiress to Sumner Redstone’s National Amusements and the Paramount Global media empire, was entertaining various M&A proposals.

Paramount has long been seen as an M&A target destined to be gobbled up, or even broken up, by the larger players in the market. While some potential suitors might see the company’s Paramount Plus streaming platform as well as it’s popular FAST service Pluto TV as the crown jewels, others are eyeing some of the conglomerate’s TV assets, or its production studios and storied library.

The rumors turned out to be true. In April 2024, Paramount entered exclusive M&A talks with longtime Paramount Pictures partner David Ellison and his Skydance Media. As these talks advanced, Paramount's longtime CEO, Bob Bakish, was jettisoned, with the board replacing him with three executives: George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins, who now comprise what is called "The Office of the CEO." (Yeah, weird.)

Paramount's wild first week of May was capped by a rival M&A bid coming from Sony and private equity firm Apollo valued at $26 billion. 

So how'd we get here?

In early December 2023, news that Skydance Media and RedBird Capital Partners have been kicking the tires on Paramount Global drove the company’s stock up 12%.

Analysts love a good M&A rumor, and they turned out in force in the run-up to Christmas to speculate on what a deal might look like. 

Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall speculated that Skydance or RedBird might try to sell off Pluto TV, which could fetch $1.7 billion, or the company’s linear networks, worth about $16 billion, in order to focus on the company’s movie and TV studio business. 

Then, just before Christmas, Axios broke the news that Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav had an extended meeting with Paramount CEO Bob Bakish at Paramount’s New York headquarters to discuss a possible merger.

Warner Bros. Discovery might be looking at Paramount’s streaming assets to buttress its own Max streaming service. And because WBD does not own a broadcast network or television stations, there is some speculation that the deal might be able to pass FCC regulatory reviews, which undoubtedly pose a problem if Comcast NBCUniversal were to enter a bid since Paramount owns broadcast network CBS and some 28 TV stations, both CBS affiliates and independents, through its CBS Stations unit. 

On the other hand, both WBD and Paramount are saddled with debt and struggling to keep up with the leaders in the streaming race. Plus, Zaslav’s hands are tied until at least April because of a reverse Morris trust set up to reduce taxes when Discovery acquired WarnerMedia from AT&T in 2022.

Meanwhile, media mogul Byron Allen has made a $3.5 billion offer to buy Paramount Global’s BET division, and BET’s management have been in talks for a management buyout. 

Paramount indicated that it was willing to sell a stake in BET in early 2023, drawing interest from Allen, along with Tyler Perry and Sean (Diddy) Combs, but eventually called off the divesture after the bids fell short of the $3 billion the company was reported seeking for the unit at the time. 

There’s no doubt others will be circling Paramount in the coming weeks -- sizing up its various components and figuring out how to carve it up. And the future of Paramount Plus very much hangs in the balance. 

It’s unclear what other players could eventually emerge, but Variety recently noted that Redstone is hoping for other offers and “hopes to sell the company as a unit and not broken up in pieces.”

It’s not clear if that’s in the cards, but given Paramount Global’s corporate structure, any deal is bound to be a bit complicated. 

In addition to the Paramount Pictures film and television studio and the CBS Entertainment Group, the company also owns several cable channels, including BET, VH1, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, CMT, Paramount Network and Showtime. Internationally, the company owns Argentina's Telefe, Chile's Chilevisión, India's Colors, the United Kingdom's Channel 5 and Australia's Network 10.

Meanwhile, Shari Redstone’s National Amusements owns a 9.7% equity stake in Paramount Global, but it controls roughly 79% of the group’s voting shares, meaning that easiest and cheapest way to get control of the group is through National Amusements – a theater chain founded by Shari’s grandfather Michael Redstone in 1936. 

Streaming struggles

With 63 million subscribers (and growing) at the end of Q3 2023, Paramount Plus is well ahead of Peacock with roughly 30 million paid subscribers, but also well behind the much bigger streamers like Netflix with almost 250 million or Max with 95 million or Disney with 225 million DTC subscribers spread over Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus. 

But it’s been a struggle getting this far. In its 2022 Q4 earnings report released in early 2023, Paramount Global reported that losses on its direct-to-consumer business rose 15% to $575 million all but wiping out Paramount’s profits, which were down 99% from the previous year. 

The company stressed that it added 10 million streaming subscribers globally in the quarter, but by that point Wall Street had already grown tiered of watching subscriber numbers swell while losses mount and wanted to see a path to profitability.

In July, the company raised prices, and by Q3, Paramount Global had staunched the bleeding, reporting a third-quarter profit of $295 million, with the media conglomerate expanding its direct-to-consumer revenue by 38% and closing DTC losses for the year by more than 30%.

Paramount Plus gained 2.7 million subscribers in Q3 to reach 63 million. Revenue expanded by 61%, driven partly by the July $1-per-month price increase. Paramount Plus global ARPU expanded 16% year over year.

DTC ad sales also thrived in Q3 on Paramount Plus and FAST platform Pluto TV, up 18% to $430 million. In fact, the company predicted that it would hit streaming profitability in 2024.

On the company’s third-quarter earnings call, CEO Bob Bakish said that the company was also exploring the prospect of selling wholesale “hard bundles” of Paramount Plus on top of legacy linear network carriage deals. 

A landmark distribution deal between Disney and Charter Communications in September saw Charter score wholesale pricing of Disney Plus and ESPN Plus in order to bundle it with customers' programming packages. The deal broke the traditional mold for such carriage deals at a point where Charter seemed prepared to walk away from the table if Disney wouldn’t cut it some slack. 

Evidently, Bakish is keen to follow in those footsteps. Not only does such bundling reduce customer acquisition cost to next to nothing, Bakish said, it grows customer ranks and reduces subscriber churn.

But MoffettNathanson analyst Robert Fishman was skeptical of the strategy as it pertains to Paramount Plus, questioning whether Paramount Plus offers the same kind of "incremental value" to a standard pay TV package that Disney Plus does. 

Integrating Showtime

Announced in January 2023, one of the company’s key initiatives over the past year has been combining it’s Paramount Plus streaming platform with Showtime and rebranding the two as “Paramount Plus with Showtime” in an effort to broaden its streaming offering and compete for scale.

Paramount Global CFO Naveen Chopra reported early in 2023 that combining Paramount Plus with Showtime is expected to save the company $700 million annually.

The Paramount Plus with Showtime streaming bundle officially launched in June for $11.99 per month, replacing the $9.99 per month Paramount Plus premium tier. Meanwhile, the monthly price for the sans-Showtime Paramount Plus Essential plan rose by $1 to $5.99. 

The initiative culminated in January 2023 with the rebranding of Showtime’s linear cable channel as Paramount Plus with Showtime. The linear channel combines Showtime titles and select Paramount Plus original series.

Programming

During the prolonged dual strikes of 2023 that left streamers, cable channels and broadcast nets with a dearth of scripted content for the fall season, CBS was able to tap Paramount Plus originals to fill some of its primetime slots, which is also a great way to introduce viewers to the streaming platform -- “If you want more, check out Paramount Plus.” 

While it was more of a case of “making the best of a bad situation” rather than a “win-win” scenario, it will be interesting to see if this kind of cross-pollination and cross-promotion becomes the new normal, or if we see a return to more strict exclusivity.

For example, in October, Paramount Plus bowed a reboot of the popular comedy series Frasier. Five days later, the first two episodes aired on CBS. Similarly, CBS picked up the first two episodes of Taylor Sheridan’s Lawmen: Bass Reeves about a week after its streaming premier in November.

Prolific show-runner and producer Sheridan has emerged as one of Paramount’s star heavy hitters. The producer has delivered such hits as Yellowstone and its prequels 1883 and 1923, which stars Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren.

In March, news broke that Sheridan reportedly commands a cumulative annual production budget of $500 million at Paramount Global as part of his overall deal there. 

In November the company revealed that Sheridan is working on two more Yellowstone spinoffs with the working titles 1944 and 2024, the latter of which has been widely rumored to star Matthew McConaughey. 

Yellowstone first premiered in 2018 on Paramount’s linear cable network, Paramount Network and in 2020 NBCUniversal’s rival steaming platform, Peacock, snapped up the rights to the series. This leads to the awkward situation where subscribers can gorge themselves on the Paramount Plus spinoffs, 1883 and 1923, but to watch the original Yellowstone series, they’ll have to subscribe to a rival platform. 

Sheridan is also behind the Sylvester Stalone-starring mob drama Tulsa King and Mayor of Kingstown starring Jeremy Renner.

And in July, Paramount Plus bowed Sheridan’s Special Ops: Lioness starring Zoe Saldaña and Nicole Kidman. The series, inspired by an actual U.S. military program, stars Saldaña as a CIA agent attempting to balance her personal and professional life. 

Another crown jewel for Paramount Plus is the Star Trek franchise, which has spawned a slew of original spinoffs for the streamer, including Star Trek: Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy and Strange New Worlds. The platform also serves as a hub for all of the classic series, including The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager and Enterprise. 

Paramount Plus's sports offerings are based on the live games that air on CBS and CBS Sports Network, as well as a few exclusives, meaning that the streamer is able to offer NFL and college football, major soccer leagues, PGA Tour and college basketball, including the annual NCAA men's March Madness tournament.

Overall, a recent Reelgood audit found that, in its ongoing efforts to rein in costs, the streamer had trimmed its movie catalog back by 64% over the past year to roughly 830 movie titles. Meanwhile, Paramount Plus' TV show catalog was up 3% year over year to 752 series. 

In August, Paramount CFO Naveen Chopra said that the company aims to plan the Paramount Plus slate more "efficiently," getting away from what he called a "volume focused game."

Chopra added, “Our programming slate is designed to ensure that each key audience segment has compelling content to enjoy throughout the year. Not too little, but also not too much.”

However, a recent Ampere Analysis study found that Paramount Plus lags well behind frontrunners Disney Plus/Hulu, Netflix and Max in terms of hosting the most popular content.

Availability 

Paramount Plus is available on just about every device, including computers, Apple (TV, iPhone and iPad), Android (TV, phone and tablet), Google TV, Chromecast, Fire TV, Roku, Samsung TV, LG TV, Vizio TV, Xfinity and Xumo and Cox Contour, as well as PlayStation and Xbox.

Internationally, the service is available in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Europe, Latin America and Australia.

In December 2023, Paramount Plus finally rolled out in Japan through a partnership with local cable TV and broadband provider J:COM, as well as Japanese premium cable channel provider Wowow Inc., both of which offer the streaming service to their subscribers at no additional cost. 

The move came about 15 months after launching in South Korea, its only other Asian market. 

Promotional Offers

Paramount Plus has a long-standing marketing partnership with Walmart giving Walmart Plus subscribers a break on the price.  

Last March, the company partnered with Verizon to launch its streaming platform on Verizon’s Plus Play wholesale app market. 

In November, alongside an aggressive three-month Black Friday promo, the streamer also rolled out a special 10% discount for AARP members. 

ViacomCBS is set to launch a discounted $4.99-a-month version of Paramount Plus featuring limited advertising on June 7.

The new iteration will replace the $5.99 "Limited Commercials" version of the SVOD service, which was essentially a holdover of the legacy CBS All Access platform. Besides being slightly cheaper than the Limited Commercials, the new "Essential Plan" doesn't include a live feed from the user's local CBS station. 

Those who sign up for Limited Commercials ahead of June 7 will be able to keep their legacy plan, but ViacomCBS will stop selling it after that date. 

The conglomerate outlines the new iteration on this FAQ. 

Essential Plan users can stream more than 30,000 movies, TV episodes and original shows on demand with "limited commercials," ViacomCBS said. They can also stream "NFL on CBS" football games and Champions League soccer matches, live. They also get live 24/7 access to national news on CBSN.

The regular $9.99 a month version of Paramount Plus remains ad-free. And users can only download content for offline viewing via this tier. 

The Essential Plan launch comes only a few days after WarnerMedia deployed a $9.99 limited commercials version of HBO Max. 

Based largely on legacy CBS All Access user base, ViacomCBS said it finished the first quarter with 36 million subscription streaming customers.

There are a mountain of questions of about ViacomCBS’s plans to launch Paramount Plus, which might be the last big direct-to-consumer video service to enter the streaming wars.

Many of those questions will be answered soon. First, ViacomCBS will hold a streaming event for Wall Street analysts on Wednesday (Feb. 24). The service itself goes live in the U.S. on March 4. If you watched the Super Bowl, where Paramount Plus had four minutes worth of promo time, you might have heard about it.

Paramount Plus is a rebranded, super-charged version of CBS All Access. Dating back to 2014, CBS All Access was one of the first DTC products introduced by a company engaged in the pay TV universe. It found some success, exceeding expectations by growing to nearly 10 million subscribers, while offering its customers a combination of new and old CBS shows, original programming led by the Star Trek franchise
and sports, including CBS’s National Football League games.

ALSO READ: Roku's Tedd Cittadine: Gatekeeper to Streaming Success

As the rest of the TV industry pivoted to streaming, following Netflix’s lead, CBS and Viacom, both controlled by the family of aging media mogul Sumner Redstone (he died in 2020), were enmeshed in corporate intrigue that resulted in the two companies eventually being recombined at the end of 2019.

One of the rationales for the merger of CBS and Viacom was to build the firepower to compete in the streaming world where, as Redstone famously said, content is king. Having a lot of iconic TV shows and movies is important for keeping subscribers, but spending billions to create original content is what attracts new customers.

While The Walt Disney Co. went all in on streaming with Disney Plus in 2019, it’s still not clear that ViacomCBS is pushing all of its chips into the pot. It still might want to support the CBS Television Network, the Viacom cable channels and Showtime (which has its own streaming service). It also bought Pluto TV, an ad-supported free streaming service that is now an integral part of ViacomCBS’s streaming strategy.

“What we’re doing is progressively building a linked ecosystem of differentiated offerings across free and pay streaming,” ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish said in December at the UBS Global TMT conference. “And that ecosystem is centered on Pluto TV in free VOD and Paramount Plus and Showtime OTT on the pay side.” 

In the third quarter, ViacomCBS reported 17.9 million streaming subscribers, up from 16.2 million in the second quarter and 10.4 million a year ago. Combined with PlutoTV and other assets, domestic streaming and digital video revenue hit $636 million, up 56% from a year ago.

“Our domestic streaming and digital-video revenue is growing north of 50% and will generate $3 billion of domestic annual run rate revenue in Q4,” Bakish said. “Again, those are metrics you would invest in, and we’re going to invest in them.”

Netflix has 203.4 million global subscribers, while Disney’s streaming services combine for 146 million subscribers, including 94.9 million for Disney Plus, so Paramount Plus also has a mountain to climb.

Wells Fargo Securities media analyst Steven Cahall said his model forecasts ViacomCBS having 31 million subscribers in 2025. But he noted that the 57% increase in Viacom’s stock this year as of April 12, to $58.31 a share, implies that the market has a target of 56 million subscribers. Is that doable?

“It’s definitely a growing category,” Bakish told the UBS forum. “We see it continuing to grow. We do not believe it is a winner-takes-all market. We believe there’s a place for a number of streaming services to be successful. And in that kind of setup, this is why we believe in a differentiated approach, complementary approach. And in fact, we do have differentiated and valuable assets.”

In a survey conducted by Hub Entertainment Research this month, 42% of US TV consumers age 16-74 said they’d be very or somewhat interested in Paramount Plus after hearing a description of the service. Among 18-to-34-year-olds, interest was higher, at 51%. When asked what they considered to be the main strengths of the service they said they expected it to have high quality content, a wide variety of shows and movies, and a strong selection of their favorite shows.

Wall Street analysts and other industry observers will be listening as Bakish and his team provide more details to the strategy for building Paramount Plus. Here are some of the questions they want to have answered.

What will be the key franchises that Paramount Plus will use to lure new subscribers?

“Clearly they are pushing a lot of what is already on TV and in their catalog, including a live feed of CBS,” LightShed Partners partner and media & technology analyst Rich Greenfield said. “But the key question is, what are the must-have new franchises? When you look at Disney Plus, think Mandalorian or WandaVision. It’s not clear yet what the big franchise content will be to drive subscriptions.”

Leading up to the launch, Bakish has touted some new original programming including The Offer, about the making of The Godfather movie franchise; Lioness, a spy drama; Kamp Koral: SpongeBob’s Under Years, a new SpongeBob SquarePants series, and a Yellowstone prequel. Also coming are new versions of BET dramedy The Game, MTV reality staple The Real World, VH1 music docuseries Behind the Music and The Real Criminal Minds, a true-crime docuseries based on CBS’s scripted procedural.

How will ViacomCBS prioritize Paramount Plus versus its broadcast, cable and other streaming assets?

ViacomCBS licensed shows, including Showtime’s Ray Donovan, and films such as The Godfather to help launch NBCUniversal’s Peacock last July and sold the exclusive streaming rights to South Park in 2019 to HBO Max, which added other Comedy Central shows in October. 

Bakish told the UBS conference that “licensing is an important business.” He said the company doesn’t believe it “makes sense to keep all that content for only an owned-and-operated streaming service,” but added “our strategy is clearly evolving in a more O&O-based direction. In fact, the decisions we made at Paramount Plus, even though we don’t have it in the market, have already impacted our content licensing decisions.”

Will ViacomCBS put its movies on Paramount Plus?

AT&T’s HBO Max gained traction when the telco decided that its Warner Bros. studio would open all of its 2021 films simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max, starting on Christmas Day 2020 with Wonder Woman 1984. Disney has put some theatricals, such as Mulan and Soul, on Disney Plus, but is also putting some on premium video-on-demand on a case by case basis. 

Paramount Pictures has 12 films for 2021, including A Quiet Place Part II, Top Gun: Maverick, Mission: Impossible 7 and Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins. Paramount has already delayed the premiere of some films because of COVID, but others have been streamed.

SpongeBob: Sponge on the Run, originally slated for theaters, will be on Paramount Plus, and the Paramount Players label is going to be producing made-for-streaming content.

“I think the film category will continue to be strategic and valuable, but certainly is evolving,” Bakish told the UBS conference. “And again, that's giving us more flexibility, more optionality as we go unlock value for Paramount and for ViacomCBS writ large.” 

Can ViacomCBS make deals with distributors?

It turns out that after making plans to launch a streaming service, getting carriage on some of the key platforms can be a cliffhanger. HBO Max, launched last May, last didn’t make a deal with Amazon until November, slowing the new service’s growth.

The same goes for cable operators, who are slowly but surely making it easier for their subscribers to access streaming services without disconnecting from their set-top boxes.

It also helps when launching a streaming service, to make a deal to offer it free or at a discount on a mobile phone platform. Disney Plus got a boost from its deal with Verizon and Discovery Plus was counting on similar results from its Verizon deal. In a display of synergy, HBO Max is free to AT&T subscribers. 

ALSO READ: Streamers Look Outside the Lines

Bakish said ViacomCBS believes being distributed everywhere is important. “Our streaming strategy has also been based on ubiquitous distribution,” he said. “We have distribution through traditional operators. We have distribution through mobile operators. We have distribution through over-the-top players, whether that's channel stores or platforms.”

CBS All Access is now available via Roku, but a new agreement will be needed for Paramount Plus, said Tedd Cittadine, VP of content distribution at Roku.

“The successful streaming services we’ve seen take off over the last year have embraced an abundance mentality that recognizes the incredible growth-curve potential for their businesses through strong collaboration with their platform partners in all areas of the business such as user acquisition, customer retention, brand marketing, advertising and ad tech,” Cittadine said.

Exactly how that carries over to Paramount Plus will be a key to how fast it grows.

Will ViacomCBS’s technology support a bigger service and more advertising?

CBS All Access has been around for a while, so it has established that its technology is basically sound. “These days, the quality of the tech is not the first driver for subscribers,” Innovid chief technology officer and co-founder Tal Chalozin said. “It’s hard to say this platform is significantly better in terms of caching, or streaming technology or buffering, at least in the first 10, 20 million subscribers.”

Innovid has done a number of integrations with CBS All Access’s ad tech and Chalozin said the already hot connected-TV ad market will benefit from having more high-quality inventory. 

“With lower ratings in linear and cord-cutting, a lot more advertisers are jumping into the marketplace for CTV,” Chalozin said. “There is more demand than supply, so when a service launches like Paramount Plus that has a hybrid of ad and subscription, that’s good for the marketplace.”

Chalozin predicted that as the streaming market gets more crowded, there will be consolidation. It’s already happened with ad-supported streamers like Pluto TV and Tubi getting acquired. On the subscription side, he expects bundlers to step in to sell packages of streaming services. “CBS All Access was one of the first to team up with Amazon Channels,” he notes.

How much financial information will ViacomCBS disclose about how many subscribers it expects to attract, how much the service will cost and when it will break even?

When Disney decided to pivot to streaming in 2019, it called a special meeting for analysts and investors held at its Burbank studios. At the meeting, Disney unveiled what Disney Plus would look like, showed clips of the programming that would be on the service and introduced many of the people responsible for creating that content.

Disney also shared fairly detailed financial information with the analysts. It provided projections about how many subscribers it expected to attract, how much it would spend on programming, how much revenue would be lost because it wasn’t licensing content to others and when Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus would break even and start to generate profits.

The presentation helped make Disney stock a winner and shares have risen to record levels and Disney Plus has exceeded those initial forecasts.

“Disney has done a fantastic job on disclosure and sticking to it quarter in and quarter out,” MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson said.

Since the Disney Plus launch, NBCU has held a similar meeting for Peacock; AT&T did one for HBO Max; and Discovery Inc. held one for the launch of Discovery Plus earlier this year. The amount of detail varied and it remains to be seen how transparent ViacomCBS will be about Paramount Plus’s financial performance.

“I have suggested [a Disney-like] approach to Viacom and all my other companies,”
Nathanson said. “We should have a breakout of subscribers, RPU and revenues at the least. A P&L [profit and loss statement] is hard because of the way content is valued and sold intra-company … so at least we would love more revenue transparency.”  

ViacomCBS has $3 billion in cash on its balance before the sale of non-core assets, chief financial officer Naveen Chopra noted on its third-quarter earnings call in November. He said the company plans to use free cash flow to fund its streaming investments. 

Can Paramount Plus catch Netflix or Disney Plus?

Brian Wieser, the former analyst and now global president for business intelligence at GroupM,  thinks the streaming business is built on a fairly simple formula. 

“The thing that drives the business is your share of investment. Your share of spending on programming will generally drive your share of viewing,” Wieser said. “In an industry in which there's $100 billion of spending on programming, if you’re spending $5 billion on programming and all else is equal, you should expect about 5% of the viewership.”

Netflix spent about $17 billion on content in 2020 and is expected to spend even more this year. 

“If someone wanted to replicate Netflix’s success in terms of their audience share, it’s really quite simple,” Wieser said. “They just need to commit to spending as much as Netflix does on content.”

Wall Street has stopped worrying about signals that Netflix and Disney will continue to spend more money on programming to boost the numbers that seem to be driving stock prices. We’ll see how aggressively ViacomCBS wants to play the streaming game. 

Is Paramount Plus going to be repackaged and resold through the respective “channels” businesses of Amazon, Apple and Roku, or will it successfully gain direct-to-consumer independence on these company’s OTT device platforms, just as Netflix, Disney Plus and HBO Max have?

ViacomCBS, which is planning a full download of Paramount Plus deets on Feb. 24, hasn’t spilled the beans. But tech blog 9to5 Mac seems to be predicting which way the wind will blow. 

“Although not officially confirmed by either Apple or Viacom at this stage, it doesn’t seem like Paramount Plus will be offered as an Apple TV Channel inside the TV app. This means customers will instead have to download a third party “Paramount+” app from the App Store to access CBS content going forward,” the 9to5 Mac reported today.

Also Read: Paramount Plus Discounted by 58% for Current CBS All Access Customers

The report (er, conjecture?) follows the scuttling of an Apple TV Channels promotion, kicked off in August, that gave the Apple TV app’s users the ability to subscribe to ad-free CBS All Access (standalone priced at $9.99 a month) and Showtime ($10.99) for a bargain price of just $9.99. It was one of the better bargains in the streaming business. 

ViacomCBS is getting ready to replace CBS All Access with the bigger, broader, ostensibly better Paramount Plus on March 4. It’s a transition similar to the one WarnerMedia pulled off last year, when it added assets to the broader “Time Warner Inc.” assets purchased by parent company AT&T to HBO Now, and rebranded the service as “HBO Max.” 

As many of us are well aware, WarnerMedia had difficulty extracting HBO from Roku Channels and Amazon Prime Video Channels. By some estimates, more than half of all HBO Now subscriptions originated from Prime Video Channels, and Amazon was said to be reluctant to see a relationship that gave it a significant revenue cut, not to mention control of user data, go away. 

HBO Max, which launched May 27, didn’t get support as a standalone app on Amazon’s Fire TV platform until November. It didn’t get support for Roku until December. That stunted growth for HBO Max. As of the end of the third quarter last year, only 8.6 million of around 38 million total U.S. HBO subscribers had upgraded to the new “Max” experience. That number has now surpassed 17 million, with HBO Max now on the two biggest connected TV platforms. 

Can we infer what will happen with Roku and Amazon based on what Apple does? Questionable.

The pricey Apple TV device only controls about 2% of U.S. connected TV living rooms, according to Strategy Analytics research published last year. And Apple untethered the Apple TV app from the Apple TV device last year, allowing it to run on both Roku and Fire TV, among other gadget platforms.

At least in terms of OTT device ecosystems, Apple probably has less leverage to keep ViacomCBS confined to Apple TV Channels, since users of the top OTT device ecosystems, Roku and Fire TV, have other ways of getting the Paramount Plus app.

Notably, both Disney Plus and HBO Max debuted as standalone apps on Apple TV. Apple simply removed HBO from Apple TV Channels in May of last year. 

Those who signed up for the CBS All Access/Showtime bundle have been unaffected by Apple’s move so far, 9to5 Mac reports. It’s unclear what will happen once the March 4 transition occurs. 

Apple TV Channels still allows users to purchase apps including Epix, Acorn TV and AMC Plus. But offer is getting more and more niche, as media conglomerates pull the bigger apps. 

ViacomCBS is offering a steep discount of its soon-to-launch Paramount Plus subscription streaming service to current CBS All Access customers willing to pay up front for a full year. 

On March 4, ViacomCBS will upgrade CBS All Access much the way WarnerMedia transformed HBO Now into HBO Max, broadening a platform that includes mainly CBS local broadcast feeds, on-demand current and legacy network shows, and some originals, with the vast Viacom TV and Paramount film libraries. 

CBS All-Access customers who sign up for a full year of Paramount Plus right now will pay $29.99 ($2.50 a month) for the base version, and $49.99 ($4.16 monthly) for an iteration with no commercials. 

ViacomCBS is promoting this as 50% off the current $59.99 and $99.99 one-year price for Paramount Plus service. 

The conglomerate hasn’t announced Paramount Plus monthly pricing. But with the promo, CBS All Access customers are actually paying 58% less on a monthly basis for the $5.99 CBS All Access base tier, while getting a 59% break on the $9.99-a-month ad-free version. This article walks you through the steps.

Also read: Paramount Plus Gets March 4 Launch Date, but Questions Remain

Notably, the promotion only spans 12 months, so customers start paying the full freight in March 2022.

ViacomCBS is set to announce more details about Paramount Plus during a special investor event that will be held on Feb. 24, the day the conglomerate reports quarterly earnings. 

Among the key details we might find out: Will Paramount Plus seamlessly transition its application access on the two leading streaming devices, Roku and Amazon Fire TV? Current CBS All Access are supposed to see their apps magically transform to Paramount Plus on March 4. This plan would be pretty disrupted by any device blackouts, of course.

Also read: Paramount Plus Gets Big Chunk of Super Bowl Promo Time

ViacomCBS aggressively promoted Paramount Plus during Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast on CBS. The network committed 30% of the 29 house ads it ran during the big game, according to an analysis conducted by MediaRadar. 

ViacomCBS confirmed a March 4 launch date for the new Paramount Plus subscription service, but key distribution options remained a question. 

It was still unclear at press time whether or not ViacomCBS will have support for the Paramount Plus (Paramount+) app on the two biggest device ecosystems, Roku and Amazon Fire TV, from day one. 

ViacomCBS said it will release key details about the service, a major expansion of the five-year-old CBS All Access platform, at a Feb. 24 Q4 earnings event. 

CBS All Access has been aggressively sold through the “channels” on both Roku and Amazon. ViacomCBS said in November that it had 17.9 million customers combined across its subscription OTT channels, a grouping led by CBS All Access and the Showtime streaming service.

ALSO READ: Super Bowl to Stream on Multiple ViacomCBS Platforms

WarnerMedia suffered a major hangup in its quest to establish HBO Max as a standalone app on Roku and Fire TV without those channels as an outlet. HBO Max launched in late May, but didn't establish support for the No. 2 OTT device ecosystem, Amazon Fire TV, until November. It didn't launch on the No. 1 platform, Roku, until December. Both Roku and Fire TV tout more than 50 million active users. 

The Walt Disney Co. also had difficult negotiations with Amazon in its attempt to make Disney Plus a standalone app on the Fire TV platform, rather than have the service’s content disaggregated and resold through Amazon Prime Video Channels.

NBCUniversal launched its Peacock streaming service in July but did not gain Roku distribution until September and still is not available via Amazon
Fire TV.

Discovery, in contrast, launched the Discovery Plus SVOD service in January with support on all major platforms.

ViacomCBS reached a deal with Apple in the fall that allowed CBS All Access and Showtime to be resold through Apple TV Channels. 

Paramount Plus will also debut in Latin America on March 4, when Canada will see CBS All Access rebranded and expanded as Paramount Plus. The service will launch in the Nordics on March 25 and in Australia in mid-2021.

Drama Coyote, with Michael Chiklis playing a border patrol agent, starts on CBS All Access Jan. 7. Chiklis plays Ben Clemens, who is forced to work for the people he spent his career trying to keep out of the United States. “Now exposed to life on the other side of the wall, Ben will start to question his black and white views of the world, challenging his ideology and his loyalties,” in CBS All Access’ words. 

There are six episodes, all of which drop on premiere day. 

Juan Pablo Raba, Adriana Paz, Kristyan Ferrer and Octavio Pisano are also in the cast. 

David Graziano is showrunner and created the series alongside Michael Carnes and Josh Gilbert. They executive produce alongside Michelle MacLaren, Mike Richardson, Keith Goldberg, Rebecca Hobbs and Michael Chiklis. 

Graziano has worked on American Gods and Southland. “We set out to tell this story from a place of authenticity, capturing the charm and complexity of a Mexican border town and its people,” he said, noting the majority Latinx cast and crew. 

Chiklis played Detective Vic Mackey on The Shield. 

Coyote is produced by Sony Pictures Television and Dark Horse Entertainment.

The first week of 2021 will feature the debut of CBS All Access crime drama Coyote and the return of fantasy drama American Gods. 

Coyote, which was initially scheduled to debut on Paramount Network, debuts on CBS All Access Jan. 7 and stars Michael Chiklis as a border patrol agent who finds himself working for the people he spent his career keeping out of America, said the streaming service.

Debuting Jan. 10 on Starz is the third season of American Gods, which stars Ricky Whittle and Ian McShane and chronicles a war brewing between the Old Gods of ancient mythological roots and the New Gods of modern technology, said the network.

Also Read: 'American Gods' Renewed on Starz'

Below are video trailers and premiere dates for several shows debuting the week of Jan. 4 to Jan. 10 on cable networks and streaming services (for some videos, viewer discretion is advised):

Jan. 5 -- History of Swear Words (documentary) -- Netflix

Jan. 7 -- Go-Big Show (reality) -- TBS

Jan. 8 -- Herself (drama) -- Prime Video

Jan. 8 -- Dickinson (returning series) -- Apple TV Plus

Jan. 9 -- A Discovery of Witches (returning series) -- Shudder/Sundance Now

Jan. 10 -- Tiger (documentary) -- HBO

Cable distribution stocks overcame a scare earlier in the year — when the initial pangs of the pandemic drove shares down by double-digits — to finish 2020 up by more than 45%, while content stocks slipped as investors continued to weigh the impact of shifting to a streaming model.

Comcast, Charter Communications, Cable One and Altice USA all reported strong gains for the year. With just eight days left in the year, barring a meltdown of epic proportions, the sector will finish up 45.1%, lower than its 78% gain in 2019, but a healthy rise considering the pressures of COVID-19 and an uncertain economic outlook earlier in the year.

Cable One again led the pack with a 50% rise in its share price — Charter was second with a 33.5% increase — but all four stocks in the sector showed healthy double-digit increases. 

Comcast had the weakest performance of the distribution sector — 11.3% — but that was mainly because of its NBCUniversal content unit. Its cable division reported robust broadband growth. In Q3 it added 633,000 broadband customers, its biggest quarterly growth ever. Rounding out the admittedly short distributors list, Altice USA shares rose 32.1% for the year. 

“The trajectory of the cable industry over the past year is a simpler narrative. Up,” wrote MoffettNathanson principal and senior analyst Craig Moffett in a note to clients.

The full-year increases mark a big change in sentiment for the sector from earlier in the year. In the early days of the pandemic distribution stocks were hit hard. Altice USA fell 35% and Comcast, Charter and Cable One were all down around 20% each in the first quarter, a result of an overall decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and fears the economy would tank as COVID-19 spread across the country. 

Content stocks were also battered in Q1 with the sector down about 40% during that period. But unlike the distribution stocks — which rallied in the second half of the year — content companies, with the exception of The Walt Disney Co., continued to falter. 

Strong broadband growth — Comcast, Altice USA, Cable One and Charter all reported robust quarterly high-speed data customer gains in Q2 and Q3 — helped drive the stock up in later months. Not including Cable One, which actually saw its stock price rise 10% in Q1, the rest of the sector dipped 12% between January and March. But from then on, distribution stocks went on a tear, rising a collective 50% between March and December. (Cable One was up  35% during that same period. 

At the same time, content stocks that were not Disney continued to slide. Disney shares grew by 20% for the year — they rallied strong in the last three quarters of 2020 after a 33% Q1 decline — primarily on the back of its Disney Plus streaming service. Disney Plus has outperformed even the most optimistic expectations — it had 86.8 million global customers as of Dec. 10 and expects to have between 230 million and 260 million subscribers by 2024. Other content companies, most who unveiled aggressive streaming strategies earlier in the year — have yet to see the same effect.

ViacomCBS, which in June said it would launch an expanded version of its streaming service CBS All Access (renamed Paramount Plus) in 2021, saw its share price slip 14.3% for the year as investors appeared to be taking a wait and see attitude on the stock. An investor event to further detail those streaming plans is set for early next year. At Discovery, which unveiled a sweeping streaming strategy in December with its Discovery Plus product, the stock was down about 14% for the year. 

Other content companies with less pronounced streaming products — Fox and AMC Networks — also felt the sting of a lower stock price, with Fox shares down 24.2% and AMC dipping about 14.6% for the year.   

But cable operators, who were written off in prior years as pay TV subscriber rolls dwindled, found new life in their commitment to broadband service. While video subscribers are expected to continue to erode — Kagan, a unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence, has predicted pay TV will lose about 31.5 million customers by 2024 — broadband should continue to hum along, albeit at a slower pace. 

In a research note. Moffett predicted that the four top publicly traded cable operators (Comcast, Charter, Altice USA and Cable One) will add a combined 4.6 million broadband customers in 2020 (a 56% spike over the prior year). That pace will slow to 3 million additions by 2024. But Moffett stressed that he continues to be bullish on cable. 

Moffett noted that expansion plans by Charter and Comcast into the more rural part of their footprints, as well as Charter’s participation in the RDOF auction could help bolster broadband growth. Furthermore, rising profit margins and reduced capital intensity should help drive multiples for the stocks.

“In late 2019, we had argued that the market’s new heuristic will be to buy Cable at 9x and sell it at 12x,” Moffett wrote. “The COVID crisis only accelerated margin expansion, as more customers moved to self-installation and web-based self-service during the crisis. Even after two full years of upward revisions to margin estimates, the market consensus was too low in its forecasts for every one of the publicly traded cable operators in Q3.”

COVID-19 also helped accelerate the decline of video subscribers and the continued shift toward streaming services. While that is good news for pure-play distributors like Charter, Altice USA and Cable One, Comcast and AT&T, each with substantial content divisions, could see added pressure. 

AT&T has essentially thrown in the towel on distribution — its DirecTV unit has lost more than 6 million customers over the past x years — in favor of its HBO Max streaming service. For Comcast, the issue is a little more esoteric. 

Other analysts have called for Comcast to separate its distribution and content assets, either via a spin-off (more likely) or a sale (less likely). While Comcast has tried hard to show investors the value of its content units, declining affiliate fee revenue and a spotty ad market have added to the uncertainty. Comcast launched its own streaming service — Peacock — across the country on July 15 and as of Dec. 8 had 26 million customers. 

While streaming and virtual MVPDs have begun to take hold as the pay TV vehicles of choice for many consumers, analysts have warned there is a danger that subscribers will cancel their subscriptions once they finish binge-watching the most popular shows or their favorite sports' seasons end. Moffett estimated that a subscriber base that only stays with a service for 9 months out of 12 is the equivalent of losing 25% of its overall customers.  

“Again, this is a concern for media companies (yes, Comcast and AT&T) more than it is cable operators,” Moffett wrote. “Remember, the cable operators are infrastructure providers. As such, we’ve long argued that there are really only two risks to the Cable thesis: infrastructure-based competition to broadband, and regulatory risk.”

He added that infrastructure competition is mainly 5G offerings from wireless companies, which don’t appear to be an immediate threat. And regulatory concerns are minimal as well, with the main fear — a reclassification of broadband service to a Title II designation — increasingly unlikely. 

“...[W]e concluded that not only was a Biden Administration nothing to fear, it might actually turn out to be a positive for Cable. We still feel that way,” Moffett wrote. “...Cable still looks attractive as we enter 2021… notwithstanding fears of a possible broadband slowdown.”

Broadcasting + Cable's Kent Gibbons and Michael Malone talk about adapting Stephen King's The Stand, HBO's Bee Gees documentary, and Trevor Noah's pre-celeb days in the December edition of Busted Pilot.

The Stand begins on CBS All Access Dec. 17. Based on the Stephen King novel, CBS All Access calls the series “King’s apocalyptic vision of a world decimated by plague and embroiled in an elemental struggle between good and evil.”

The fate of mankind rests on the shoulders of 108-year-old Mother Abagail, played by Whoopi Goldberg, and a handful of survivors. Representing the side of evil is Randall Flagg, aka the Dark Man, played by Alexander Skarsgard.

New episodes drop weekly, culminating with a new “coda,” in the network’s verbiage, written by King. 

Benjamin Cavell, showrunner and executive producer, said King’s coda came to be after the author had seen a few screenplays and liked where the show intended to head. “When it was clear he was thinking, I trust these guys, our reaction was, do everything possible to make this happen,” said Cavell. 

The novel was published in 1978. Cavell said it has long bothered King that Frannie, who is played by Odessa Young, does not participate in the big face-off that gives the book its title. “Frannie is not one of the protagonists in the climax, in the showdown,” he said. 

King’s coda fit nicely with the project. “It really felt of a piece with the rest of it,” said Cavell. 

James Marsden plays Stu Redman and Jovan Adepo plays Larry Underwood. There are nine episodes. The limited series begins in Boulder, and the plague has decimated mankind. It then flashes back five months to Maine, as “flu season”, as one news report puts it, begins knocking people out. 

As time passes, nerdy teen Harold Lauder, played by Owen Teague, and Frannie, who used to babysit Harold, are the only ones left in their town after the plague, known as Captain Trips, has wiped out the population. They decide to head south to the CDC in Atlanta. 

Weighing in at 823 pages, the book is not for everyone. (An “uncut” one later published by King has 1,152 pages.) Cavell said he read it when he was 12. Many people have decided not to read it, based on The Stand’s size. But Cavell said he’d never heard of anyone who started it and did not finish. “For so many people, it’s intimidating and huge,” he said. “But once you start it, how do you put it down? It’s so propulsive.”

The Stand had Owen King, son of Stephen, on the set. He’s an accomplished author and screenwriter in his own right. “It was so freeing and reassuring to have a member of the King family there with us in the writers’ room,” said Cavell. 

Owen, he added, “is really smart about story and structure.”

Cavell, Taylor Elmore, Will Weiske, Jimmy Miller, Roy Lee and Richard P. Rubinstein are the executive producers. 

Are viewers up for watching a series about a pandemic taking over the nation? There’s lots of coughing and retching and and choking, and victims have fleshy, ginormous necks. The effects of the plague in The Stand are so dire that some might note that our current pandemic, dreadful as it is, isn’t as bad as the one in the series. 

Cavell has been at work on The Stand for years, dating back to a time when COVID was on no one’s mind. “One thing people can’t say about the series is that it’s not thought through,” he said. “We know what the book means to people. We know what it means to us.”

Digital streaming services will serve up several mid-December show debuts this week.

Netflix on Dec. 18 will premiere the much-anticipated original movie Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, starring Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman in his final role.  

Prime Video on Dec. 16 will bring back its sci-fi series The Expanse for a fifth season. (Amazon recently ordered a sixth season of the former Syfy show.) And CBS All-Access on Dec. 17 will premiere its horror-themed limited series The Stand, based on a novel of the same name by Stephen King, starring James Marsden and Whoopi Goldberg. 

Below are video trailers and premiere dates for several shows debuting the week of Dec. 14 to Dec. 20 on cable networks and streaming services (for some videos, viewer discretion is advised):

Dec. 14 -- Tiny Pretty Things (drama) -- Netflix

Dec. 14 -- Deliciousness (reality) -- MTV

Dec. 16 -- The Ripper (documentary) -- Netflix

Dec. 17 -- 4 Blocks (drama) -- HBO Max

Dec. 18 -- On Pointe (reality) -- Disney Plus

Dec. 18 -- Small Axe: Education (drama) -- Prime Video

The Stand begins on CBS All Access Dec. 17. Adapted from the Stephen King novel, the series looks at a world decimated by plague and a struggle between good and evil. 

Whoopi Goldberg plays Mother Abagail, Alexander Skarsgård plays Randall Flagg and James Marsden portrays Stu Redman. 

“We had a lot of updating to do to make a 42-year-old book feel relevant to our modern day,” Benjamin Cavell, showrunner and executive producer, said at a press event. “Little did we know how relevant it would come to feel.”

Cavell came on board three years ago, with no idea how relevant The Stand would become. But he sees it as more than a plague yarn. “Frankly, I’ve never regarded The Stand as really a book about a pandemic,” he said. “The pandemic in the book exists as a mechanism to empty out the world so that there can be this really elemental struggle between good and evil.”

Goldberg’s Mother Abagail represents the good. She drew on another one of her TV roles to inform her character. “It’s a person who is trying to get a whole bunch of people to do some things that maybe they don't believe in, they’re not sure,” Goldberg said. “Basically, I’m doing The View.”

Docuseries On Pointe is on Disney Plus Dec. 18. It’s a look at a season in New York’s renowned School of American Ballet. Students ages 8 to 18 from a wide range of economic and ethnic backgrounds chase their dreams as everyone rehearses for a production of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center. 

One does not have to be a fan of ballet to dig On Pointe. “The themes of the series are universal,” said Sara Bernstein, executive producer. “It’s about excellence and true dedication and young people chasing their dreams.”

Bernstein calls On Pointe “intimate and immersive.” The series is produced by Imagine Documentaries and DCTV, with Brian Grazer and Ron Howard among the exec producers. They didn’t set out to make a reality series, Bernstein said, but one “about watching the students’ lives unfold.”

Bernstein said Disney Plus was a perfect home for On Pointe. “They are looking for new and exciting documentary-type programing to appeal to the co-viewing audience they cultivate,” she said. 

The series is also a look at the parent-child relationships among these standout kids. “The parents are willing to commit themselves,” said Bernstein. “They are inspired by what they see in their children.”

For her, viewing the students in their dress rehearsals emerged as something of a highlight. “It’s magical to watch their excitement and their anticipation and their nervousness,” Bernstein said. “And also their professionalism.”

ViacomCBS said it is adding new features to CBS All Access for kids and families ahead of the streaming service being rebranded as Paramount Plus early next year.

CBS All Access is letting subscribers create as many as six profiles per account and manage each profile with “Kids Mode.” Kids Mode allows parents to limit access to programming for older or younger children based on content ratings. Parents can also use a PIN code to control access to mature content.

Related: ViacomCBS Sets Investor Event for Streaming Plans

At the same time, more library programming from the company’s Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. kids channels is being added to CBS All Access.

“We are thrilled to bring even more popular kids hits from Nick Jr. and Nickelodeon to the service, in advance of our upcoming rebrand as Paramount Plus,” said Rob Gelick, executive VP and general manager, streaming services and chief product officer, ViacomCBS Streaming. 

“We’ve already seen incredible growth in viewership since we began expanding our offering of children’s programming on the service,” Gelick said. “With today’s new product enhancements, like ‘Kids Mode’ and multiple profiles, we can create customized experiences for each member of the household, while giving our subscribers even more opportunities to discover and watch family programming together, and allowing parents additional peace of mind with the ability to further customize what programming is available to their kids.” 

The additional programming includes 800 episodes of Paw Patrol, Blaze and the Monster Machines, Blue’s Clues, Bubble Guppies, Dora the Explorer and Shimmer and Shine

All CBS All Access children’s programming is available commercial-free.

Comcast Cable said it will be distributing CBS All Access, the ViacomCBS streaming service.

ViacomCBS will be rebranding CBS All Access next year and Comcast will continue to carry it under its new name, Paramount Plus.

Related: Paramount Plus is New Name for ViacomCBS 'Super Streamer'

Comcast said its Xfinity X1 is the first pay TV provider to offer CBS All Access to their users. Comcast’ Flex broadband platform launched All Access earlier this year. 

As the pay TV industry goes through cord cutting, Comcast has been integrating streaming service into its Xfinity X1 platform, making navigating programming choices easier and boosting its value to consumers.

X1 already carries services including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Peacock, YouTube, Xumi, Tubi, Pluto TV and a host of others.

“X1 customers will be able to enjoy CBS All Access’ offering of more than 20,000 episodes and movies from BET, CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures and more, as well as exclusive original series like Star Trek: Discovery, with new episodes dropping weekly on Thursdays; the upcoming limited event series The Stand, premiering Dec. 17th and based on Stephen King's best-selling novel; as well as the recently debuted docuseries Texas 6, and many more,” said Rebecca Heap, senior VP, video and entertainment, Comcast cable, in a blog post 

“To launch the app and access the streaming service over the Internet, X1 customers can say ‘CBS All Access’ into the Xfinity Voice Remote,” she said.

TV networks will cook up a number of series premieres -- including reprises of two   classic franchises -- during the week of Thanksgiving. 

HBO on Nov. 26 will debut The Flight Attendant, a limited series that follows a young female flight attendant caught up in a murder mystery after she wakes up next to a dead man with no memory of what happened (see review).

Peacock on Nov. 25 will debut Saved by the Bell, a reboot of the classic 1990s comedy sitcom, while Disney Plus on Nov. 27 will premiere Black Beauty, a reimagining of the classic novel by Anna Sewell.

Below are video trailers and premiere dates for several shows debuting the week of Nov. 23 to Nov. 29 on cable networks and streaming services (for some videos, viewer discretion is advised):

Nov. 23 -- Black Narcissus (drama) -- FX

Nov. 23 -- Shawn Mendes: I Wonder (documentary) -- Netflix

Nov. 26 -- Texas 6 -- (reality) -- CBS All Access

Nov. 27 -- Small Axe: Lovers Rock (drama) -- Prime Video

Nov. 29 -- My Psychedelic Love Story (documentary) -- Showtime

That Animal Rescue Show, an unscripted series about the animal rescue community in and around Austin, Texas, premieres on CBS All Access Oct. 29. Filmmaker Richard Linklater produces the show. There are 10 episodes depicting  dogs, pigs, horses and other animals in need of a home. 

The docuseries “provides a window into this captivating world through moving, humorous and powerful stories of animals, the humans who love them and the inspiring, life-changing bond that occurs between people who have dedicated their lives to rescue and the animals who rescue them right back,” said CBS All Access. 

The project was hatched when Linklater rescued a bunch of pigs in Austin. Linklater’s films include School of Rock, Dazed and Confused and Boyhood. 

“The theme is, people rescue animals, and animals rescue people,” Guttentag told B+C. 

Linklater directs a couple episodes about the Body Positive Pig Pageant in Austin, celebrating swine of all sizes. Austin bands contribute to the series’ soundtrack. “It’s very authentic to the area,” Guttentag said. 

CBS Television Studios produces the show along with Linklater’s Detour Filmproduction, 1891 Productions and Dr. Phil McGraw’s Stage 29. Linklater, Bill Guttentag, Nayeema Raza and McGraw executive produce along with Jay McGraw and Julia Eisenman.

Unscripted series dominate the list of shows premiering as the calendar turns to November. 

Nat Geo’s City So Real debuts Oct. 29 and looks at the contentious 2019 Chicago mayoral election, while HBO’s documentary The Soul of America looks at the United States’ current political and historical moment by examining its past.

On the scripted front, Disney Plus returns its Emmy-winning series The Mandalorian for a second season on Oct. 30.

Below are video trailers and premiere dates for several shows debuting the week of Oct. 26 to Nov. 1 on cable networks and streaming services (for some videos, viewer discretion is advised):

Oct. 26 -- Temple (drama) -- Spectrum

Oct. 29 -- A Creepshow Animated Special (horror) -- Shudder

Oct. 29 -- That Animal Rescue Show (reality) -- CBS All Access

Oct. 29 -- Top Secret Videos (reality) -- truTV

Oct. 30 -- Justin Bieber: Next Chapter (reality) -- YouTube

Oct. 30 -- Truth Seekers (horror/comedy) -- Prime Video

Deutschland 89 starts on SundanceTV Oct. 29. Martin Rauch is in limbo during the peaceful revolution around him in Germany. Pursued by Western spy agencies and the KGB, Martin, played by Jonas Nay, is determined to finish his final job. 

Anna and Jorg Winger created the show and executive produce. Jorg said production was completed when COVID hit, but the virus meant editing happened at three separate apartments in Berlin. 

His source material for the show includes a book called The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall by Mary Elise Sarotte. Deutschland touches on how Germany has reinvented itself a number of times over the years, including stints as a communist, fascist and democratic nation. “I don’t know how many countries there are that went through so many changes,” Winger said. 

Deutschland 83 came out in 2015, Deutschland 86 arrived in 2018 and Deutschland 89 is here now. “I always pitched it as a trilogy,” Winger said. “There are too many series that go on too long.”

The final season “has many colors,” said Winger — a spy show with serious drama roots and a bit of humor, too. “We always wanted to mix the genres,” he said. 

Anna Winger is also behind the Netflix series Unorthodox. With Deutschland behind them, the Wingers can focus on their new projects. “Our 11-year-old asked if we ever talk about anything but work,” Jorg said. 

Also on Oct. 29 is That Animal Rescue Show on CBS All Access. About the animal rescue community in Austin, Texas, the docuseries features dogs, pigs, horses and other animals in need of a home. 

“The theme is, people rescue animals, and animals rescue people,” said Bill Guttentag, executive producer. 

His fellow exec producers include Dr. Phil McGraw and filmmaker Richard Linklater, whose movies include Dazed and Confused and School of Rock. Linklater has rescued a bunch of pigs, and saw some great stories in the world of animal rescue. His goal for That Animal Rescue Show? Ten episodes that could work as shorts at Sundance, said Guttentag. 

Linklater directs a couple episodes about the Body Positive Pig Pageant in Austin, celebrating swine of all sizes. 

Loads of Austin bands contribute to the series’ soundtrack. “It’s very authentic to the area,” Guttentag said. 

That Animal Rescue Show arrives at the right time, believes Guttentag. The nation may be divided on political issues, but most of us can agree on our love of animals. “We’re all looking for respite from all the horrible stuff around us,” he said. “The show is a balm for these troubled times.”

The Halloween season is in full swing as several horror-themed content make their debut this week.

Prime Video will debut its original movie Evil Eye on Oct. 13 while Hulu will deliver its Marvel Comics-based series Helstrom (pictured) on Oct. 16.

Also on the docket this week is the Oct. 15 debut of the third season of CBS All Access drama series Star Trek: Discovery.

Below are video trailers and premiere dates for several shows debuting the week of Oct. 12 to Oct. 18 on cable networks and streaming services (for some videos, viewer discretion is advised):

Oct. 12 -- Mystery Road (drama) -- Acorn TV

Oct. 15 -- Des (miniseries) -- Sundance Now

Oct. 15 -- Lennox Lewis: The Untold Story (documentary) -- Crackle

Oct. 15 -- Social Distance (drama) -- Netflix

Oct. 16 -- Grand Army (drama) -- Netflix

Oct. 16 -- The Trial of the Chicago 7 (movie) -- Netflix

Oct. 17 --David Byrne’s American Utopia (documentary) -- HBO

With ViacomCBS in the process of broadening and rebranding CBS All Access into “Paramount Plus,” the man in charge of the streaming service used the forum provided by Future Media’s Fall TV 2020 virtual conference to explain the marketing rationale 

"Few brands within our company have the kind of resonance" that Paramount does, said Marc DeBevoise, CEO of CBS Interactive. Paramount, he explained, conveys "big, broad entertainment. It means 'curtain-raiser.'"

The shift to Paramount Plus doesn’t mean that ViacomCBS is giving up on the CBS brand name. The objective, however, was to find an umbrella name like Paramount Plus that lacks "specificity," and can serve as an umbrella not only to CBS, but Nickelodeon, BET, MTV and all the other brands that are not entering the SVOD service’s broadened portfolio of programming brands. 

Also Read: Fall TV 2020: Pluto TV and Tubi Founders on Early VC Disinterest: 'All They Watched Was "Game of Thrones"'

“We had to find something that could sit as a uniting brand on top of them all,” DeBevoise explained. 

DeBevoise, who was interviewed by Fall TV 2020 exec producer Tim Hanlon in a virtual one-on-one Thursday, reiterated ViacomCBS’ earlier stated timeline—CBS All Access won’t officially change its name to Paramount Plus until the first quarter. And most of the reconfiguration of the platform will debut during that time, as well. 

However, he noted that some of the transformation already started in August, when 3,500 TV episodes from the Viacom part of the recent ViacomCBS remarriage joined the CBS All Access portfolio. 

In the half-hour interview, DeBevoise also touched on the relationship between Pluto TV and Paramount Plus—the AVOD platform will be kept separate, as much of its large programming portfolio comes from outside the ViacomCBS library. 

DeBevoise also discussed new original series that will bow amid the relaunch of Paramount Plus. Among the shows will be, The Offer a scripted drama about the making of The Godfather; the Taylor Sheridon-created spy drama The Lioness; and a relaunch of venerable VH1 series Behind the Music. 

Notably, Paramount Plus will be the steaming home of the venerable kids series SpongeBob SquarePants, with the series’ latest theatrical movie iteration bypassing the COVID-hamstrung movie exhibition business and going straight to SVOD. 

It was back in the fourth quarter of 2011 that SpongeBob-dependent Nickelodeon ratings cratered suddenly, with Viacom officially tracing the drop to kids—seemingly overnight—discovering reruns of the show on Netflix streaming.

As the lockdown has sent streaming-video usage skyrocketing, one big question has loomed: how will ViacomCBS make CBS All Access relevant to more than ardent Star Trek fans in a suddenly far more competitive and strategically vital sector? 

For months now, ViacomCBS executives have been promising a “house of brands” revamp of its streaming strategy, with three tiers of online services: free, broad-pay and premium pay. 

Also Read: ViacomCBS Officially Announces Major Expansion of CBS All Access

During the company’s May earnings call, CEO Bob Bakish pulled back the veil a bit, promising to “capitalize on our position across free and pay, adding substantial content assets and user experience enhancements supported by marketing to serve consumers with a robust, differentiated suite of linked streaming offerings.”

Those would include in some fashion the company’s premium service, Showtime, its broadcast network, CBS, various news and sports online networks, free ad-supported Pluto, Viacom’s family of basic cable stalwarts, and movie studio Paramount. The media conglomerate also promised an international expansion. 

A significant revamp of CBS All Access certainly is in order. CBS All Access launched in 2014, in a very different time and with little market interest. It got a boost in 2017, when it added NFL games and launched its first original Star Trek show, Discovery. 

Last year, after CBS and Viacom re-merged, CBS All Access added Nickelodeon children’s programming, an expansion well-timed ahead of the pandemic. 

But the core of the CBS All Access service has remained limited: live streams from the network’s various divisions, back episodes of current CBS shows and hundreds of older series such as Cheers, Mission: Impossible, Perry Mason, Twin Peaks, The Twilight Zone, Taxi, and I Love Lucy. Late night, reality and other programming, plus some related online content are on offer. And of course, there’s lots more Star Trek, led by the well-received Picard, featuring Patrick Stewart in a twilight-of-the-gods reprise of his iconic role. 

All that has boosted CBS All Access to 13.5 million subscribers, a nice number in the old days of streaming. But we’re no longer in the old days. Streaming video has changed dramatically the past six months, including:

• Netflix added nearly 16 million subscribers last quarter, pushing it to 183 million worldwide, roughly 13.5 times larger than CBS All Access.
• Amazon Prime now has 150 million subscribers, all of whom get free access to Prime Video (though previously, only about half took advantage of that access). 
• Disney Plus has grabbed 50 million subscribers since it launched in November, and is now expanding internationally.
• Apple TV Plus, despite a more subdued November debut, still has more than 33 million subscribers, and reportedly is now in the market for library content that it previously eschewed. TV Plus also just bought a Sony film, the Tom Hanks WWII drama Greyhound, for $70 million. For comparison, Bloomberg reported that that CBS All Access content budget this year totaled $800 million.
• HBO Max launches this week, featuring AT&T/Warner Media’s version of a house of brands approach, built atop HBO’s storied library, bolstered with Warner Bros. and MGM films, CNN, Turner Broadcasting sports and series and Warner TV series including Friends.
• Fox bought Pluto competitor Tubi for $440 million, after selling its stake in Hulu to Disney, which is reshaping that service with FX content and an attractive streaming bundle that also includes Disney Plus and ESPN Plus.
• NBCUniversal, which previously bought ad-supported Xumo, scooped up movie-centric service Vudu from Walmart to pair with Fandango. And NBCU’s freemium take on the house of brands approach, Peacock, goes wide in July after debuting last month for Comcast broadband subscribers 

Rebranding

“These events… indicate streaming video has hit the inflection point between streaming as an early adopter/fast follower behavior or a niche add-on to traditional TV and streaming as a mainstream element of the media industry,” Forrester principal analyst Jim Nail wrote.

Amid all that, CBS All Access must be a lot smarter if it wants to attract anyone outside the Star Trek universe. 

It’s the latest rejiggering challenge for Bakish, who first made his name transforming Viacom’s international cable channels, then doing the same to the rest of Viacom as interim CEO, where he focused on six core brands and made a string of digital acquisitions. 

Also Read: ViacomCBS Expanding Star Trek Franchise

Majority shareholder Shari Redstone was so pleased that she gave Bakish the permanent CEO job first at Viacom, and then at ViacomCBS.

Now Bakish must reorient a polyglot batch of free, subscription and premium networks into a more rational and comprehensive offering that can succeed amid the streaming universe’s new realities. 

The company has remained relatively mum on details, but executives have signaled that the new CBS All Access, which will be rechristened "Paramount Plus", will include content from MTV, BET, Smithsonian Network, Comedy Central, the Paramount Network, and still more Nickelodeon shows.

They’re also adding in 100 Paramount films, including Oscar winners such as The Godfather, Terms of Endearment and An Inconvenient Truth, along with other favorites such as Patriot Games, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? and, of course, Star Trek movies. 

It’s not clear yet how the coming revamp will incorporate content from Showtime, Pluto, CBS News 24/7 and CBS Sports, among other assets.

Programming

ViacomCBS is also aggressively pursuing some high-profile projects. It won what the Hollywood Reporter called a “massive bidding war” for the expensive rights to turn one of the feel-good hits of the lockdown--John Krasinski’s Some Good News webcast—into a multi-platform addition to its channels. 

The revamped show—Krasinski will remain as an exec producer and have some on-air presence but no longer host—will get its first window of distribution on CBS All Access, before moving to “a number of the company’s linear networks.” 

It was one of the first deals for new CBS Entertainment Group president George Cheeks since replacing Joe Ianniello. Importantly, Comedy Central Productions took an ownership stake and will produce the show and related short-form digital material.

That Krasinski’s show ended up with ViacomCBS isn’t surprising: His Amazon Prime series, Jack Ryan, is produced by Paramount TV, and his hit horror feature, A Quiet Place, was distributed by Paramount Pictures.

But the new deal demonstrates the potential power and reach that ViacomCBS can muster when it’s focused. It’s telling, however, that the needed focus isn’t yet razor sharp.  

For instance, in March, after the lockdown blocked theatrical release of The Lovebirds, Paramount sold the project to Netflix, where it just debuted.  

Paramount previously unloaded Martin Scorsese’s hugely expensive opus, The Irishman, as well as J.J. Abrams project The Cloverfield Paradox and a planned Beverly Hills Cop sequel, among other projects. 

As well, Netflix partnered with Paramount to finance and make Star Trek: Discovery, in exchange for that show’s rights everywhere but the U.S. market. 

The Netflix deals have allowed Paramount to dodge risk, while giving Netflix noteworthy additions to its library. 

But it seems unlikely that risk-reduction strategy remains in place after the debut of a revamped CBS All Access. 

As a smaller media company competing against trillion-dollar giants, the last thing Bakish and ViacomCBS can afford is anything but a laser focus maximizing every corner of the combined company. All Access will have to truly live up to its name to thrive in this new era.

ViacomCBS, which has been working to turn CBS All Access into a “super” streaming service, said it will roll out next year under the Paramount Plus brand.

The Paramount brand has long been synonymous with films and more recently has been the name used for Paramount Network, a cable network formerly known as Spike TV, TNN, The National Network and The Nashville Network.

CBS got into the streaming game early with CBS All Access and Showtime OTT, which had 16.2 million subscribers combined as of June 30. Now ViacomCBS is trying to make a bigger splash and compete against more established competitors, ranging from Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu to Disney Plus, HBO Max and Peacock.

Paramount Plus will feature a broad range of programming from the company’s current businesses, including news, sports and entertainment. ViacomCBS announced five new original series that will be added to its roster by the time it launches in the U.S. early next year.

At this point Paramount Plus is expected to cost the same as CBS All Access and, like CBS All Access, have ad supported and ad free versions.

ViacomCBS plans to launch Paramount Plus internationally as well in 2021, with the first markets being Australia, Latin America and the Nordics.

“Paramount is an iconic and storied brand beloved by consumers all over the world, and it is synonymous with quality, integrity and world-class storytelling,” said ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish. “With Paramount Plus, we’re excited to establish one global streaming brand in the broad-pay segment that will draw on the sheer breadth and depth of the ViacomCBS portfolio to offer an extraordinary collection of content for everyone to enjoy.”

The newest original series ticketed for Paramount Plus are:

The Offer, a scripted limited event series from Paramount Television Studios based on Oscar winning producer Al Ruddy’s experiences making The Godfather.

Lioness, a spy drama based on a real CIA program, follows a Marine recruited to befriend the daughter of a terrorist. The series is produced by Paramount Network and 101 Studios.

Behind The Music--The Top 40, a new version of the memorable MTV series, looks at the 40 biggest artists in MTV’s 40 year history. The series is being produced by Creature Films and MTV Studios.

The Real Criminal Minds, a docuseries based on the CBS TV series, produced by XG Productions in association with CBS Television Studios and ABC Signature.

The Game, a revival of the BET series, from CBS Television Studios and Grammnet Productions.

ViacomCBS had previously announced that the new service would feature SpongeBob SquarePants content including the new Kamp Koral from Nickelodeon and the SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run.

It will also have CBS All Access shows such as The Good Fight, The Twilight Zone, and the latest iterations of Star Trek, including the upcoming Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

The company said it plans to continue to develop new original series from BET, CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon and Paramount Pictures leading up to the launch of Paramount Plus.

ViacomCBS began expanding CBS All Access this summer and said August was one of its best month ever in terms of signing up new subscribers. The average age of new subscribers in August was younger than the service’s average.

“The response from consumers in just the early weeks of the service’s expansion already illustrates the tremendous opportunity ahead of us in bringing these phenomenal ViacomCBS brands together in one premium streaming home under the new Paramount+ name,” said Marc DeBevoise, chief digital officer, ViacomCBS and CEO of ViacomCBS Digital. “With the addition of even more content from across the portfolio as well as the new exclusive originals we are announcing today, we look forward to the early 2021 rebrand and bringing existing and new subscribers more of the compelling, genre-spanning live sports, breaking news and mountain of entertainment ViacomCBS has to offer.”

The soon-to-expand CBS All Access SVOD service has renewed its distribution agreement with Amazon, Bob Bakish, CEO of parent company ViacomCBS, said Wednesday. 

"They continue to be an excellent partner for us, and we for them,” Bakish said, while being interviewed at the Bank of America Virtual Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference by analyst Jessica Reif Ehrlich.

CBS All Access is distributed by Amazon through its Prime Video Channels service, with Amazon disaggregating the streaming service within its Prime Video app and controlling the customer relationship and billing. The SVOD service, along with its paywalled sibling, Showtime, are also supported by the Amazon Fire TV connected TV device ecosystem. 

Related: Analyst Raises ViacomCBS Outlook Based on Streaming Potential

ViacomCBS entered into a similar re-distribution agreement recently with Apple, to package CBS All Access as a channel via the Apple TV app, and support the service’s app on Apple hardware, including Apple TV devices. 

“We have partnerships with Apple, with Amazon, with Comcast, with Verizon, Vizio just to name a few,” said Bakish, who conspicuously paid no reference to the biggest connected TV platform operator of all, Roku. (Bakish's quotes were taken from a Seeking Alpha transcript.)

Could the Roku omission have import for CBS All Access?

AT&T and WarnerMedia were notably unable to come to distribution terms with Roku when they similarly expanded and transitioned legacy SVOD service HBO Now into HBO Max. And Comcast and NBCUniversal have similarly been at odds with Roku over Peacock. 

Updated: A CBS Interactive rep said it was "conjecture" to read anything into Bakish's comments, or lack thereof, in regard to Roku, noting that CBS All Access has had, and continues to have, a distribution partnership through Roku and its "channels" initiative. 

The rep would not confirm, however, that distribution is guaranteed to stay in place once ViacomCBS launches what Bakish referred to as the "super streaming service" version of CBS All Access. 

“We'll rebrand All Access and have a significant marketing campaign,” Bakish said. “We’re also expanding the original slate significantly to cover all of the brands.”

He noted that CBS All Access has already added 190 Paramount movies, as well as 3,500 episodes from Viacom TV series. 

“The end result," he added, will offer consumers “a broad and differentiated product at a compelling price point. It's going to have wide demographic appeal [to] kids, young adults, millennials, older adults. It's going to have a very robust offering of entertainment, plus sports and news. It's going to benefit from franchise IP, and our substantial marketing assets."

Bakish said CBS All Access and Showtime, as well as AVOD platform Pluto TV, will be kept separate in a “link ecosystem.” 

“We believe this approach serves the broadest set of consumers’ needs and therefore the largest consumer base. It enables the most ubiquitous distribution, and we've learned over time ubiquitous distribution is extremely powerful,” he explained. 

Bakish added that CBS All Access and Showtime, which touted a combined 16.2 million subscribers as of the end of the second quarter, will surpass 18 million by the end of 2020. 

He also predicted that free-to-consumer service Pluto TV, which has 26.5 million monthly active users at the end of Q2, will surpass 30 million MAUs. 

Wells Fargo Securities media analyst Steven Cahall raised his outlook on ViacomCBS Thursday from “Underweight” to “Equal Weight” and increased his 12-month price target on the stock to $30 per share from $19 per share, citing the programmers aggressive moves in the streaming video space.

ViacomCBS stock has been down considerably this year -- it was up about 1% in late trading Aug. 27 to $28.27 each, but is down more than 30% since January -- as declining subscribers and a sluggish ad market have hurt all programmers. In a note to clients, Cahall said there is opportunity in ViacomCBS’ plans to focus more on direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming services like its Pluto TV, CBS All Access and Showtime, and centers its business on a House of Brands strategy.  

“We’re not yet bullish on the stock but a more aggressive DTC strategy or merger activity would get us there,” Cahall wrote.

ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish unveiled the House of Brands initiative in February, vowing to expand its CBS All Access, Showtime and Pluto TV offerings by adding its own film and television assets via on-demand and live experiences, and would partner with traditional and new distributors both domestically and internationally. 

Cahall broke down each initiative in his report, adding that he believes rebundling into a House of Brands could reduce churn and be more aggressive on pricing. He estimated a House of Brands streaming product could retail for $10-to-$15 per month, adding that a sub-$10 price point would likely attract more customers. 

“...[I]f it’s closer to $15 then the launch may be less enticing for consumers,” Cahall wrote.

Adopting that strategy would mean ViacomCBS would have to forego content licensing revenue, which Cahall saw as a next step. 

“To take DTC to the next level, we want to see [ViacomCBS] cease licensing marquee Paramount and Showtime content to competitors and stop feeding services like Netflix with originals,” Cahall wrote. “Our upgrade contemplates [ViacomCBS] using divestiture cash to wean itself from licensing. 

But Cahall believes the focus on DTC could substantially boost revenue. He estimated DTC subscribers to CBS All Access, Showtime, Noggin and BET + would rise from 11.2 million in 2019 to 26.6 million by 2025. Total digital subscription revenue from those services would jump from $779 million in 2019 to $1.5 billion in 2025.  

Ad-supported Pluto TV would see advertising revenue increase from $660 million in 2019 to $2.2 billion by 2025, according to Cahall’s estimates.   

Cahall also believes that Viacom should investigate selling off some non-core assets, a move that some believe is more feasible after the death of its former chairman and largest shareholder Sumner Redstone.  ViacomCBS vice chair Shari Redstone, according to some analysts (Cahall included) is believed to be more open to selling off assets than her late father.

The analyst added a combination with Discovery Inc., “is a deal that both companies should be considering.”

The Stand, based on the Stephen King novel about a world decimated by plague, begins on CBS All Access Dec. 17. The nine episodes will drop weekly on Thursdays. Whoopi Goldberg, Alexander Skarsgard, James Marsden and Odessa Young are in the cast. 

“The fate of mankind rests on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abagail (Goldberg) and a handful of survivors,” said CBS All Access. “Their worst nightmares are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg (Skarsgård), the Dark Man.”

The Stand will close with a new coda written by King, who published the novel in 1978.

Benjamin Cavell is showrunner and executive producer. 

“During the two years we spent making The Stand, we all felt the responsibility of adapting what may be the most beloved work of one of the world’s most beloved storytellers, but none of us could have imagined that Stephen King’s 40-year-old masterpiece about a global pandemic would come to be so eerily relevant,” said Cavell. “We’re honored to tell this sprawling, epic story, including a new coda that Stephen King has wanted to add for decades. We’re so proud of this show and its attempt to find meaning and hope in the most uncertain of times. We can’t wait to share it with the world.”

Several King books are being turned into television series, including Chapelwaite on Epix and The Outsider on HBO. 

The series is produced by CBS Television Studios. Cavell executive produces alongside Taylor Elmore, Will Weiske, Jimmy Miller, Roy Lee and Richard P. Rubinstein. Josh Boone serves as director and an executive producer for the series premiere and final episode. 

Apple TV Plus subscribers can now also purchase a bundle of ViacomCBS SVOD services CBS All Access and Showtime at a combined price of $9.99 per month.

That price, offered through the channels feature in the Apple TV app, represents a 52% break over purchasing the $9.99 commercial-free version of CBS All Access and the $10.99 iteration of Showtime’s streaming service a la carte. 

Also read: Apple TV Plus to Bundle CBS All Access and Showtime at Discount

Priced at $4.99 a month, the Apple TV Plus streaming service has struggled in its first 10 months out of the gate, with its original-content-focused library hampered by pandemic-related production delays. Pricing incentives tied to other SVOD products certainly could not hurt. 

CBS All Access and Showtime now appear under the "More Channels" banner within the Apple TV app, alongside not only Apple TV Plus, but also the SVOD iterations of Epix and Starz, among other channels. Everything from billing to playback of the ViacomCBS services is disaggregated through Apple TV. 

"It’s great to be able to reach so many viewers with an offer that delivers our premium content through the Apple TV app," David Nevins, the CBS chief creative officer and Showtime chairman and CEO, said in a release. 

Added Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior VP of Internet Software and Services: “Apple TV Plus gives you access to award-winning Apple originals, with more high-quality series and movies being added each month. This bundle is a big bonus for Apple TV Plus subscribers, giving them the best of CBS and Showtime on the Apple TV app at a great value.”

Added Marc DeBevoise, ViacomCBS’s chief digital officer and ViacomCBS Digital’s president and chief executive officer: “There’s no better time to launch this special bundle. CBS All Access has recently expanded to now have 20,000+ episodes and movies for fans to enjoy, plus a great slate of new content from exclusive original series, like Star Trek: Discovery and The Stand, to new programming from CBS like Big Brother, Love Island and more.”

Apple has reportedly entered into an agreement to resell ViacomCBS's two SVOD services, CBS All Access and Showtime, at a steep discount through its Apple TV app. 

Bloomberg reports that Apple will resell CBS All Access and Showtime streaming in an Amazon Channels-like play. The bundle for the two SVOD services would run $9.99, a steep discount over the combined price of Showtime ($10.99 standalone) and CBS All Access ($9.99 in its no-advertising configuration).

Also read: ‘Apple One’ Initiative Seeks to Bundle Services like Apple Music and Apple TV+

Ostensibly, since Apple is reselling CBS All Access, the ad-supported $6.99 tier would be off the table. (It'd be mighty hard for Apple and ViacomCBS to negotiate how to split those ad dollars, wouldn't it?)

According to Bloomberg, the deal will kick off Monday. 

Bloomberg didn't address how the bundling will work once ViacomCBS launches and expanded version of CBS All Access that incorporates the broader Viacom part of the company. 

On Thursday, Bloomberg also reported that Apple is looking to bundle its own services combining assets like Apple TV Plus with Apple Music. 

Overall second-quarter revenue was off 12% to $6.275 billion for ViacomCBS, with the conglomerate reporting on Thursday the common refrain of a pandemic-ravaged advertising market. 

But ViacomCBS struck a bullish tone in its Q2 report in regard to subscription streaming, touting a 52% year-over-year increase in paid OTT revenue, and a 75% uptick in SVOD subscribers, reaching 16.2 million, as it finally shed some of the details tied to the reboot of its five-year-old CBS All Access SVOD platform.

Re-launching in “early 2021,” the expanded CBS All Access will add 3,500 episodes from the broader ViacomCBS portfolio, spanning series from BET, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Smithsonian and other networks. The infusion will up the CBS All Access search engine to more than 20,000 TV show episodes and movies. Showtime content will also be featured on the expanded service. 

CBS All Access, which was launched in a more nascent and tranquil market for video streaming, by what was then a single-parent CBS Corp., pre its re-marriage to Viacom, is now competing in an SVOD realm that not only includes Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu, but Disney Plus, HBO Max and Peacock, just to name a few recently launched streaming services. 

As such, ViacomCBS will be pouring in a far greater amount of original series resource to the service. Mentioned in Thursday’s earnings release were Big Brother Live Feeds, The Stand and the animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run and Kamp Koral, a new original kid’s series premiering in 2021 and the first spinoff derived from SpongeBob SquarePants.

In addition to the expanded original series lineup, CBS All Access will feature live programming, spanning news, events and sports. News programming will include live streams of local CBS stations nationwide and CBSN, CBS News' rapidly growing 24/7 digital news service. Event live streams will feature The Super Bowl, The Grammy Awards, The Academy of Country Music Awards, The Tony Awards and more Major sporting events from golf to football to basketball, and UEFA club competitions.

Beyond the U.S., where CBS All Access is currently base priced, with commercials, for $5.99 a month, the expanded platform will have an enhanced international focus, deploying next year in Australia, Latin America and the Nordics. The territories will be added shortly thereafter. 

The relaunched CBS All Access platform will remain on the same technology backbone, the company said. 

Notably, there will be no rollup with Pluto TV, the ad-supported video on demand platform Viacom paid $340 million for in January 2019, before it re-merged with CBS. 

Pluto TV active users were up 61% in the second quarter to 26.5 million. 

“We want to be big in AVOD, and we want to be big in SVOD. Those two services I see as completely complementary to each other,” says David Lynn, president and CEO of ViacomCBS Networks International, told Variety.

ViacomCBS plans to broaden its streaming business by launching an international SVOD service in early 2021.

In addition to content from CBS All Access, which is being super-sized next year, the new service will feature exclusive premieres of all new Showtime series.

The company labeled Australia, Latin American and the Nordics as priority markets for the new service, for which a name has not be disclosed.

The first series to appear on the service include Halo and American Rust.

CBS All Access series will also premiere on the new service, including the upcoming Guilty Party and The Harper House.

The service will also combine movies from Paramount Pictures and premieres and "box sets" from Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon and Paramount Network.

ViacomCBS said it will work with existing distribution partners, as well as new distributors, to market the service to their subscribers, as well as retailing the service direct to consumers.

ViacomCBS said it expanded the programming on its CBS All Access streaming service and upgraded its user interface.

The company has announced that it plans to rebrand CBS All Access next year and turn it into a “super service” better positioned to compete with Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney’s combo of Disney Plus and Hulu.

For now, the prices for CBS All Access won’t change. 

The services is adding original series including Kamp Koral, a new SpongeBob SquarePants children’s series set to debut in 2021.

Programming from other ViacomCBS brands is also being added to CBS All Access.

A new user interface add more personalization and recommendations and has central hubs for ViacomCBS brands.

CBS All Access premieres Star Trek: Lower Decks, an animated comedy set in the Star Trek universe, Aug. 6. There are 10 episodes and new episodes stream weekly on Thursdays. 

Mike McMahan (Rick and Morty) developed the series, which focuses on the support crew on a not very important Starfleet ship, the U.S.S. Cerritos. Characters Mariner, Boimler, Rutherford and Tendi keep up with their duties and social lives, and deal with the ship being “rocked by a multitude of sci-fi anomalies,” according to CBS All Access. 

Jack Quaid, Jerry O’Connell and Dawnn Lewis provide voices. 

The streaming service starts at $5.99 monthly. 

Other Star Trek properties on CBS All Access are Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard. 

The series is produced by CBS’ Eye Animation Productions, Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment. Titmouse is the animation studio. 

McMahan executive produces with Alex Kurtzman, Heather Kadin, Rod Roddenberry, Trevor Roth and Katie Krentz. 

Peacock, the streaming service from Comcast’s NBCUniversal unit, agreed to license a number of series and movies from ViacomCBS.

ViacomCBS is planning to expand its own direct-to-consumer, with a preview coming this summer before a launch in 2021 creating what CEO Bob Bakish called a “super” streamer, but has decided to continue to license some of the content in its libraries to rival services.

Related: CBS to Roll out ‘Super’ Streamer in 2021

Included in the agreement are series Ray Donovan, The Affair, Charmed, Undercover Boss, The Game, Everybody Hates Chris and Real Husbands of Hollywood. They’ll be available when Peacock launches outside of the Comcast footprint on July 15.

Peacock has also license films including The Godfather trilogy, Catch Me If You Can, The Talented Mr. Ripley, American Beauty, Patriot Games, Last Holiday, Fatal Attraction, The Firm and An Officer and a Gentleman. Peacock will have limited exclusive windows to the films in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

“This agreement with Peacock demonstrates the incredible and enduring value of ViacomCBS content,” said Dan Cohen, President, ViacomCBS Global Distribution Group. “The partnership we are announcing today is consistent with our strategy to maximize the value of our content by selectively licensing our library product to third parties while prioritizing franchise IP for our own platforms.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“We are truly excited to bring some of the most popular movies and series from across the ViacomCBS family of brands to Peacock,” said Frances Manfredi, President, Content Acquisition and Strategy, Peacock. “We continue to expand the Peacock catalog with premium programming from NBCUniversal and beyond; partnering with companies like ViacomCBS to ensure that all of our viewers can choose from the best entertainment options available in the market today.”

Peacock will launch across mobile, web and connected TV platforms with a free tier in July. Peacock Premium will also be available for $4.99 per month and features more than 15,000 hours of content. Viewers may also upgrade Peacock Premium to ad-free for an additional $5.00 per month

Season two of The Twilight Zone is back on CBS All Access. Jordan Peele narrates the reboot, and executive produces too. 

The first episode, called “Meet in the Middle,” shows a man named Phil suffering from hearing a woman’s voice in his head. Phil finds it hard to live with the woman constantly speaking in his brain, interrupting his dates and other private moments. 

Over time, Phil and the woman behind the voice, Annie, begin to hit it off. At least Phil does, falling hard for Annie. 

He begins digging around online for more information, and finds Annie is married. She notes that her marriage is a dead end, giving Phil hope. 

The two plan to meet at the midpoint between their homes. Phil is on a train when he hears Annie in distress. He gets out of the train and heads to where she is, and faces off with a man he believed to be harming Annie, not realizing Annie is a step ahead of him. 

It ends badly, at least for Phil. There isn’t much to like about Phil, but Jimmi Simpson plays him deftly. It’s a creepy episode. 

The second episode, “The Who of You,” sees a struggling actor named Harry rob a bank. He has the ability to lock eyes with another person, then swap souls with them after the eye lock has happened. Others in the swap-personality chain include a woman from the bank Harry attempted to rob, a police officer, a psychic, a jogger and a boy. 

Over time, it’s a bit challenging to remember who swapped souls with who. 

Ethan Embry plays Harry. 

Chasing Harry all the while is a detective played by Daniel Sunjata, formerly of Rescue Me. 

Frothy ‘60s pop offsets the anxious mood of the episode. 

The new season has some name actors in the cast, including Joel McHale, Damon Wayans Jr., Gretchen Mol and Topher Grace. The episodes we watched are faithful nods to the ‘60s series that predated the reboot. The stories didn’t stay with me long, but were fun to watch. They offer entertaining twists on the world we know, and Peele nimbly inserts himself in the frame to deliver his sage assessment. 

The first week of summer will see the final season debut of OWN's Greenleaf as well as the return of CBS' All-Access' The Twilight Zone. 

OWN on June 23 will premiere the fifth and final season of its mega church drama Greenleaf, starring Keith David and Lynn Whitfield. The series finished its fourth season as the most watched original scripted series on ad-supported cable for African-American women and total viewers, according to OWN.

On June 25 streaming service CBS All Access will return anthology series The Twilight Zone for its sophomore run. The series, based on the 1960's series of the same name, is executive produced by Jordan Peele. 

Below are video trailers and premiere dates for several other shows debuting the week of June 22 to June 28 on cable networks and streaming services (for some videos, viewer discretion is advised):

June 25 -- Esme & Roy (returning animation series) -- HBO Max

June 25 -- Doom Patrol (returning series) -- HBO Max

June 25 -- Search Party (returning series) -- HBO Max

June 26 -- My Spy (action movie) -- Prime Video

June 28 -- Black Monday (returning series) -- Showtime

June 28 -- I’ll Be Gone In the Dark (documentary) -- HBO

ViacomCBS plans to preview an expanded version of its streaming service CBS All Access this summer, but won’t launch its rebrand until 2021.

Speaking at the 2020 Credit Suisse Virtual Communications Conference Tuesday, ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish outlined the company’s streaming strategy, part of which is transforming All Access into what he called “a super service.”

Bakish said that over-the-summer the company will be adding content from cable brands including Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, Smithsonian, MTV, BET and Paramount Network.

The change should help the service attract younger consumers, he said. 

The rebranded service will feature a “much broader slate of original content, much of it based on our key franchise IP from across ViacomCBS,” he said, as well as substantial changes to our user experience.

It will also have a range of sports and news programming.

At the same time, ViacomCBS will be adding content and distribution to its free streaming service Pluto TV. 

Starting this month, Pluto TV viewers will be able to click a button to sign up for CBS All Access and, eventually, its enhanced version.

Bakish added that the company’s streaming strategy included international expansion.

“We see a big opportunity for ViacomCBS in international streaming and we see it based on the assets, infrastructure and capabilities we have already all around the world,” Bakish said.

Pluto TV is already in the U.K., Germany, Austria and Switzerland in Europe and in 17 Latin American countries. In the next 12 months, Pluto TV will roll out in Brazil, Spain, France, Italy and other countries, he said.

Bakish also saw the company expanding its paid subscription service internationally. 

The international streaming product will be supported by television assets ViacomCBS already has around the world, including broadcast outlets in the U.K. and Australia.

“We believe we can selectively license product in international markets similar to the way we’re thinking about the U.S.,” he said.

Android TV users are now able to stream CBS All Access video in the HDR format. 

The ViacomCBS-owned SVOD service doesn’t offer 4K streaming support yet. But it does stream shows like Star Trek: Picard in Dolby Vision HDR. This feature, as 9to5 Google noted, was previously confined to other OTT device platforms, including Apple TV.

Also read: Android TV: Everything You Need to Know About the World’s Fastest Growing Video Operating System

As 9to5 Google also reported, Google has also added a feature to to the Chromecast audio streaming component of Android TV. The OTT platform has built-in support for Chromecast, allowing users to “cast” apps on mobile devices to the big screen.

The new support allows Android TV users to listen to apps like Spotify on their TVs and home theater set-ups in the background as they hunt for a show. 

CBS has ordered Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, based on the time Captain Christopher Pike manned the U.S.S. Enterprise. The series will feature fan favorites from season two of Star Trek: Discovery, Anson Mount as Captain Pike, Rebecca Romijn as Number One and Ethan Peck as Science Officer Spock. 

The pilot was written by Akiva Goldsman with the story by Goldsman, Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumet. Goldsman, Kurtzman and Lumet are executive producers in addition to Henry Alonso Myers, Heather Kadin, Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth. 

Strange New Worlds will be produced by CBS Television Studios, Secret Hideout and Roddenberry Entertainment.

“Fans fell in love with Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn and Ethan Peck’s portrayals of these iconic characters when they were first introduced on Star Trek: Discovery last season,” said Julie McNamara, executive VP and head of programming, CBS All Access. “This new series will be a perfect complement to the franchise, bringing a whole new perspective and series of adventures to Star Trek.”

CBS All Access also streams originals Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Discovery. 

“When we said we heard the fans’ outpouring of love for Pike, Number One and Spock when they boarded Star Trek: Discovery last season, we meant it,” said Kurtzman. “These iconic characters have a deep history in Star Trek canon, yet so much of their stories have yet to be told. With Akiva and Henry at the helm, the Enterprise, its crew and its fans are in for an extraordinary journey to new frontiers in the Star Trek universe.”

CBS All-Access Friday announced the development on a new live-action series based on the iconic Star Trek sci-fi franchise, the streaming service said Friday.  

The new series, Star Trek-Strange New Worlds,follows current CBS-All Access series Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, and will feature iconic Star Trek characters Spock, Captain Pike and Number One played by Ethan Peck, Anson Mount and Rebecca Romijn, respectively, said the streaming service. 

The new series will follow the characters, which were introduced during the second season of Star Trek: Discovery, as they explore new worlds around the galaxy in the decade before Captain Kirk boarded the U.S.S. Enterprise, said the service.

“Fans fell in love with Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn and Ethan Peck’s portrayals of these iconic characters when they were first introduced on Star Trek: Discovery last season,” said Julie McNamara, executive VP and head of programming for CBS All Access in a statement. “This new series will be a perfect complement to the franchise, bringing a whole new perspective and series of adventures to Star Trek.”

Also in development at CBS All Access is an animated series, Star Trek: Lower Decks and a Section 31-based series starring Michelle Yeoh. 

CBS All-Access Friday announced the development on a new live-action series based on the iconic Star Trek sci-fi franchise, the streaming service said Friday.  

The series, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, follows current CBS-All Access series Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard, and will feature iconic Star Trek characters Spock, Captain Pike and Number One played by Ethan Peck, Anson Mount and Rebecca Romijn, respectively, said the streaming service. 

The new series will follow the characters, which were introduced during the second season of Star Trek: Discovery, as they explore new worlds around the galaxy in the decade before Captain Kirk boarded the U.S.S. Enterprise, said the service.

“Fans fell in love with Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn and Ethan Peck’s portrayals of these iconic characters when they were first introduced on Star Trek: Discovery last season,” said Julie McNamara, Executive VP and Head of Programming for CBS All Access in a statement. “This new series will be a perfect complement to the franchise, bringing a whole new perspective and series of adventures to Star Trek."

Also in development at CBS All Access is an animated series, Star Trek: Lower Decks and a Section 31-based series starring Michelle Yeoh. 

CBS All Access has ordered a fifth season for drama The Good Fight. Due to the pandemic-related halt in production, season four will end May 28 after seven episodes, instead of the planned 10.

“The Good Fight remains one of the most beloved and critically acclaimed original series on CBS All Access, and we’ve seen a tremendous response from fans this season,” said Julie McNamara, executive VP and head of programming, CBS All Access. “While we all had hoped to provide audiences with a 10-episode fourth season, we, among many others, have had to adapt due to the pandemic. Although it’s a shortened season, the incredible cast and crew, helmed by the incomparable Robert and Michelle King, have produced a phenomenal seven episodes. We can’t wait for viewers to see the remainder of the season and are excited to bring subscribers even more of the timely, gripping storylines the Kings bring to life next in season five.”

Robert and Michelle King are showrunners and executive producers of the series, which they co-created with Phil Alden Robinson.

“It’s been weird to not be able to finish the fourth season,” said the Kings. “It left the story in even more absurd a place than usual. So we’re thrilled that CBS All Access wants to bring The Good Fight back for an additional season, and we know what story we’re planning to tell. It’s like getting the answers to the SAT ahead of time.”

Season four finds Reddick, Boseman & Lockhart navigating a different landscape. After they lost their biggest client and their founding partner’s name was tarnished, the firm was forced to accept an offer by a multinational law firm.

The cast includes Christine Baranski, Cush Jumbo, Sarah Steele, Nyambi Nyambi, Michael Boatman, Zach Grenier, John Larroquette, Audra McDonald and Delroy Lindo.

Ridley Scott, David W. Zucker, Brooke Kennedy, Liz Glotzer, William Finkelstein and Jonathan Tolins are executive producers alongside the Kings. The series is produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Scott Free Productions and King Size Productions.

CBS All Access has ordered a fifth season for drama The Good Fight. Due to the pandemic-related halt in production, season four will end May 28 after seven episodes, instead of the planned 10.

“The Good Fight remains one of the most beloved and critically acclaimed original series on CBS All Access, and we’ve seen a tremendous response from fans this season,” said Julie McNamara, executive VP and head of programming, CBS All Access. “While we all had hoped to provide audiences with a 10-episode fourth season, we, among many others, have had to adapt due to the pandemic. Although it’s a shortened season, the incredible cast and crew, helmed by the incomparable Robert and Michelle King, have produced a phenomenal seven episodes. We can’t wait for viewers to see the remainder of the season and are excited to bring subscribers even more of the timely, gripping storylines the Kings bring to life next in season five.”

Robert and Michelle King are showrunners and executive producers of the series, which they co-created with Phil Alden Robinson.

“It’s been weird to not be able to finish the fourth season,” said the Kings. “It left the story in even more absurd a place than usual. So we’re thrilled that CBS All Access wants to bring The Good Fight back for an additional season, and we know what story we’re planning to tell. It’s like getting the answers to the SAT ahead of time.”

Season four finds Reddick, Boseman & Lockhart navigating a different landscape. After they lost their biggest client and their founding partner’s name was tarnished, the firm was forced to accept an offer by a multinational law firm.

The cast includes Christine Baranski, Cush Jumbo, Sarah Steele, Nyambi Nyambi, Michael Boatman, Zach Grenier, John Larroquette, Audra McDonald and Delroy Lindo.

Ridley Scott, David W. Zucker, Brooke Kennedy, Liz Glotzer, William Finkelstein and Jonathan Tolins are executive producers alongside the Kings. The series is produced by CBS Television Studios in association with Scott Free Productions and King Size Productions.

Season two of The Twilight Zone starts on CBS All Access June 25. All 10 episodes will drop that day.

The original Twilight Zone debuted on CBS in 1959. Jordan Peele and Simon Kinberg brought the series back with new episodes in 2019. Both are executive producers and Peele hosts the program.

The cast includes Morena Baccarin, Kylie Bunbury, Jenna Elfman, Ethan Embry, Sky Ferreira, Topher Grace, Tony Hale, David Krumholtz, Joel McHale, Chris Meloni, Gretchen Mol and Damon Wayans Jr.

CBS Television Studios produces The Twilight Zone along with Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions and Kinberg’s Genre Films. Win Rosenfeld, Audrey Chon, Alex Rubens, Glen Morgan, Carol Serling and Rick Berg executive produce the show along with Peele and Kinberg. 

Season two of The Twilight Zone starts on CBS All Access June 25. All 10 episodes will drop that day. 

The original Twilight Zone debuted on CBS in 1959. Jordan Peele and Simon Kinberg brought the series back with new episodes in 2019. Both are executive producers and Peele hosts the program. 

The cast includes Morena Baccarin, Kylie Bunbury, Jenna Elfman, Ethan Embry, Sky Ferreira, Topher Grace, Tony Hale, David Krumholtz, Joel McHale, Chris Meloni, Gretchen Mol and Damon Wayans Jr. 

CBS Television Studios produces The Twilight Zone along with Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions and Kinberg’s Genre Films. Win Rosenfeld, Audrey Chon, Alex Rubens, Glen Morgan, Carol Serling and Rick Berg executive produce the show along with Peele and Kinberg. 

With more people streaming because of shelter-at-home orders meant to slow the spread of the new coronavirus, ViacomCBS said it was accelerating its plans for an expanded subscription video on demand service built on CBS All Access.

The service will be rebranded and relaunched this summer.

“We believe audiences want their entertainment on demand and their news, sports and events live, and our expanded offering will be the service that gives them what they want, how they want it all in one place and then a great value," ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish said during the company’s earnings call with analysts on Thursday.

RELATED: ViacomCBS Expands YouTube TV Carriage

Bakish said the expanded service starts with what on CBS All Access now, including CBS network programming, library content and an expanding slate of originals. In addition, it will have content from Viacom cable channels including Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV, BET and Paramount Network, plus material from the Smithsonian channel.

It will also have more than 100 Paramount films, beginning this week.

Bakish said the streaming platform’s originals strategy is designed to take advantage of its intellectual properties through a growing cadence of tentpole series.

“Our experience makes clear that we can acquire new customers in a disciplined and economically efficient way while reducing churn and driving customer retention with a deep volume of entertainment news and sports,” he said.

Bakish said the distribution strategy for the streaming platform will include working with existing partnerships. He noted that CBS All Access is already distributed by Comcast, AT&T, Verizon Communications and Roku with more to come.

ViacomCBS will also be able to use its network as promotional platforms to draw people to the streaming service.

Bakish added that the promotions platform included PlutoTV, which will have clickthroughs designed to upsell viewers from the free Pluto service to the paid product.

RELATED: Pluto TV Expands to Latin America

He said ViacomCBS will also be launching a broad pay streaming product in multiple markets over the next 12 months.

“We are full speed ahead on streaming seeing strong demand for our services today with a strategy to achieve accelerated growth domestically and internationally in the months and years to come,” he said.

ViacomCBS said it was accelerating its plans for an expanded subscription video-on-demand service built on CBS All Access.

The service will be rebranded and relaunched this summer.

“We believe audiences want their entertainment on demand and their news, sports and events live, and our expanded offering will be the service that gives them what they want, how they want it all in one place and then a great value," CEO Bob Bakish said during the company’s earnings call with analysts on Thursday.

Bakish said the expanded service starts with what's on CBS All Access now, including CBS network programming, library content and an expanding slate of originals. In addition, it will have content from Viacom cable channels including Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV, BET and Paramount Network, plus material from the Smithsonian channel.

It will also have more than 100 Paramount films, beginning this week.

Bakish said the streaming platform’s originals strategy is designed to take advantage of its intellectual properties through a growing cadence of tentpole series.

“Our experience makes clear that we can acquire new customers in a disciplined and economically efficient way while reducing churn and driving customer retention with a deep volume of entertainment news and sports,” he said.

Bakish said the distribution strategy for the streaming platform will include working with existing partnerships. He noted that CBS All Access is already distributed by Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Roku with more to come.

ViacomCBS will also be able to use its network as promotional platforms to draw people to the streaming service.

Bakish added that the promotions platform included PlutoTV,  which will have clickthroughs designed to upsell viewers from the free Pluto service to the paid product.

He said ViacomCBS will also be launching a broad pay streaming product in multiple markets over the next 12 months.

“We are full speed ahead on streaming seeing strong demand for our services today with a strategy to achieve accelerated growth domestically and internationally in the months and years to come,” he said.

HBO for the fourth year in a row drew top honors for NAMIC’s 26th annual Vision Awards, the diversity organization announced Wednesday morning.

HBO won four Vision Awards to top all networks, with NBC following a close second with three wins. The Vision Awards honor programming that reflects the lives, spirit and contributions of people of color that mirror the diverse composition of the viewing audience.

CBS All Access’ Twilight Zone reboot hosted by Jordan Peele (pictured) was the top choice in the Best Performance, Drama category, while HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show won top honors for Best Performance, Comedy, said NAMIC. Overall NAMIC announced a total of 17 Vision Awards for networks and distributors this year.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored how much our nation relies on broadcast and cable programmers and storytellers to educate, entertain, and enrich our communities,” said NAMIC President and CEO A. Shuanise Washington. “Today, we not only are honoring winners of the Vision Awards but also are offering our deepest appreciation for the vital service they provide.”

The complete list of Vision Awards winners are listed below:

Animation

Elena of Avalor – Disney Junior

Awards & Honors

2019 Black Girls Rock! – BET Networks

Best Performance – Comedy

Kal Penn: Sunnyside – NBC

Best Performance – Drama

Brian Tee: Chicago Med – NBC

Children’s

Sesame Street 50th Anniversary Special – HBO

Comedy

A Black Lady Sketch Show – HBO

Digital Media – Short Form

Voices of the Civil Rights Movement – Confronting America’s Broken Promise – Comcast | NBCUniversal

Documentary

True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality – HBO

Drama

The Twilight Zone – CBS All Access

Foreign Language

Caravanas – Discovery Network Latin America

Lifestyle

No Passport Required – PBS

News/Informational

Life Inside: Angola – Dateline

Original Movie or Special

I Am Somebody’s Child: The Regina Louise Story – Lifetime

Reality

Made from Scratch – Fuse

Reality – Social Issues

Unapologetic – ESPN

Sports

The Shop: Uninterrupted – HBO

Variety/Talk Show

Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear’s All in the Family and The Jeffersons -- ABC

Below are video trailers and premiere dates for several shows debuting the week of April 6 to April 12 on cable networks and streaming services (for some videos, viewer discretion is advised):

April 6 -- The Big Show (comedy) -- Netflix

April 6 -- Deadwater Fell (drama) -- Acorn TV

April 7 -- The Last O.G. (returning series) -- TBS

April 8 -- Liar (returning series) -- Sundance

April 9 -- The Good Fight (returning series) -- CBS All Access

April 9 -- Shaq Life (reality series) -- TNT

April 10 -- Brews Brothers (comedy) -- Netflix

April 11 -- The Clark Sisters: The First Ladies of Gospel (movie) -- Lifetime

April 12 -- Belgravia (drama) -- Epix

April 12 -- Insecure (returning series) -- HBO

April 12 -- Killing Eve (returning series) -- BBC America/AMC

April 12 -- Run (dramedy) -- HBO

April 12 -- Willie Nelson: American Outlaw (documentary) --A&E

The National Football League will kick off its 2020 playoff season with two additional playoff teams and several new, and somewhat surprising, TV distribution outlets.

NFL team owners voted Tuesday to add one additional Wild Card team in the AFC and the NFC for a total of 14 playoff teams, according to ESPN. Under the new playoffs format, only the top seeded playoff team in each conference will get a first-round bye. Previously, first and second-seeded teams in each conference received first-round byes. 

The traditional wild card weekend will now expand to three games instead of two, with NBC and CBS each telecasting one of the two new playoff games.

On the CBS side, streaming service CBS All Access will also stream the game live, while kids-targeted Nickelodeon will feature its own production of the game targeted to its young audience, according to reports.

For NBC, its soon-to-launch streaming service Peacock will simulcast the game along with Spanish-language network Telemundo.

The NFL's move to include streaming, Spanish-language and kids-targeted services into its television distribution portfolio signifies the league’s desire to not only reach its current fans currently streaming content, but also to groom the next generation of fans.

“The NFL is continuing to hedge its bets,” said sports analyst Lee Berke. “It is continuing to show tremendous support to broadcasters because they can step up with the dollars necessary, but it is also saying that there’s a strong Spanish-speaking audience that we want to cater to, there’s a younger audience we want to attract and there’s a streaming audience we want to be part of.” 

Below are video trailers and premiere dates for several shows debuting the week of March 16 to March 22 on cable networks and streaming services (for some videos, viewer discretion is advised):

March 16 -- The Plot Against America (drama) -- HBO

March 18 -- Little Fires Everywhere (drama) -- Hulu

March 18 -- Brockmire (returning series) -- IFC 

March 18 -- Motherland: Fort Salem (Drama) -- Freeform

March 19 -- Altered Carbon: Resleeved (Anime) -- Netflix

March 19 -- Feel Good (comedy) -- Netflix

March 19 -- Tyler Perry's Ruthless (drama) -- BET+