Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon is taking the captain’s chair on CBS All Access’ Star Trek: Picard. Chabon, who’s been part of the show’s creative team since Picard was announced, has been named showrunner of the upcoming series.
Marc DeBevoise, president and chief operating officer of CBS Interactive, can see viewers subscribing to about 10 OTT services on average.
CBS All Access Subs Grow Over 50%
CBS All Access has seen double-digit growth during the past year, momentum that got a big boost earlier this month from the combination of the second season premiere of Star Trek: Discovery and the NFL’s AFC conference championship. Marc DeBevoise, president-COO of CBS Interactive, said Wednesday during the Television Critics Assciation press tour in Pasadena, Calif., that CBS All Access logged more than 50% growth in total subscribers as well as in total streams delivered and the amount of time users spent watching the service.
CBS’s digital streaming service CBS All Access is a unique creature, a product of the country’s most old-school — and old-skewing — broadcaster, trying to beat Netflix at its own game. Launched in 2014 but ramping up its original programming in recent months, All Access seeks to walk a slippery line between mainstream network and premium-subscription television.
The ad-supported tier of CBS All Access is the most high-profile ad-supported channel to become available thus far. To date, Amazon Channels has mostly relied on ad-free streaming services to bolster its lineup of premium subscriptions.
Watching popular TV shows such as The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones has become so easy online that millions are not only logging in to a plethora of new services, they’re also paying for it — including 2.2 million subscribers at Sling TV, parent Dish Network revealed for the first time Wednesday.
Why A La Carte TV Is Just Too Much
CBS airs the latest Star Trek spinoff on its paid subscription service CBS All Access. But how many are we supposed to buy? This fan says no. For now.
CBS All Access is joining Amazon Channels with a reduced-ad offering, becoming the first of the digital company’s 140 channels with a live, linear feed. The arrangement enables Prime members to add CBS for $9.99 a month.
With its ability to provide programming on demand, streaming-video services are akin to a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. Little wonder, then, that CBS has chosen its “All Access” streaming video service to launch a new version of The Twilight Zone, the seminal sci-fi series that opened each week with a distinctive introduction from creator Rod Serling that used those aforementioned words.
Star Trek: Discovery goes where no Trek has gone before: streaming. CBS’s Les Moonves is betting the show’s rabid fans will come along.
Sunday’s premiere of Star Trek: Discovery on CBS All Access drove a record number of single day sign-ups for CBS’ digital streaming subscription service. While no specific numbers were reported, the network claims that today’s record outstrips the previous one spurred by the 2017 Grammy Awards back in February.
“Star Trek: Discovery,” the first new TV series in the franchise in 12 years. will debut on CBS on Sept. 24, with the rest of its 15-episode run streaming on the CBS All Access service. The series gets its closest look yet here, including the turbulent development and production period it weathered and the expectations ahead of it. The show’s ultimate worthiness, its creators say, will lie in “the historical ‘Star Trek’ values it carries forward and battle-tests in settings that a modern audience will recognize.”