CBS News and Stations has launched CBSN Baltimore, the 12th of 13 local direct-to-consumer streaming news services within the group. WJZ Baltimore is the station behind CBSN Baltimore.
It marks the newest expansion of major market local news streaming services from CBS and features local news content produced by KOVR and KMAX.
TVN Focus On Digital | TV Station CMSs Streamline And Simplify
Content management systems are the workhorses of local stations’ digital operations. Executives from Tegna, NBCU, CBS, Gray, Nexstar and Fox have discovered that user simplicity and integrations for multiplatform distribution have become essential attributes. Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.
CBS Local Digital has continued to spin up new OTT channels despite the coronavirus-prompted remote working shift. Executives say months of close collaboration between CBSN, the network’s streaming arm, and CBS Television Stations’ digital team allowed the group to stay on its charted course.
With the traditional broadcast and cable news outlets branded as partisan, lacking local resources and beset by cord-cutting, the streaming service has an opening.
Exclusives
CBS Launches CBSN Chicago
The debut is the newest expansion of major market local news streaming services from CBS and features local news content produced WBBM.
The Writers Guild of America East says it has negotiated the first contract with CBSN, which the guild said marks the first anchored live streaming service to be unionized.
It marks the newest expansion of major market local news streaming services from CBS and features local news content produced by WCCO Minneapolis.
Any news junkie in need of a live-Information fix can toggle on to any number of streaming news outlets. Now, TV stations affiliated with CBS can do the same. CBS News told affiliates in a memo Tuesday that it would allow them to use live coverage from its CBSN streaming-video hub to keep news events on the air even when the network’s traditional reports had come to an end.
CBSN Local Services will be live in all 13 major markets where CBS has local news operations by early next year.
Sharing Strategies For Launching OTT Services
Executives from leading local and national news players in the OTT space discuss their various options for packaging and presenting content on the platform. Also crucial is figuring out how best to differentiate one’s OTT service from the many competing options, overcoming a lack of viewing metrics and personalizing content for viewers.
CBSN, the 24-hour free streaming video news network from CBS News, is now averaging more than 1 million video streams per day, according to the company. Roughly 80% of CBSN’s daily live streams are happening on live content versus on-demand clips of various news segments.
OTT Is Top-Of-Mind For CBS’s Christy Tanner
The EVP and GM of CBS News Digital may have found an answer to the aging out of typical TV news viewers. On average, users of its CBSN streaming service are 38 years old. Now the unit is turning its attention to delivering more local news with the rollout of CBSN Local later this month. (Photo: Jack Pagano)
Christy Tanner will explain how CBSN, CBS News’ streaming video news service launched in 2014, is creating new value for viewers, advertisers and CBS Corp. She will keynote the NAB Show’s Online Video Program on April 10.
For three years, CBSN has been trying to prove that 24/7 news channels don’t have to come from cable. And its viewership on streaming platforms, computers and phones shows it’s strategy is working.
Jeff Glor takes over as the broadcast’s anchor replacing Scott Pelley, who was shown the door — or, rather, sent back across the street to 60 Minutes — after six years this past spring. The network also announced Friday that the evening news will be replayed each night at 10 on the CBSN streaming service, an additional viewing opportunity for people who aren’t around a television set at dinnertime.
CBS has promoted Robert Gifford to oversee day-to-day live programming for the company’s streaming news service, CBSN.
In the fall of 2014, CBS launched CBSN, a 24-hour streaming news channel available for free online and across all manner of smartphones, tablets and connected TV screens. Nearly three years in, CBSN is profitable. Going forward, the plan is to “take some of the success and reinvest it” into the business, according to Christy Tanner, SVP-GM of CBS News Digital for CBS Interactive. This includes putting money and resources toward new content, distribution partnerships and editorial products, which will often involve working in tandem with other departments in the broader CBS portfolio — a testament to how much CBS higher-ups value CBSN.
CBS News said it would launch a new, limited-run primetime TV series based on reports prepared in the style of its streaming-video news outlet, CBSN. CBSN: On Assignment will air on four consecutive Monday evenings starting July 31 at 10 p.m. ET, and attempt to bring a more on-the-ground perspective to an audience more accustomed to CBS News mainstays like 48 Hours and 60 Minutes.
Three days after CBS News got blindsided when Josh Elliott announced on-air that he was leaving the CBSN anchor desk, and issued a statement saying Elliott “is going to be taking field assignments and reporting longform pieces as well” across various platforms, CBS News says Elliott is out.
CBSN has unveiled new apps for the Android TV and Amazon Fire TV that will feature 360-degree videos, starting with behind-the-scenes 60 Minutes footage shot in that format. “The CBS News Digital team believes the format will become an increasingly important means of storytelling, including within the news genre it focusing on,” Sarah Perez reports.
On Election Day, the 24/7 streaming service beats its prior records of 3 million streams and 1.4 million unique viewers for the first presidential debate.
CBSN, the network’s free, online streaming service launched two years ago, has become a major selling point for CBS. When CEO Les Moonves talks to shareholders, he cites the digital network as one of the “catalysts for future growth” that “will drive earnings in the quarters and years to come.” But some TV and digital news execs doubt that CBSN has any meaningful revenue projection, and are confounded by the network’s decision to pour money and resources into what they describe as an archaic business strategy with little chance of turning a profit.
CBSN, the internet television channel operated by CBS News, has been around since 2014, but executives are just now beginning to see the real value of an OTT video news presence. Marc Debevoise, EVP and GM of CBS News, summed up his feelings toward CBSN at a recent investor conference: “This is the future of CBS News.”
NEW YORK (AP) — CBS News has hired former “Good Morning America” personality Josh Elliott to be an anchor on the network’s CBSN online news service, and an occasional contributor […]
CBSN, which launched on Nov. 6, 2014, streams a continuous newscast and also allows users to click on streams of individual stories. It is available on the CBS News website, on the network’s mobile apps and through services like Apple TV, Roku and Android TV. Starting this week, it can also be seen on Xbox One. Political reporter Major Garrett will host a preview of Saturday’s Democratic debate an hour before it begins on CBSN. The free service will stream the debate live, accompanied by data and tweets provided by Twitter.
CBS has found a strong appetite for live content on its CBSN news channel. Launched in November, the 24/7 ad-supported online streaming channel — with live anchors and on-demand video news — has been the top-ranked news outlet on Roku streaming video devices that connect to TVs, CBS announced Tuesday.
What’s Behind CBS’s Digital News Push?
CBS News chief David Rhodes talks about the network’s decision to launch a streaming news service — CBSN — as part of a strategy to uphold his network’s brand and format while also attracting the viewers that will keep it in business decades from now.
It’s calling the new service the first “live, anchored news network across all leading digital platforms.” The network features a 60-minute format delivering live, updated news content from 9 a.m. to midnight ET every weekday at launch to Internet-connected TV, online and mobile platforms.
After months of preparations, CBS News is widely expected to launch CBSN, a new always-on “feed” distributed via broadband, part of an effort by CBS Corp. to burnish the work of its venerable news unit without having to build out the old-school infrastructure, like a cable network, that would have been de rigeur in a different era.
CBS News 24-hour digital news channel will be called CBSN, Capital has learned, and the network is preparing to launch a marketing campaign around it, a source told Capital, featuring the tagline “CBS News. Always On.” CBS has filed trademarks for “CBSN” and the tagline in recent weeks. The network is in the final stages of developing the project but an exact launch date for the network has not yet been set, though it’s been reported to be aiming to launch by election day, Nov. 4.
