CBS All Access to Rebrand And Expand Globally

Looks like that Viacom-CBS merger is continuing to pay off for both companies…  and also for consumers who aren’t afraid of a little corporate consolidation. 

Deadline reports that ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish told analysts and investors on a Thursday conference call that the company’s most prominent streaming service, CBS All Access, will be getting a reband, expanding internationally, and adding hundreds of library titles. Directly after the call, CBS All Access added more than 100 films from subsidiary Paramount. Prominent titles include the Star Trek films and The Godfather. In the coming months, shows and movies from other ViacomCBS properties such as Nickelodeon, MTV, and more will be joining the service as well.

“Expanding CBS All Access’ library of films with these iconic titles from Paramount Pictures is just one of the many ways we’re integrating the phenomenal catalog of IP available to us within the ViacomCBS family,” CBS All Access programming chief Julie McNamara said in a press statement. “The service is on a growth trajectory with two record-breaking months in March and April, and we look forward to bringing even more premium content and value to our subscribers in the coming months.”

After a long de facto relationship and partnership, Viacom and CBS officially merged into ViacomCBS last December. The newly-combined entity inherited not only many TV imprints like Comedy Central, Showtime, Nickelodeon, and more, but also quite a few streaming services as well. ViacomCBS’s streaming options fall into a sort of “jack of all trades, master of none” dynamic with the company’s many properties spread over CBS All Access, Showtime’s streaming service, Pluto TV, and BET+, to name a few. 

It’s long been clear that a grand consolidation of these streaming properties into one entity was needed for ViacomCBS to compete with Netflix and Disney+. ViacomCBS confirmed as much earlier this year when it said it was working on a “House of Brands” all-inclusive streaming service. Now it seems likely that the aforementioned “House of Brands” is really just going to be this CBS All Access reboot, particularly since Baskin told investors that the company has an “already-developed tech platform … we are not building from scratch.”

Back in February, Baskin said that “House of Brands” would launch by the end of this year with 30,000 episodes of television and 1,000 movies on the platform. Plenty of questions remain but for now it seems as though the all-encompassing ViacomCBS streaming service will be the one they’ve had all along…albeit with a different name. 

CBS All Access currently costs $5.99 a month for a subscription with ads and $9.99 for a subscription without them. The streamer is the exclusive home to Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, and many other originals. It’s also the exclusive streaming home to CBS content. It’s unknown at this time what the service will rebrand to or how much it will cost.