An ‘Outstanding’ Q2 For CBS As All Access Goes Global

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“CBS delivered outstanding Q2 results while continuing to take a number of steps to achieve our long-term financial goals.”


That’s the positive assessment of CBS Corp.’s April-June 2017 performance from Chairman/CEO Leslie Moonves.

“First, we had a terrific upfront with gains in pricing and volume, including more and more deals that better reflect how people are watching our programming on a delayed basis,” he said. “In addition, we took significant steps during the quarter to grow our affiliate fees from both traditional and ‘skinny’ bundles.”

Retransmission consent and reverse compensation increased 25% in Q2.

At the same time, Moonves says CBS is now seeing the benefit of its recent “skinny bundle” deals with Google’s YouTube TV, Hulu, fuboTV, and (finally) DirecTV NOW.

Perhaps the biggest news from CBS after Monday’s market close was its plan to take its CBS All Access “over the top” platform into the international marketplace, starting with Canada in the first half of 2018.

CBS All Access is growing faster than we anticipated domestically, and now represents a whole new opportunity internationally as well,” said Moonves. “By going direct-to-consumer around the world, we will facilitate new connections between the global audience and our industry-leading premium content.”

CBS All Access launched in the U.S. in October 2014 and has grown its subscribers rapidly since that time. On March 15, CBS noted that by 2020 it would have 8 million subscribers combined for CBS All Access and SHOWTIME’s direct-to-consumer products.

CBS is ahead of that pace and will exceed more than 4 million subscribers combined by the end of 2017.

CBS All Access is currently available online at CBS.com, on mobile devices via the CBS App for iOS, Android and Windows 10, and on Roku Players, Apple TV, Chromecast, Android TV, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Fire TV.

The U.S. subscription offering is available for $5.99 per month, with a commercial-free option available to subscribers for $9.99 per month.

Prices for non-U.S. markets will be announced at a future date.