Driven by a flurry of recent deals with Media General, Scripps, Sinclair and other station groups, CBS Corp. said it now has 40 affiliates signed up for its over-the-top service, CBS All Access.
With the 14 CBS owned-and-operated stations that were already enlisted when the streaming service launched last October, CBS All Access is now available in 124 markets covering 75 percent of the U.S., the broadcaster adds.
Of those 124 markets, 59 have the ability to--in addition to on-demand CBS programming--also stream live feeds of their local stations.
CBS All Access delivers on-demand streaming of virtually all CBS programming, with the notable exception of NFL games, to Apple and Android mobile devices, as well as Roku. The service also streams thousands of episodes of archival CBS programming.
CBS, which charges $5.99 a month for the service, hasn't released subscriber numbers. But the company continues to be one of the hardest bargainers for broadcast retransmission licensing fees from pay-TV operators, despite the availability of its programming outside the pay-TV ecosystem.
SNL Kagan recently revised its growth figures for overall retrans revenue, projecting that it will grow to $9.8 billion by 2020. An earlier estimate, released just in October, had the figure at $9.4 billion. The revision came after CBS Corp. negotiated new overall carriage and retrans licensing deals with Dish Network (NASDAQ: DISH) and AT&T U-verse (NYSE: T).
For more:
- read this CBS Corp. press release
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