CBS Corp. chief executive Les Moonves said his company's CBS All Access and Showtime SVOD services have surpassed 2 million subscribers, and that that base is "evenly split."
"As you recall, we set a goal of 8 million subscribers between All Access and Showtime OTT by 2020, representing $800 million in new revenue," Moonves said to investors during CBS' second-quarter earnings call Thursday. "With more than 2 million subs between them already, we are confident that this will be easily achieved."
Moonves added that he expects new original series being developed and produced by CBS' TV studio specifically for All Access — namely, the highly anticipated Star Trek reboot and a spinoff of CBS network series The Good Wife — to drive SVOD subscriptions even higher.
"It's also safe to say that Star Trek will lead to a significant bump in subscribers for CBS All Access here in the U.S.," he said. "And in addition to Star Trek, we have the upcoming Good Wife spinoff coming to All Access, along with other original programming that we will be announcing soon."
Eventually, Moonves said, All Access and the streaming Showtime platform will be bundled together at "a slight discount."
"But as of now, these 2 million [subscribers] are not crossed whatsoever, so they're not bundled," he noted.
Moonves also said that close to 100 percent of CBS network affiliates are now participating in All Access and that CBS has been able to represent this total affiliate body in negotiations with other streaming platforms, namely Sony's PlayStation Vue.
"Yeah, we are virtually at 100 percent of the country on our All Access on their sign-up," he said. "I don't think any other network and affiliate body has this close a relationship as we do… They get a piece of the action on All Access, and so it's been very supportive. They signed up for Sony Vue and allowed us to act on behalf of them nationally, and we think that will continue with the other services."
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