Sony has announced that it has signed on seven more CBS affiliate stations for its virtual MVPD service, PlayStation Vue.
With the deals, Vue users in Houston, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and San Antonio now have live streaming access to their local CBS stations. Other regions gaining CBS local access: Greensboro, North Carolina, as well as Tampa and Orlando, Florida.
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Sony reps have yet to respond to an email query asking how much U.S. clearance Vue currently has regarding CBS. In January, Sony touted signups for 20 local CBS stations and said it had cleared CBS stations in around half of the U.S.
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The ability to access the local live feeds of major broadcast networks has become hard currency in the now very competitive vMVPD markets, in which program offerings are largely the same—a monthly bill of under $40 gets you the Big Four broadcast networks as well as a handful of major cable channels.
Earlier this week, AT&T announced that it finally carved a deal with CBS Corp. for DirecTV Now, giving the vMVPD access to CBS’s owned and operated stations. AT&T must now make deals with dozens of CBS affiliates to catch up to Vue.
Sony hasn’t released subscriber numbers for Vue, which was the second vMVPD to come out of the gate, behind Dish Network’s Sling TV, two years ago.