M+E Connections

The CEOs of CBS and Viacom stressed the importance of their over-the-top (OTT) streaming initiatives, especially their direct-to-consumer (D2C) offerings, at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco, Feb. 27-28.

Viacom CEO Robert Bakish, however, conceded Feb. 28 that he was being “kind of cryptic” in providing only some sketchy details about his company’s coming D2C streaming service that Viacom expects to launch before the end of its current fiscal year.

“Later in the year, you’ll hear about the product we’re going to launch” to take advantage of Viacom’s content and the growing OTT space, he said, but noted it will include “over 10,000 hours of library product, which we’re going to implement on a direct-to-consumer basis.” This is “an opportunity we’re very excited about,” he said.

The coming D2C streaming service is designed to serve as a “complement product” to existing OTT multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) offerings, Bakish said on Viacom’s first-quarter earnings call Feb. 8. “We do not view this as an MVPD substitute product,” he said at the time.

Viacom was “not yet prepared to fully announce the offering, but we’re very confident that we’re going to be in a position to do so soon” and then “launch it within the fiscal year,” CFO Wade Davis told analysts on the same call. But he told them: “What I can say is that it’s going to be significant and it’s also going to be differentiated from what’s in the marketplace today.”

CBS already launched CBS All Access and Showtime OTT, and they’ve attracted 5 million subscribers combined, CBS CEO Leslie Moonves recently said on his company’s fourth-quarter earnings call Feb. 15. The company also already launched a CBSN D2C digital news network and now plans to launch CBS Sports HQ and “Entertainment Tonight” D2C streaming services this year.

“CBS Interactive is obviously an extremely important part of our company and may be the most important part of our company going forward,” Moonves told the Morgan Stanley conference Feb. 27. CBS is “in pretty good shape to continue to expand” its OTT offerings, he said.

OTT services in general provide a “much better demographic” to CBS than traditional linear broadcast TV, he also told the conference, noting more people are watching CBS today than 10 years ago thanks to OTT and other alternative distribution channels.

“The outlook is very positive” for CBS, he said, adding: “As virtual MVPDs grow, as All Access grows, we’re feeling confident.”

Moonves also indicated he wasn’t concerned about the growing number of rivals CBS now has, including Apple. “The game is changing very rapidly. There’s new buyers doing business differently,” but CBS is used to that, he said. Noting that Apple, as just one example, recently jumped into the original TV content arena by signing a deal to bring back Steven Spielberg’s anthology TV series “Amazing Stories,” Moonves said: “They’re investing some major money on major product. What their end game is I’m not quite sure – yet.”

Moonves and Bakish also stressed the growing importance of their companies’ international OTT plans at the conference. Viacom sees “a lot of opportunity” still in its plans outside the U.S., Bakish said.