Sweet repeats
CBS revs up streaming strategy
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CBS said Tuesday that starting with its September premiere week, ad-supported episodes of every primetime show it fully owns will be streamed online the next day for free.
All three "CSI" skeins, along with "NCIS" and "Numbers," will be available on CBS' Innertube broadband video platform for four weeks after they air. "Survivor," which doesn't generate much revenue from syndication or DVD sales, and new drama "Jericho" will be available all season as CBS tests if there's demand for a show several months after its first run.
Eye net is following the lead of ABC, which streamed "Lost," "Desperate Housewives," "Alias" and "Commander in Chief" on its Web site in a two-month experiment last spring. It plans to relaunch the offering with more shows this fall. During its test, the Alphabet streamed episodes more than 5.7 million times.
CBS also has been airing full episodes of "Big Brother" on Innertube this summer and has thus far streamed episodes on-demand more than 1 million times. Net's experiment putting NCAA basketball tournament games online in March was even more successful. It delivered 14 million streams to about 1.5 million people in just four days.
"All of those things led us to believe it's worth it to take this step," said CBS digital media prexy Larry Kramer. "The audience is showing a willingness to try it, and we know we can deliver a large number of streams safely and create a good experience."
Given the growing interest of advertisers and Wall Street in digital media, it seems likely other nets will follow the lead of ABC and CBS. All the broadcast nets except the not-yet-launched CW and most cable networks already sell shows on iTunes, offer clips and occasional episodes online for promotional purposes; in some cases, they make shows available on-demand via cable or satcaster.
Also expected to come soon: shows not produced by a network's sibling studio. Though the revenue share may be complicated to work out, CBS would surely like to offer on the Web several of its top-rated series that it doesn't fully own, such as "Two and a Half Men" and "Without a Trace."
Kramer said Innertube will likely offer significantly more shows by the end of the season, which could mean series produced by other studios or older programs from CBS' library.
The broadband initiative is the first since CBS signed a deal with its affiliates that provided a framework for sharing the revenue generated by digital distribution of shows.
Agreement, finalized in July, gives stations financial incentives to promote network ad-supported video offerings on their Web sites and direct traffic to CBS.com.
Affils had previously worried that increased on-demand offerings would diminish the live audience, their lifeblood and source of the lion's share of the net's advertising revenue.
However, Kramer said with all the on-demand tests thus far, he hasn't seen any evidence that Web streaming cannibalizes broadcast ratings. It's still to be determined, however, whether it affects viewing in syndication or sales of DVDs or downloadable episodes.
Skeins on CBS.com will have a 10-second pre-roll commercial before they start and three unskippable 15- or 30-second spots throughout. Kramer said ad agencies were offered the opportunity to participate starting Tuesday.
Throughout the year, CBS plans to experiment with how it integrates advertising. Kramer noted the net may let viewers pick which spots they want to see or give advertisers the opportunity to target viewers based on demographic information they enter when registering.
Innertube, which CBS launched in May, consists primarily of promotional clips and "behind-the-scenes" videos for CBS programs, along with a few Web-only reality shows.
Though it had previously held back from jumping into new-media platforms as quickly as rival webs, CBS has been very aggressive in the past year. It was the first broadcast net to start selling shows on-demand via cable in a deal with Comcast last November, and in January it pacted with Google to sell several shows on the search giant's then-new videostore. It drew record traffic for its "March Madness" online offering.
In other digital news, NBC on Tuesday started selling its daytime serial "Passions" on Apple's iTunes Music Store. Soap opera is the first available for download on iTunes.
