
CBS Offers Web Service as TV Unbundles Itself - dnetesn
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/business/cbs-to-offer-web-subscription-service.html?_r=0
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ansible
_For the live stream, the ads will be the same as those on the traditional
television broadcast. For the on-demand programming, the typical 12 to 16
minutes of ads an hour will be reduced 25 percent._

I guess I'm not their intended customer. I'm not going to pay for a service to
give me ads. If I'm watching a live show, I want the ability to pause it, walk
away for a few minutes, and then skip commercials.

For on-demand content, I don't want any commercials. I don't see the value
otherwise.

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tedivm
Do you have cable? My guess is they're targeting existing cable customers who
are considering cutting the cord- those people are already paying for a
service that gives them advertisements, so for them this isn't much different
(in fact it's 25% less ads and potentially a much smaller cable bill).

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californian
Except this is streaming broadcast shows, not cable (unless I missed
something). This wouldn't really help cutting the cord... you could already
get rid of cable and just use an antenna for CBS.

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ryanhuff
Antennas won't work for many people.

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eastbayjake
Which people? I've lived in one place where my antenna didn't work, and it was
so in the middle of nowhere that slow DSL speeds would have made streaming TV
content pretty unpleasant. I'd imagine many of those people already have
satellite for TV and internet.

~~~
ryanhuff
I hear downtown areas are particularly bad for OTA. I live in southern
California, but far from the transmitters, and its hard to get a clean OTA
signal.

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goodcanadian
I am not going to pay to stream content that still has ads in it . . . this is
one reason that I am a "cord never" in the odd parlance of the article.

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ChuckMcM
I'm going to assume they started on this effort at the same time they started
making loud noises about Aero and their "mini" antennae.

I agree that it seems strange to have both pay + ads, which is clearly a grab
at both the money people paid to the cable/satellite company and the revenue
they get from advertisers. I would subscribe to a service where it was free
and the ads paid for it (like broadcast TV), or it cost money and had no ads
(Netflix). My guess is that they won't be as successful as they would like,
perhaps that is my hope. I would not be a fan if this pay and pay model became
the norm.

Of course the Dish/DirectTV/Comcast folks are no doubt having fits about being
disintermediated.

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mason55
_> I agree that it seems strange to have both pay + ads_

 _> I would not be a fan if this pay and pay model became the norm._

Maybe you've heard of cable television for which you both pay and see ads? I
think it might catch on at some point...

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ChuckMcM
Snarkiness aside, think about what the "value" is/was that cable brought to
the transaction. The value of cable was that you could get channels (and thus
content) that you could not get from 'over the air' stations. Early cable
adopters people with poor or non-existent over the air reception. Then cable
added the equivalent of UHF channels (sorry if that is a US centric thing but
all of the channels on that band in the US were a bit 'off'). Then came the
'movie' channels which you could _only_ get on cable and the reason people
paid for cable was that other content which they had no other way to get.

Internet service was never a threat until bandwidth got to the point where you
could watch video on it with the same fidelity as bad TV, then suddenly other
ways to get alternate content were available. Netflix dropped into that change
just as affordable 1 - 3 mbit bandwidth was hitting (the whole ADSL revolution
in the 90's) and since the bandwidth race that has just gotten worse.

So cable, which you paid for, was the only way to get this "other" content,
which carried free over-the-air content with its concommitant advertising as a
'favor' to its subscribers so they didn't need an antenna (and they did get
better reception, but not HD, but that is a different thread). Now folks are
dumping cable for things like Netflix and Hulu because they can get content
"ala carte" and Netfix on demand is better than all of the 'budget' movie
channels on cable (think Encore, Starz, or Cinemax) and now they go back to
over the air reception (now digital) of the free content. Comcast is
disintermediated because they don't bring anything to the party (except, to
their pain, fast internet access).

That is the sea change that is going on here. Fat pipe providers as a
commodity, and a bunch of different services being content providers on
demand.

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dchuk
While I'm excited that more Big Networks are realizing that offering streaming
only packages to consumers is a Good Idea, I'm really worried about how the
cable internet companies will retaliate. We've already seen them blame Netflix
for its own popularity, what's stopping them from doing this to companies like
HBO and CBS that are now willing to offer a package that circumvents TV
entirely?

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dsl
The cable companies can't retaliate against the likes of CBS and HBO, because
they risk losing the content for their service. So they pick on Netflix
instead...

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dchuk
Well, that's supposing that the big cable companies are rational. They tend to
act counter to that in a lot of situations though...

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jerf
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5639327](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5639327)
s/Warner Brothers/CBS & HBO/g

I suppose I've got three more major networks I can look forward to reposting
this for (ABC NBC Fox), and who knows how many of the cable-only networks will
think this is a good idea....

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dwild
At first I though it was US only, like always, but then I saw there's also
Canada in the countries. I fill everything, it's fine, I get to the second
step, the activation, it ask again for address, but now, no country and only a
state selection.

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Animats
This probably means CBS will be disabling their existing system for allowing
free viewing of their shows, delayed by a day or so. That was a nice service.

 _CBS - The Police Procedural Network_

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RexRollman
I am happy to see this happen but broadband quota limits could become a
limiting factor as more and more video is consumed this way.

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joesmo
Until they work things out with the NFL it's not worth any money. The rest of
the programming is available elsewhere.

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dsl
Heads up: if you run AdBlock they prevent you from watching anything except
the live stream.

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jpmattia
Watching CBS over lines owned by Comcast (who owns NBC) will be interesting.

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dragonwriter
> Watching CBS over lines owned by Comcast (who owns NBC) will be interesting.

People having been watching CBS over lines owned by Comcast most of the nearly
half century Comcast has existed, including the period where it has owned
NBCUniversal (it has been, after all, a CATV company a lot longer than its
been an ISP.)

~~~
exelius
Actually, Comcast would love to be able to ditch the local networks. They
currently have to pay local station owners for distribution rights in the form
of retransmission agreements.

This way, CBS will be paying for a commercial CDN because, well, that's what
you have to do when you distribute video over the Internet if you want decent
performance (and there are lots of business and technical reasons for this).
Most commercial CDNs have had interconnect agreements with all the large ISPs
for over a decade.

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beauzero
...seriously awesome news.

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paulhauggis
Isn't the Internet great! Instead of paying cable for one bundle of channels,
we are now paying a monthly fee for each one.

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untothebreach
I know you are being sarcastic, but as an existing cord-cutter who hasn't paid
for TV in over 2 years, I much prefer this way.

I won't sign up for the CBS service, but I would totally pay a monthly fee for
Comedy Central and Fox Sports Detroit, as those are the only things I really
miss from back when I had cable.

