CBS Will Air The Good Fight This Summer to Promote Their Streaming Service CBS All Access
CBS has added The Good Fight, the streaming spin-off of former hit CBS show The Good Wife, to their summer line-up. The first season of the series, which original premiered on CBS All Access in February 2017, will air on CBS starting on Sunday, June 16th. CBS will air two episodes on back-to-back Sunday evenings, with the remaining six episodes airing at 10pm ET the subsequent weeks.
The show which just finished airing their third season in early May was an early success for CBS All Access. The service now has an ambitious goal to reach 25 million domestic subscribers of both of their OTT services by 2022. CBS Interim CEO Joe Ianniello suggested they could use CBS to drive streaming subscribers in February.
“What if we took season one of The Good Fight and put it on the CBS broadcast network to drive subscribers back to CBS All Access,” said Ianniello. “And so, we’re literally thinking all of the possibilities through. It has to be broad enough to have mass appeal for the CBS broadcast network.”
Ianniello continued that “because the quality of the content we’re producing at All Access…the promotional platform that the network has is bigger than the streaming platform. So, we’re really thinking about that going forward.” By leveraging CBS broadcast network, CBS All Access would be able to reduce customer acquisition cost and be “an efficient use of the intellectual property.”
This wouldn't be the first time the CBS has used content from other properties on the broadcast network. In 2008, CBS aired 12 episodes of the Showtime series Dexter during the 100-day WGA writer’s strike. The content was edited to fit broadcast standards and the shorter time slot.
CBS All Access has aggressively added new original content especially around the Star Trek universe. The company recently started their second season of Star Trek: Discovery and will be adding an animated series called Star Trek: Lower Decks, as well as one featuring Patrick Stewart as Jean Luc Picard and another with Crazy Rich Asians star Michelle Yeoh. The service also launched a reboot of The Twilight Zone with Jordan Peele in April, which has been renewed for a second season.