At the Television Critics Association’s event today, CBS All Access announced that their mobile and tablet apps, which is housed inside of the CBS App, would get a much needed redesign later this the summer. The last major update of the CBS App came 10 months ago, when they added Download and Play support which allowed for the app to be used offline. While details of the changes is sparse, the hope is that the update will bring the app more in line with other SVOD apps like Hulu and Netflix.
With CBS All Access, you can stream your local CBS station, watch CBS shows on-demand, as well as CBS All Access originals like Star Trek: Discovery, The Good Fight, and The Twilight Zone. They offer two plans, an ad-supported one for $5.99 a month and ad-free for $9.99. Just yesterday, company became available as part of Apple TV Channels.
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. After the success of its first season, the service recently renewed digital remake of The Twilight Zone with Jordan Peele for a second season.
As part of their 2018 Fourth Quarter earnings, CBS announced that they have surpassed 8 million direct-to-consumer subscribers of CBS All Access and Showtime. The company originally projected that it would take another two years to reach that number of subscribers.
The company has now set a new goal to reach 25 million domestic subscribers of both of their OTT services by 2022. By comparison, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video surpassed that number by the end of 2018, while Netflix announced 60 million domestic subscribers (150 million worldwide) in July.