The television landscape took a hard shift toward the future this week with announcements from HBO and CBS that they were each launching freestanding video-on-demand services. The moves occurred within 24 hours of each other and have left television watchers wondering who will be begging for their streaming subscription dollars next?
During their announcement on Thursday, HBO pointed to 10 million households in the U.S. that are broadband-only, cutting the cord from a regular cable subscription. TheWrap reached out to other networks to ask if and when they will make similar moves like HBO and CBS and offer programming to consumers who aren't watching traditional broadcast TV.
Showtime, a subsidiary of CBS and HBO's biggest competitor, has been considering a standalone streaming model, it said.
“We are always looking at ways of expanding our audience and it is certainly something that we have been examining for some time,” a Showtime representative told TheWrap. “The subscription model is ideally positioned to take advantage of developing technologies in the consumer marketplace.”
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Starz also has no current plans for a standalone streaming venture domestically. In a statement, Starz CEO Chris Albrecht said, ”Premium networks such as STARZ provide immense value to distributors as an [over-the-top] offering on top of broadband services. We support more U.S. and international distributors making these offerings available to consumers.”
The premium cable service launched its streaming service internationally last weekend with an eye toward emerging markets, such as Asia and Africa. It currently has both the platform and the streaming rights to launch in the U.S.
ABC, NBC and Fox all have stakes in the free (but ad-supported) streaming video service Hulu. CBS is the only network of the big four who has no stake in Hulu, making its launch into streaming all that much more critical.
The Wrap also reached out to The CW and NBC about a possible streaming venture. They had no comment.
CBS's All-Access subscription, while commercial free, comes with a monthly fee of $5.99, however.
Robert Thompson, a professor of Television and Pop Culture at Syracuse University, says it's only a matter of time before every network has their own streaming service.
“Oftentimes there's a generational shift of these things that can take 20 years,” Thompson told TheWrap. “I think CBS sees this the same way — why let this all go to Netflix and Amazon Prime?”
