CBS, Viacom to reunite
Aim to battle Netflix in streaming content
NEW YORK — The newly combined ViacomCBS will invest in more movies and TV shows and try to sell more advertising as it seeks to become a bigger player in the growing business of streaming video.
Yet the bigger company still might not be big enough to be competitive, as larger rival Disney launches its own service in November and streaming pioneer Netflix spends even more on original shows and movies.
That isn’t stopping Viacom CEO Bob Bakish, who will lead the combined company, to declare that ViacomCBS will be “one of only a few companies with the breadth and depth of content and reach to shape the future of our industry.”
CBS and Viacom, which separated in 2006, announced their long-anticipated reunion Tuesday.
Viacom owns the Paramount Pictures movie studio and pay TV channels such as Comedy Central, MTV and BET, while CBS has a broadcast network, television stations, Showtime and a stake in The CW over-the-air network.
CBS was one of the first media companies to launch its own streaming service, CBS All Access. The $6-amonth service now has a new “Star Trek” series, a revival of “The Twilight Zone” and archives of old and current broadcast shows.
Now, Disney, Comcast’s NBC-Universal and AT&T’s WarnerMedia are jumping in with their own services as well to challenge Netflix, Amazon, Google and other tech companies encroaching into entertainment. To expand its library, Disney bought Fox’s entertainment businesses for $71 billion in March, while DirecTV owner AT&T bought Time Warner last year for $81 billion.
Once the deal is completed, expected by the end of the year, ViacomCBS will have a combined library with more than 140,000 TV episodes and 3,600 film titles, including franchises such as “Star Trek” and “Mission: Impossible.”
CBS has a market value of $18 billion and Viacom about $11.7 billion. Disney’s is nearly $245 billion and Netflix is at $136 billion.
And the Paramount movie studio, despite hits like last year’s “A Quiet Place” and the latest “Mission: Impossible” sequel, has just 5% of this year’s market share at the box office. It hasn’t been in the top five since 2011.
Moody’s media analyst Neil Begley said ViacomCBS might have to consider other acquisitions to keep up.
The all-stock deal will give CBS shareholders about 61% of the combined company and Viacom shareholders the rest. The companies say the combined company will have $28 billion in revenue. By combining, the companies say they will save $500 million a year.