Stream Wars: the great CBS-Viacom merger

There's a new player in streaming-town: the American multimedia conglomerates CBS and Viacom have announced their decision to once again combine their efforts. I'm saying again because both companies recently split (German), back in 2006.

The newly-created megacorporation is slated to be called ViacomCBS, attempting to achieve a yearly revenue around 28 billion dollars. They plan on becoming a «leading company in the entertainment industry». The stars of this sector in 2018 included WarnerMedia with a 33,8 billion dollar profit, the Walt Disney Company at 59,4 billion and Comcast at 94,5 billion.

United against the Netflix wave

In some ways, this fusion can be seen as a step back: after their 2006 split, only CBS managed to successfully position itself in the market. Viacom was left floundering for several years due to the rise of the Internet.

Together, both businesses are looking to impress with over 140,000 «premium TV episodes» and over 3,600 movies. At this point, only 750 movies or TV episodes have been commissioned. Their channels, such as MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, reach more than 4.3 billion viewers in over 180 countries. On top of that, their subsidiary Paramount Pictures is one of the biggest movie studios in the world.

Famous franchises such as «Terminator», «Mission: Impossible» and «Star Trek» will be united under ViacomCBS. Therefore, it's easy to assume that «Star Trek: Discovery» as well as the upcoming Jean-Luc Picard series «Star Trek: Picard» will disappear from streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video sooner or later.

This will only intensify the upcoming war between streaming providers – at our expense, as we'll have to suffer through our favourite content being put through a wood chipper and distributed amongst multiple platforms.

A price point or release date for ViacomCBS' streaming service has not yet been announced. I’ll make sure you stay up-to-date. If you’d like to be informed about more behind-the-scenes news from the world of cinema and TV series, follow me by clicking on the «Follow author» button.