A day after ABC News launched its new cable channel, CBS News is reportedly looking toward the possibility of a 24-hour service devoted to news and information programming. BuzzFeed’s Peter Lauria reports that CBS News president David Rhodes has made this a “pet project.”
The news and interactive divisions of CBS have been quietly developing a digital video service that continually streams content 24-hours a day and leverages reporting from its existing news staff and content from the broadcaster’s archives onto new distribution platforms, according to two sources close to the situation.
Rhodes, a veteran of Fox News and Bloomberg, knows a thing or two about programming a newschannel. Lauria reports Rhodes is working alongside CBS Interactive chief Jim Lanzone “who is spearheading talks with distributors and whose Interactive unit runs the digital operations for CBS News from a sales, marketing, and technological perspective.”
The news comes less than a day after ABC News and Univision launched their news and information joint venture called Fusion, which is geared toward millennials and Hispanics. As Lauria points out, CBS’s audience is decidedly older:
At first blush, the idea of CBS News creating a 24-hour digital video service seems quixotic since it features one of the oldest audiences in TV, with an average viewer age in the mid-50s. But as digital adoption increases, more and more older viewers are getting onto connected devices, mobile or otherwise.