Yahoo News CBS News’ Plan to Expand ’48 Hours’: A Free Streaming Channel
There are only 24 hours in a day, but CBS News wants to fill that time with 48 Hours.
The true crime-focused newsmagazine will get its own dedicated free streaming channel, launching today, in an expansion of the broadcast news brand.
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The free ad-supported streaming network will be called “48 Hours,” and will be programmed with the more than 500 episodes of the newsmagazine that have been produced so far, with new episodes running after they air on CBS.
The 48 Hours network will initially be available on CBS News digital platforms, Paramount+ and Pluto, with other platforms to follow.
“48 Hours is probably the pinnacle of brands in terms of working across all mediums and platforms: We have 48 Hours episodes on Paramount+, it does exceptionally well on Pluto, does exceptionally well on digital, does exceptionally well on YouTube,” says Sahand Sepehrnia, executive VP of digital content strategy and business for CBS News and stations, entertainment and sports. “It’s also a show that on FAST works incredibly well, right? You can watch each episode, and no matter when you start or when you finish it, each episode stands on its own, and that becomes very challenging in the entertainment world.”
The FAST expansion is also a strategic move by CBS News and its leader, Wendy McMahon, to try and grow audiences using the reach of digital, while still maintaining the broadcast backbone.
“I think the thing is for many, many years, 48 Hours was kind of overshadowed because of where and how you could view us,” says Judy Tygard, the show’s executive producer. “You know, we’ve been on Saturday night for a lot of years. Our team always jokes, that’s the loneliest night of the week, right? Has the fewest available eyeballs, and we were always kind of overlooked in the true crime space because of where and how you could watch us. This expansion has been like oxygen to our team, that has known that we’re producing these quality episodes, and now every platform we hit, it just catches like wildfire.”
In the case of the FAST channel, the plan is to have a curated stream around specific themes (think “Love Gone Wrong” or “Cold Cases”), with the most compelling episodes being programmed for the evening hours.
“We know that our peak audience is actually at night, and so we program our best content at night,” Sepehrnia says. “We look at the data, we look at the audience flow, and so the way we program FAST is a little bit similar to linear, where we’re looking at the lead outs and the lead ins and looking at the audience flow and the changes in audience flow.”
48 Hours joins CBS News 24/7, CBS Sports HQ and CBS local stations in the streaming space, though it is the first streaming network dedicated to a single show in the company’s portfolio.
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