CBS Launches Streaming News Channel

CBS News digital streaming channel went live Today.

One online news channel is free to viewers right now and is being supported by Advertisers. 

Capital New York reports that CBS is stressing that the move is not meant as a way into the 24-hour cable-news channel fray.

“We are not endeavoring to start a cable news channel online,” CBS News president David Rhodes told Capital in an interview. “We are trying to create something that is native for connected devices.”

Those devices include laptops and PCs, smartphones and tablets, and, yes, Internet-connected TVs. The target audience: younger viewers, some of whom may not subscribe to a pay-TV service.

“You go on college campuses today, and there aren’t many television sets, but there are an awful lot of computers and iPads,” CBS C.E.O. Les Moonves said on CNBC Thursday morning, regarding CBSN’s paid sister service CBS All Access.

“We just feel like we need to be there for those audiences, otherwise someone else will be,” Rhodes said.