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.”
The two companies have been major content
spenders, having spent more than $13 billion
combined in the past year, or close to the
estimated $15 billion Netflix is expected to
spend on content in 2019. The two companies
have more than 750 series currently ordered or
in production.
But the combined company will still be small.
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.
CBS says All Access and its Showtime
streaming services have 8 million subscribers
combined. That’s far less than the 60 million
U.S. subscribers that Netflix has, though it’s
comparable with the estimated number of
subscribers to HBO Now, that network’s stand-
alone streaming service.
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. However, the number
of possible targets is dwindling, he said, with
what’s left mostly smaller companies such as the
Discovery and the AMC television networks and
the MGM and Lionsgate movie studios.