NOW: ALL THE NEWS ALL THE TIME — ONLINE FROM CBS

CBS is getting its feet wet today (Thursday) with "over the top" (OTT) online programming by launching a new free news service dubbed CBSN. The network said that the service, which will be available only via the Internet, will present 60-minute news programs that viewers can view live or scroll back to watch reports on demand. The company said in plans to air 15 hours live and repeat 9 hours at night. The service will be ad supported. Microsoft has come aboard as the initial sponsor. Appearing on CNBC today, CBS chief Les Moonves commented, "CBS News is a phenomenal organization that has bureaus across the world, and producing a ton of content of which we don’t have enough air time to put it on. So, since we do not have a cable news network, and since the world is going online, we have the ability to put on a 24-hour news channel with anchors live, with plenty of content at not a great cost." A similar OTT service was launched this year by CNN, now called CNNGo, which allows anyone subscribing to a cable or satellite service to select news reports from the past 24 hours of the cable news network’s programming. Reuters has said that it is also planning to introduce an online news service next year, that will be available via paid subscription.