Wednesday, October 15 was a momentous day for digital media. With streaming services like Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime giving networks a place for past episodes (and in some cases, new episodes day after air) of their series to live on and gain new viewers, there was a seismic shift that was felt throughout the lands of Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner and other cable providers when HBO announced it would launch its own stand-alone streaming service in 2015.

HBO currently provides HBO GO for cable subscribers which includes a library of movies, and complete series both new and old, including Game of Thrones, Veep, The Sopranos, Girls, The Wire and more. Amazon Instant members also have access to HBO programs, but only past seasons (current seasons will take up to three years to land on Amazon). The new streaming service will not require a cable subscription and will include basically the same content as cable subscribers get with HBO GO (sister channel Cinemax content may also be included). It’s rumored Showtime will follow suit at some point in the near future.

And that future may not be too far away with today’s announcement that CBS (Showtime is a corporate sibling) is also going to offer its own exclusive subscriber streaming service. As far as streaming content goes, CBS has been notoriously stingy in offering new episodes of its current season shows on any platform save for its own mobile app and website (and even there, finding complete episodes of your favorite shows is a dicey proposition although the network does offer current episodes of Under the Dome and Extant on Amazon).

CBS All Access is a new pay service that gives subscribers access to most of the network’s current programming and classics from its vaults. For $5.99 a month, users have access to full current seasons of 15 CBS primetime shows, including The Big Bang Theory, Blue Bloods, Criminal Minds, CSI, Elementary, The Good Wife, Hawaii Five-0, The Mentalist, NCIS, Person of Interest and Survivor, with new episodes available day after air. (CBS is the one major network that does not offer new episodes of its shows on Hulu Plus.)

You also get the ability to live-stream your local CBS station (initially in 14 markets with more to be added, and some sporting events will not be available), full past seasons of 8 CBS shows including The Good Wife, Blue Bloods, and Survivor (with more to come), 5,000 episodes of “CBS Classics” including Cheers, Twin Peaks, Star Trek, and CSI: Miami, and Big Brother 24/7 live feeds. Extra content for special events like the Country Music Awards and The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show will also be available.

With more options becoming available to stream just the shows and networks you want, are the cable companies in danger of becoming obsolete, or will this force them to drop prices to keep subscribers plugged in? The new streaming options, of course, won’t kill cable — just yet — but they will certainly force the companies to re-examine their current models. With subscribers cutting the cord and relying on OTA local network channels, streaming services, Roku, Apple TV and Google Chrome, the cable companies are going to have to start offering something other than their tiered packages.

One popular solution, something demanded by cable subscribers in general, is an ‘a la carte’ option, allowing customers to choose what channels they want to pay for and not be forced to pay for channels they never watch. So far, though, cable companies and content providers have been less than enthusiastic about that option simply because it would cost them millions. But with many cable channels offering their programming online (hardly any of the big ones like HGTV, Lifetime or Discovery offer current programs on Hulu Plus like the major networks do), cord-cutters could force them to re-evaluate their own streaming strategies, especially those that do require a cable subscription log-in (like MTV and TNT) to access their shows. If subscribers start to flee cable en masse, those networks will have to adapt to survive.

With CBS All Access priced at $5.99 a month, Hulu Plus at $7.99, Netflix at $8.99 (and that recent $1.00 price increase really hurt their bottom line), Amazon at about $8.25 a month and the HBO service projected to cost perhaps as much as $15 (totaling less than $50 a month), would you be willing to ditch cable and watch everything streaming and over the air in the case of local channels?

CBS has announced its fall schedule, and with the network having the most returning new shows from the previous season, they really didn’t have too much to change. Until the network acquired Thursday Night Football and spin-offs from the popular CSI and NCIS franchises. In fact, a good portion of their returning programs are benched until football ends its run.

With the Thursday schedule disrupted and the new additions taking old favorites’ time slots, The Mentalist, Mike & Molly, Undercover Boss, and newcomers Battle Creek and The Odd Couple won’t be seen until 2015. Other shows like The Amazing Race and The Big Bang Theory are moving to make room for the new additions. CBS’ biggest change is the end of its 2-hour Monday comedy block, something that’s been in place since 1986! The 9 PM hour now belongs to new thriller Scorpion while the troubled 10 PM spot hopefully gets a boost from NCIS: Los Angeles.

Monday will now lead off with The Big Bang Theory, which will return to its Thursday slot after football (and then 2 Broke Girls will return to Monday), with Mom moving to 8:30. CBS did not pick up HIMYM spin-off How I Met Your Dad. Tuesday starts off with NCIS which leads into the third hour of NCIS shows on the network, this one taking place in New Orleans. Wednesday adds Kevin Williamson’s psychological thriller Stalker starring Dylan McDermott and Maggie Q. Thursday’s new addition is the comedy The McCarthys, about an Irish Catholic, sports-crazed family and the gay son who just doesn’t want to spend that much time with them. Friday welcomes The Amazing Race to the 8 PM timeslot, which should make fans of the show very happy. Why? Because the show will now always start on time! No more football and golf delays (makes setting a DVR so much easier).

Saturday sticks with the Crimetime/48 Hours block, and Sunday sees Madame Secretary, with Tea Leoni, Tim Daly and Bebe Neuwirth, take over the 8 PM slot, and CSI moves to the 10 PM slot until the spin-off CSI: Cyber takes over later in the season. And in case you’re wondering, CBS has confirmed that this will be the final season of Two and a Half Men. The one positive outcome of football disrupting the fall schedule is that the network will have enough original programming to cut down on or eliminate reruns throughout the season. CBS seems to be in a good position heading into fall with a roster of hit shows, newcomers that follow the CBS crime drama formula (so should be successful) and has more powerhouses waiting in the wings. Here’s what the fall schedule looks like:

Monday
8 p.m. — The Big Bang Theory/2 Broke Girls
8:30 p.m. — Mom
9 p.m. — Scorpion
10 p.m. — NCIS: Los Angeles

Tuesday
8 p.m. — NCIS
9 p.m. — NCIS: New Orleans
10 p.m. — Person of Interest

Wednesday
8 p.m. — Survivor
9 p.m. — Criminal Minds
10 p.m. — Stalker

Thursday
8 p.m. – Thursday Night Football

Thursday (after NFL)
8 p.m. — The Big Bang Theory
8:30 p.m. –The Millers
9 p.m. — Two and a Half Men
9:30 p.m. — The McCarthys
10 p.m. — Elementary

Friday
8 p.m. — The Amazing Race
9 p.m. — Hawaii Five-O
10 p.m. — Blue Bloods

Saturday
8 p.m. — Crimetime Saturday/48 Hours

Sunday
7 p.m. — 60 Minutes
8 p.m. — Madame Secretary
9 p.m. — The Good Wife
10 p.m. — CSI/CSI Cyber

I don’t know what was more awkward on last night’s Emmy Awards: The parade of CBS television actors pimping their own shows before doling out awards or Shemar “Well it’s me again” Moore’s delivery of his other catchphrase, “Only CBS.” Let’s get Shemar out of the way first.  He was drunk, right? Or he sustained a concussion minutes before the telecast launched and they threw him out there anyway. He acted like C3PO without the clever dialogue. I kept flashing back to the scene in Talladega Nights when Will Ferrell didn’t know what to do with his hands.

This CBS brings me to the other CBS problem with the CBS night where all CBS presenters felt compelled CBS to mention the network CBS and their television program CBS as much as possible CBS. Ummm, CBS … you won. You’re the most popular network. I don’t particularly like most of your lowest common denominator sitcoms or NCISs or CSIs, but I realize that apparently a lot of other people do, so congratulations. You’re like McDonald’s, and as Jerry Seinfeld said in one of his bits, just put up a sign saying “we’re doing very well” instead of all the constant promotion. It was awkward. When an overly tan Will Arnett came out with his new TV mom, Margo Martindale (who is great in The Americans, and I hope she still has time to guest on that show), and did their bit where she guilted him into pimping their new show, he said during the bit that it wasn’t appropriate. And it really isn’t appropriate.

But in this day and age, where people are streaming shows and fast forwarding through commercials on their DVRs, networks have to do more to get their advertising revenue. And that has spilled over into program promotion. Gone are the days of the “And now a word from our sponsors…” advertisements. They have been replaced with “product integration.” Chuck loves Subway and their “$5 foot longs.” New Girl is not only “adorkable” but it also teaches us how to use the foot-activated liftgate on the Ford Escape. Ray Donovan’s cell phone gets more screen time than Bunchy. It’s distracting. I expect product integration on shows like American Idol or Project Runway because that’s the only way to force it down the viewer’s throats, but blatantly working it into plot lines on scripted comedies and dramas makes it hard to suspend my disbelief. This was the technique used by CBS during the Emmys. Want to know if Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston gets robbed? Well, first let’s hear about the new comedy Mom starring Anna Faris and Allison Janney. Only CBS.

Maybe this is common now for these types of live broadcasts; I really only tuned in to see Neil Patrick Harris work his magic. But I find it annoying that in this renaissance of television programming when one hour dramas are far richer in depth and character than 99% of the films in the theaters, that blatant product/program integration is so heavy handedly shoved in our faces. Although, considering the in your face, no-thinking required comedy that is the paradigm that most of CBS’s sitcoms employ, I guess I should have expected it.

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Big Brother started two weeks early this year as the fifteenth season premiered on CBS on June 26. The show normally debuts the week after July 4th, so the fans are getting some extra time to spend with their favorite hamsters this summer … but will this cast of characters even be worth the three days a week in primetime, 7 nights a week on Big Brother After Dark (now on TVGN, which unlike Showtime Too, has to mercilessly edit the audio feeds making entire conversations sometimes unintelligible), and 24/7 on the live feeds?

I would have said yes, probably, after watching the first episode but by the fourth episode of the season, the first live eviction, my feelings on the show and this cast in particular have changed drastically. Perhaps it’s a sign of an aging show (similar to what Survivor has gone through), but it seems the casting process now is to find beautiful, vapid people who are less interested in the game than they are in being on TV and having a “showmance.” Yeah, it’s now become a hookup show. I started watching Big Brother with the third season, and they had some terrific people with a wide range of personalities and life experience: Marcellas Reynolds, Amy Crews, Chiara Jude, Danielle Reyes, Eric Ouellette, Jason Guy and Gerry Lancaster immediately come to mind as the standouts of that season, with age ranges from 23 to 51! This season’s cast members range in age from 22 to 37.

And now, some of the younger ones are showing their maturity level … at least to the people watching the live feeds. CBS and producer Allison Grodner go to great lengths to make sure what we see in primetime is a carefully crafted, non-offensive game show featuring the “real” personalities of the House Guests. But anyone watching the live feeds knows that what CBS creates for network viewing is more fantasy than reality. It was tough to stomach Thursday’s episode in which Aaryn was portrayed as the innocent, angelic blonde with a cute crush on surfer dude David after hearing the horrible things she’s been saying. In fact, at this point Aaryn, David, Kaitlin, GinaMarie, Jeremy, Amanda and Spencer have all shocked viewers with their racist, misogynistic, homophobic comments.

Aaryn’s been the worst of the bunch so far with such gems as “be careful what you say in the dark; you might not be able to see that bitch,” (about Candice, the single black female in the house), “No one’s gonna vote for whoever that queer puts up,” about gay HG Andy, and “Shut up. Go make some fucking rice,” to Asian HG Helen. Nice. But it doesn’t stop there. GinaMarie has chimed in that Helen “should be kissing our ass and serving us some fucking rice,” and “you know two blacks stick together. They’re like tokens” (referring to Candice and Howard, the one black male in the house). David, who was thankfully the first one evicted, said that the sheets smelled bad because of “black Candice.” Amanda called Andy “Faggoty Ann” and Spencer called him “Kermit the fag.” Spencer also praised Hitler’s speaking abilities and said the medical torture by the Nazi doctors was beneficial. Jeremy simply thinks of women as nothing but sex objects and has called some of them in the house “c–ts.”

As the fans, and now the media, have caught on to what’s being said by the House Guests, CBS’ response has been the same as it was in the past when other House Guests behaved badly, like “America’s Sweetheart” Jeff Schroeder, who went on an anti-gay rant during his season. CBS’ reaction to that was to cast him on Big Brother a second time, as well as The Amazing Race, and gave him a show online in which he interviewed the evicted House Guests. This season he was given the job of interviewing the HGs before they went into the house. I suppose by that measure Aaryn will be the head of programming at CBS by the time this season is over. She’s going to need the job, however, because karma has already bitten her in the ass, and she doesn’t even know it! Her employer Zephyr Talent, a modeling agency in Texas, has dropped her from their roster after her comments. GinaMarie is also oblivious to the fact that her employer, East Coast USA Pageants, Inc., has also fired her because in her position of being a role model to young girls, they actually found her comments to be not something they want her protegés to look up to.

Knowing how these people talk amongst themselves really kills the fun of watching Big Brother. The producers have allegedly made an announcement to the House Guests to stop using racist language in the house, but will a verbal admonishment with no threat of consequences within the game really change the behavior of these people? Does CBS think that this unusual amount of publicity the show is now receiving will actually help the show, which has seen some of its lowest-ever ratings? There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right? I have a feeling that if the offensive comments continue — and things could get even worse after this week’s eviction and HoH competition, and the apparent cheating perpetrated by the winner — CBS is going to find itself in more of a publicity nightmare with viewers fleeing the show in droves. I don’t know that I want to spend three more months with these people, and I’m betting negativity surrounding this cast will take its toll on the show. The best suggestion I’ve seen so far: evict the entire cast and start over.

UPDATE: Spencer’s employer is also looking into taking action against him as well. Being a union worker, they may have less options than Aaryn’s or GinaMarie’s but the repercussions of racist rants continue to cause ripples.

UPDATE: In a surprise move, CBS did broadcast a collection of Aaryn’s comments accompanied by reactions from some of her housemates on the July 7th episode.

Yesterday, I previewed ABC’s slate of new dramas. Today it’s time to take a look at what CBS is serving up. Since the Tiffany network is returning eleven hour-long dramas from last year (along with three hour-long reality shows), there’s not a lot of room for new material. You’d think with position like that, they’d be able to pick from the cream of the crop.

We’ve only had the chance to look at two of the three new dramas. One is a drastic change from the network’s regular fare, while the other fits right in. Will CBS’s strategy of trying something new work out?

Hostages (Mondays 10:00PM)

It seems like most of the networks were taking chances with high-concept dramas. Hostages definitely fits that bill: the family of a surgeon scheduled to operate on the President of the United States is held hostage to force the doctor to make a fatal error while in the operation room. Hostages should be right up my alley: a political intrigue thriller where the lines between black and white are more than a little blurry. Sadly though, the first episode just falls flat.

Verdict: The DVR is going to have a hard time recording this against The Blacklist and Castle.

Magic Eight Ball Chances of a Second Season: My reply is no.

Intelligence (Midseason, Mondays 10:00PM)

Like the last couple of years, the broadcast networks are holding back several of my favorite pilots for midseason; Intelligence is on that list. Ever since the finale of Lost, audiences have been waiting with bated breath for Josh Holloway’s return to television. I can assure you (ladies) that he’s just as roguish as he’s always been. He and Megan Ory (Once Upon a Time) have great chemistry, and the show’s got the one ingredient that I think makes NCIS one of the most watched shows on television: It’s fun.

Verdict: Intelligence had me at hello, and I’ll figure out a way to work out the DVR schedule later.

Magic Eight Ball Chances of a Second Season: As I see it yes.

CBS Pilots not yet available to press: Reckless (Midseason)