CBS All Access is a terrible streaming service, and I wish it ill

There’s a saying in business that you can have things good, fast, or cheap — pick two. CBS’s dedicated streaming service, All Access (the exclusive online home of Star Trek: Discovery) has often seemed like the answer to a different question: what if you had none of those three things?

Although All Access has been around since 2014, the subscription service made its biggest splash yet in September 2017, with Discovery’s debut. It was the first Star Trek show in more than a decade, and it seems to have been designed specifically to drive interest in CBS’s service. Although international audiences can watch the show — which just returned after a two-month holiday hiatus — through Netflix, cord-cutters in America had to pay for All Access to see Discovery, fueling a record number of sign-ups, and a record number of people annoyed by the idea of paying $6 a month to watch a show with commercials.

Americans who want to watch All Access shows without commercials will have to pony up $9.99 a month — more than a subscription to either basic Netflix or Hulu Plus. Although the graduated pay structure sounds a bit like Hulu’s no commercials plan, Hulu offers shows from ABC, NBC, Fox, and a limited amount of CBS’s own library, as well as a substantial movie library and original content. CBS All Access, on the other hand, offers… CBS All Access.

Despite its name, the service also doesn’t actually provide that much access, even to the network’s own library. The Big Bang Theory remains CBS’s biggest hit, but only 12 episodes of the comedy’s 11 seasons are currently available to stream, due to licensing issues. Other popular shows, like 2 Broke Girls, aren’t available at all. And even when you can watch the shows you want, video quality has been a persistent concern for viewers; Star Trek: Discovery’s illustrious debut was accompanied by frustrating glitches for many All Access users.

I can personally attest that the glitches have persisted. In one viewing of Sunday’s mid-season debut of Discovery, the service seized up twice during commercials, and when I reloaded, I had to watch the same ads all over again. In another case, the audio from the show continued to play over the commercials, projecting the screams of characters undergoing torture over a cheery Cigna ad promoting annual check-ups.

CBS is the only broadcast network with its own dedicated streaming subscription service, and there’s a reason for that: if you’re a going to charge money for access to content from one channel, you’d better be getting some truly essential television. There were few complaints about HBO Now when it launched in 2015, but HBO has always been subscription-only, and cord-cutters had been calling for a streaming-only option of the prestige TV channel for years. But CBS is no HBO, and All Access is a service pretty much no one but CBS wanted.

For many viewers, the All Access subscription fee amounts to an a la carte payment for Discovery on a service that has little else to offer them, adding yet another line item to their media budget every month. Cord-cutting once seemed like a way to evade the hefty charges that come with cable TV bundles, but now, it’s increasingly starting to feel more like making a lot of little payments instead of one big one. If you subscribe to Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Prime, you’re already paying about $25 a month; add HBO Now and Showtime, and you’re over $50. Throw on CBS All Access and Disney’s upcoming ESPN streaming service, and cord-cutting starts to feel less like freedom and more like a death by a thousand cuts.

And yet, I subscribed to All Access anyway in order to watch Discovery, even though I feel personally insulted by its business model. So arguably, making a Trek series that lots of people want to watch and holding it hostage behind a paywall was an effective move — at least when it comes to coercing superfans like me. I’ll keep shelling out the monthly fee for the same reason I keep watching when All Access glitches out, and I have to watch the same Geico commercial about talking penguins three times in a row: I want to watch Star Trek, even if the experience is so frustrating that it feels like an elaborate troll.

So you got me, CBS. I’m paying for your subscription service — at least until this season of Discovery ends — but I’m doing it reluctantly and resentfully, and feeling like a rube every step of the way.