[1] On May 15, 2014, CBS Corporation CEO Leslie Moonves confirmed in an interview with Bloomberg Television that the company was working on the service.

Describing it as an "exciting alternative to cable news", he went on to say that "there is so much information that we get every day that doesn’t fit into a 22-minute newscast at 6:30 or CBS This Morning".

It also reported that the content would take place in an informal newsroom setting, and that its interface would consist of a video player with a playlist on a sidebar, and feature social network integration.

CBSN uses commercial breaks similar to a conventional television channel; Amazon.com and Microsoft were among the service's initial advertisers.

Developed in collaboration between CBS Interactive and ET distributor CBS Television Distribution, the service covers entertainment news headlines and breaking news, celebrity interviews, feature segments, behind-the-scenes and red carpet coverage, and trends in celebrity fashion, beauty and lifestyle.

ET Live utilizes complementary standalone presenters complementary to those featured on Entertainment Tonight—some of whom serve as on-air contributors for the syndicated broadcast—with the parent series' main hosts and correspondents appearing in segments promoting stories scheduled to be shown on the on-air broadcast.

The carriage came as the free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service was in the process of becoming a sister property to CBS as part of CBS Corporation's merger with Viacom (which, earlier that year, had acquired Pluto TV from namesake parent Pluto Inc.),[22] which was completed on December 4, 2019.

[38] The following month, CBS announced it was launching 10 p.m. weeknight newscasts at WKBD, WUPA, and WTOG hubbed out of KTVT, WCBS, and WFOR, respectively, and confirmed the newly hired multimedia journalists would help produce stories.

[39] The decision was due in part to the rising demand for newscasts from viewers and advertisers alike, and to the successful rollout of CBSN Local thus far.

[41][42][43] In July 2022, the WKBD, WUPA, and WTOG newscasts were replaced by new programs under the Now title, which featured a mixture of local segments, and national segments produced from KTVT; similar programs were concurrently launched on KSTW, WLNY-TV in New York, WSBK-TV in Boston, WPSG in Philadelphia, KTXA in Dallas–Fort Worth, KBCW in San Francisco, and WBFS-TV in Miami.

[46] CBS News and Stations co-president Wendy McMahon stated, in an interview with Variety coinciding with the rebranding, that CBS planned to produce 45,000 hours of local programming for the local streams by the end of 2022, including high school sports coverage.

[47] The services' names were incorporated into the titles of the Now newscasts in markets where CBS maintains a full news operation.

According to Moonves, CBSN is designed primarily to leverage the resources of CBS News and other CBS-owned entities to "create exciting, highly competitive new services that meet evolving audience preferences for content consumption"; viewers can watch CBSN live as a linear service, or watch previous segments on-demand.