ViacomCBS Announces March 4 Launch Date for Paramount+
Launch Dates Set for International Rollout of Paramount+ in Latin America and the Nordics
Company to Host Investor-Focused “ViacomCBS Streaming Event” and Report Fourth Quarter and Full Year Financial Results on February 24, 2021
New York--Jan. 19, 2021--ViacomCBS Inc. (NASDAQ: VIAC, VIACA)
announced today that its highly anticipated streaming service,
Paramount+, will launch in the U.S. on Thursday, March 4, 2021.
ViacomCBS will also bring Paramount+ to international markets with initial debuts in Latin America on March 4, 2021; the Nordics on March 25, 2021; and Australia in mid-2021. The CBS All Access service in Canada will be rebranded to Paramount+ on March 4, 2021, and an expanded offering will be available later in the year.
Additionally, the company will host an investor event and issue fourth quarter and full year financial results for the period ending December 31, 2020 on Wednesday, February 24, 2021. The presentation will deliver a comprehensive overview of the company’s streaming strategy, including Paramount+, Pluto TV, and SHOWTIME® OTT.
A webcast of the ViacomCBS investor event can be accessed in the
Events, Webcasts & Annual Meetings section of ViacomCBS’
Investors website (ir.viacomcbs.com) beginning at approximately 4:15 p.m. (ET), following the release of its earnings materials. Virtual doors open at 4:00 p.m. (ET) with early tune in encouraged prior to the start of the event.
The earnings release and materials will be accessible on the Investors home page of ViacomCBS’ website.
A replay of the investor event will be available in the Events, Webcasts & Annual Meetings section of the ViacomCBS’ Investors home page.
About ViacomCBS
ViacomCBS (NASDAQ: VIAC; VIACA) is a leading global media and entertainment company that creates premium content and experiences for audiences worldwide. Driven by iconic consumer brands, its portfolio includes CBS, Showtime Networks, Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, BET, CBS All Access, Pluto TV and Simon & Schuster, among others. The company delivers the largest share of the U.S. television audience and boasts one of the industry’s most important and extensive libraries of TV and film titles. In addition to offering innovative streaming services and digital video products, ViacomCBS provides powerful capabilities in production, distribution and advertising solutions for partners on five continents.
For more information about ViacomCBS, please visit
www.viacomcbs.com and follow @ViacomCBS on social platforms.
VIAC-IR
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Paramount Plus will be a much-expanded rebrand of CBS All Access, the subscription service launched in 2014 that combined live streaming of CBS’ network programming via its 150-plus local affiliates, including NFL games, with a menu of original series, catch-up viewing and library shows. With the relaunch, Paramount Plus will also feature dedicated hubs for ViacomCBS’ core cable properties including Nickelodeon, MTV, BET and Comedy Central, for a total of some 30,000 titles. At present, CBS All Access is believed to have about 8-9 million subscribers.
Paramount Plus will also have an ad-supported component through the CBS live streams and the CBS News, sports highlights and Entertainment Tonight-branded theme channels that complement the mothership Eye on CBS All Access.
It is thought that ViacomCBS
will keep Noggin, Nickelodeon's top-rated subscription-based interactive learning service for preschoolers, operational because of its unique interactive functionality and access to games. However, video content on Noggin, which includes popular preschool programming such as
Dora the Explorer and
PAW Patrol, will also become available on the rebranded Paramount Plus.
ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish has made the build-out of All Access a top priority since the December 2019 merger of Viacom and CBS Corp. The Feb. 24 investor presentation will talk up ViacomCBS’ position with a big footprint in the ad-supported streaming arena with the growing
Pluto TV, as well as its subscription bids with Paramount Plus and the standalone Showtime app.
Bakish’s move as articulated in December is to build “a linked ecosystem of differentiated offerings across free and pay streaming.”
ViacomCBS’ lack of a clear streaming plan for Wall Street had been a drag on the stock, which sank to just under $12 as the coronavirus crisis hit the U.S. in March 2020. But news of the Paramount Plus launch date and investor presentation comes as ViacomCBS shares have been climbing steadily. The stock is up 80% over the past six months after closing Friday at $45.30, and up 35% for the year to date.
Shares have no doubt been boosted by recent ViacomCBS distribution deals with virtual MVPDs, notably YouTube TV and Hulu, that promise to beef up the company’s all-important domestic affiliate revenue line. That plus a better-than-expected advertising market and a more ambitious streaming strategy has earned ViacomCBS positive comments from influential analysts in the past few weeks.
“We’ve written positively on our expectations for Paramount+, stating we think the platform can be a winner in the streaming wars given its mix of strong IP, news, and sports,” JPMorgan’s Alexia Quadrani wrote in a note Jan. 12.
Paramount+ Marketing Push Will Rely Heavily on ViacomCBS Networks
Media companies’ new streaming services have one advantage over tech rivals such as Netflix: cross-promotion opportunities
ViacomCBS Inc. will begin a 13-week marketing campaign for its coming Paramount+ streaming service with advertising during the National Football League’s AFC Championship game this Sunday, followed by ads during the Super Bowl, the Grammy Awards, the Masters and March Madness.
But the media giant, formed in 2019 by the merger of Viacom and CBS, faces a challenge as it introduces a consumer brand in an increasingly competitive and punishingly expensive streaming-television market.
The streaming wars have led to a rush in new movie and TV production, and billions of dollars in spending on content. Marketing budgets are rising, too, as media rivals seek to raise consumer awareness of new services in a landscape dominated by Netflix Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Walt Disney Co. ’s rapidly growing Disney+.
Paramount+, named after the famed movie studio owned by ViacomCBS, will launch in the U.S. on March 4. It will be an expanded and rebranded version of the existing CBS All Access streaming service, giving it a jump on services that start from scratch. ViacomCBS aims to make Paramount+ stand out by promoting its range of content, including live sports, news, movies and TV shows.
ViacomCBS will also exploit a key advantage media giants have over their technology competitors: TV and digital empires with promotional ad inventory, celebrity talent and intellectual property at the ready.
The AFC Championship and the Super Bowl, for example, will air on CBS, the flagship broadcast network of ViacomCBS. A series of ads in and bookended by the games will feature talent and characters from the ViacomCBS portfolio, such as CBS late-night host James Corden and Nickelodeon’s Dora the Explorer, on a journey to reach “Paramount Mountain.”
The broader campaign will total more than 6,000 spots airing across the company’s TV networks, which also include MTV, BET, CMT and Comedy Central. The campaign will use promotional inventory reserved for so-called house ads instead of commercial ad time sold to other marketers, said Josh Line, executive vice president and chief brand officer at ViacomCBS.
The extensive TV effort will be complemented by ads running on ViacomCBS’ digital platforms, such as the free streaming service Pluto TV, and social channels.
One of the top priorities for ViacomCBS following the merger was to establish a system for companywide marketing efforts making use of an expanded portfolio of assets, Mr. Line said. This included creating a group of 17 top marketing executives overseeing a committee of 65 employees, including media planners and social-media staffers, meeting regularly.
“We have been developing and refining our operational model on how to do it for this moment,” Mr. Line said.
Making use of owned assets has become a familiar model for the streaming services of media conglomerates as they try to take on the likes of Netflix, which just topped 200 million subscribers.
Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal, for example, last year planned to spend more than twice as much promoting its Peacock service on its own channels and platforms than outside of its own properties. Ads and promotional graphics for Disney+ are frequently shown on Disney siblings ABC and ESPN.
“All the TV companies do that—and they have that ability, which Netflix doesn’t,” said Ross Benes, senior analyst at research firm eMarketer. “They’ll still drop money elsewhere, but they have so much I.P. (intellectual property) between a combined Viacom and CBS, they can get more marketing support out of that than by dropping $200 million on other channels.”
ViacomCBS has said it would also advertise on properties it doesn’t own, including print, digital, streaming and out-of-home media.
ViacomCBS executives declined to say how much the company plans to spend marketing Paramount+ this year, but said outlays would be at levels competitive with rivals. Media giants including Comcast and AT&T Inc. budgeted hundreds of millions of dollars to promote their streaming services in 2020. Netflix, meanwhile, spent more than $2.2 billion on marketing last year.
ViacomCBS had 17.9 million domestic subscribers across its paid streaming services including CBS All Access and Showtime at the end of its third quarter last year, up 72% from a year earlier, according to the company. Subscribers were split roughly evenly between CBS All Access and Showtime, a person familiar with the matter said.
Disney+ grew to 86.8 million subscribers by December 2020 after its November 2019 launch, but several newer streaming services, including Peacock, WarnerMedia’s HBO Max and Discovery Inc.’s Discovery+ have since joined the battle for consumers’ time and money.
“[ViacomCBS] has had a head start on Peacock and Discovery+,” Mr. Benes said. “I don’t see them skyrocketing the way Disney did with Disney+, but even being the fourth-most successful streaming service would still mean a lot of viewers and subscribers.”
ViacomCBS’ experience in building out CBS All Access, Showtime and other subscription services underscores it knows how to attract new subscribers and keep existing ones, said Domenic DiMeglio, executive vice president, head of operations and chief marketing officer for Paramount+.
“You’re marketing to and acquiring subscribers day in and day out,” he said.
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Originally published: Tuesday, January 19, 2021 at 19:06 GMT.
