ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish said that the company is the largest creator of English and Spanish language content around the world.
“As we speak, we have 900 series in the works,” he said during a session at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference on Wednesday.
“We’re creating content across five continents. We absolutely have a global content strategy for Paramount Plus,” he said. “We’re going to use Paramount Plus to distribute our content globally. It really is about entertainment content outside of the U.S. In the U.S., it’s ‘News, Sports, and a Mountain of Entertainment’. (Internationally), we don’t have the same assets in news and sports as the U.S., so the global push is really entertainment.”
Part of that push involves creating an international streaming home for US-produced content, Bakish said, pointing to the recently announced SkyShowtime deal in Europe. “We’re taking our most successful U.S. formats and rolling them out internationally,” he said.
Bakish said this is particularly relevant with unscripted content, which allows U.S. content to be moved overseas as well as bringing international content in for the domestic market.
“We are taking international shows, dubbing them and putting them in the U.S.,” Bakish said. “This is something some of the other streamers have shown really works.”
Paramount Plus
Paramount+ is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 40,000+ TV show episodes from BET, CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr. and more. The lineup includes “1883,” “Tulsa King,” “Star Trek: Discovery,” Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants,” and “PAW Patrol.” Subscribers can watch the NFL, college football, The Masters, college basketball, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa, Serie A, and NWSL. The service also offers the option to watch your live CBS affiliate. The upgraded ad-free package includes premium movies and shows from Showtime.
International Streaming Expansion Includes Pluto TV
Bakish said that the international streaming expansion for ViacomCBS includes Pluto TV — which has already launched throughout Latin America. He said the company is announcing an expansion into Italy for the advertising-supported streaming service.
He also touted an increase in advertising revenue for Pluto TV around the world for this year.
“I mentioned Pluto will deliver over a billion dollars (in streaming revenue) this year,” Bakish said. “All streaming advertising (from Pluto TV) will be over $2 billion this year.”
Pluto TV was acquired by ViacomCBS in January 2019 and separates curated content into individual channels for viewers.
Much of the content on Pluto comes from the ViacomCBS portfolio, but a significant amount also comes from other domestic and international sources.
