ViacomCBS Hints at Streaming Bundles to Come
With the streaming market being so saturated, services are having to find ways to set themselves apart. While some services stay in one lane, ViacomCBS is working to cover every possible viewer with live programming, sports, and on demand content at multiple price points.
ViacomCBS is working to check all the boxes:
- A free, ad-supported tier via Pluto TV
- A subscription service with Paramount+
- Premium offerings with SHOWTIME and BET+
And there may be more offerings to come. President of streaming Tom Ryan says, “We’ll…do more with bundling. We have done some bundles in the past, and we will be bringing more bundles to market, so that people can buy a number of our services and use them all together. We’re going to integrate the services, so that you can consume them all in one place.”
While ViacomCBS sees the importance of being innovative with its content, platform strategies, and bundles, the company has chosen to keep some of its services separate. Notably, Paramount+ and Showtime aren't bundled.
The company believes it knows what works with audiences. Ryan says, “People don’t want to have to do all of the work to find something entertaining, and that insight has served us. People love to be programmed to. Curation, or discovery, is something that we’re very serious about.” Experimenting with new strategies based on the company’s findings has proven to be successful for the company. Ryan says that they don’t want to replicate what other streaming services are already doing.
Ryan promises more innovative moves to come from ViacomCBS, adding, “When you’re able to bring something to market that doesn’t exist before, that’s where you find success. Of course, people are going to have certain expectations of what a streaming service has, and we’ll have those things. But I think we’re really going to shine by doing things differently.”