Last month, Viacom announced that they had acquired ad-supported streaming TV service, Pluto TV for $340 million. The service offers 100 linear channels of lifestyle, news, sports, and entertainment content through partnerships with 130 media networks.
Today, the company announced that the acquisition has been completed. “The completion of this deal marks an exciting next step in Viacom’s evolution and a powerful opportunity for us to extend our consumer reach and broaden our ability to add value across the industry as the media landscape continues to segment,” said Bob Bakish, Viacom President and CEO. “Together with Pluto TV, we look forward to becoming a stronger partner to distributors, advertisers, content providers and audiences around the world.”
Pluto TV will operate as an independent subsidiary of Viacom, led by President and CEO Tom Ryan.
Viacom plans to use their infrastructure to expand Pluto TV’s footprint in the United States and around the world. The company also hopes to expand on the platform’s 100 live linear channels with their deep library genre-specific content - kids (Nickelodeon), African-American (BET), reality (MTV & VH1), and comedy (Comedy Central).
Viacom also sees Pluto TV as a marketing engine to sell their own OTT services — Noggin, Comedy Central Now, and Nick Hits. But don’t expect first-run content to appear on Pluto TV, as Viacom says they will keep that content for their own linear channels.
Pluto TV has more than 12 million monthly active users, 7.5 million of which are on connected TVs. The service can stream across a wide array of devices including Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, Chromecast, PS4, iOS, Android, and your computer.
Last week another similar service, XUMO was rumored to be in acquisition talks with broadcasters including Sinclair Media Group. Last month, Sinclair launched their own ad-supported streaming service, STIRR.
Additionally, Tubi announced that following a $25m growth capital round, they had signed a streaming deal with NBCUniversal for 400 classic TV shows & films.