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Viacom CBS Goes All-In With Rebrand

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Abdulrehman
Viacom CBS Goes All-In With Rebrand

Last year we saw Disney restructure completely around the needs of their premier Disney+ streaming model. This year, it’s ViacomCBS’s turn. While Paramount+ has yet to reach the subscriber volumes of Netflix or Disney, they're still putting all their eggs in one basket with the streaming model. Entertainment attorney Brandon Blake looks at the latest move in more detail.


Annual Investor Day Presentation:

All this was revealed at their annual investor day last week, which also was rather close to the 1-year anniversary of Paramount+’s launch. We’ve been promised more revivals, more ‘fan-favorite’ IPs, and sequels of popular products to help push their streaming options to new levels. 

 

While the legacy Paramount Studios has had a life of sorts within the wider ViacomCBS family, it will now return to its former prominence as the entire company takes over the name, solidifying its branding as the parent company for Paramount+. The announcement was made in a cute, if somewhat silly, action sequence showing the CEO and chairperson driving Bumblebee, the iconic Transformer.


Dedication to Storytelling:

This builds on Paramount’s reputation as the home of ‘brilliant storytelling’, or at least that’s the premise as presented. Despite the buoyancy, it’s hard to forget that Paramount+ is severely lagging behind its peers, both in subscriber numbers and its overall global reach. It ended 2021 at just short of 33M subscribers, a near doubling since the end of Q1, but still small figures overall. The new target is 120M by 2024.

 

Perhaps more practical for pushing the company forward than airy nostalgia, they’re hoping to ride Showtime’s coattails, with an option to watch Showtime through Paramount+ (for a fee, of course) in both ad and ad-free variations. They also mentioned an overall tripling of content spends to $6B by 2024.

 

The revealed average revenue per user (ARPU) for Paramount+ was $9 in Q4, a far cry from Netflix’s $14.78 domestically. It does, however, top Disney’s $6.68, although with Disney we must always remember Hulu lurking in the shadows, bringing in a fantastic $87 per user and driven mostly by live sports. As of 2024, their streaming service will be the home for all the film studio’s releases after their theatrical release period, too.

 

Yet during the Q&A, they returned again to content and quality as their planned drivers. Paramount has a large library, with some series that have huge volumes of seasons and enduring popularity. Think everything from SpongeBob to NCIS. Unlike many of the other streaming services, they may not need to focus as heavily on exclusive originals, with a huge body of content already open to them. It could well be the ‘key to our long-term streaming economics’ it was described as.

 

Despite its small size, Paramount+ has not done terribly for an entity only just starting its second year. The existing 33M subscribers actually exceeded its initial expectations. Will it reach the lofty heights it’s aiming for? For now, it’s too early to say, but the Blake & Wang P.A team will have an eye on it every step of the way.

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Abdulrehman
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