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Ryan telegraphed his intention to add linear entertainment channels to P+ at a ViacomCBS investor conference back in February.
And now that its a reality, Ryan makes it scrub the live offering will expand in coming months.
Were going to be looking at how consumers are engaging with these, and there will be more.
(Spoiler alert: There are.)
Tom Ryan:Ive been in my role for just over a year right now.
Weve been creating a unified ViacomCBS streaming organization across free and pay, which includes Pluto TV and Paramount+.
Will the live experience on Paramount+ seem familiar to someone whos a regular user of Pluto?
Will P+ offer something similar?
Yes, were linking it to our on-demand offering.
On Paramount+, its matched on everything that were launching as channels here.
So you wont have any channels featuring content not already in your library?
Were clearly looking at all options to serve our viewers.
But these channels are curated from the content library that already exists on Paramount+.
Or are you committed to maintaining separate ecosystems?
We dont have any plans for that to announce at this time.
You have some really iconic brands within Paramount+, such as CBS, TV Land, and MTV.
Why arent some of these channels branded according to those networks, as you do with Pluto?
At least for today, we want it to be very descriptive with the content.
We found on Pluto that the descriptors are very powerful.
And when I say third-party, Im including even ViacomCBS brands.
So the key thing is to get consumers into content that they will like as quickly as possible.
Sometimes brands can be an additional benefit toward that goal.
And we think that this accomplishes that.
You are not the first SVOD streamer to lean into linear channels.
Shudder has a couple of live channels.
Does it make a difference whether these linear channel feeds offer actual scheduled programming?
We think that there is a power to tuning in live.
So were launching with this method.
But right now were taking the Pluto approach, the success of which speaks for itself.
There will be no ads on these live channels.
Will that always be the case?
So the features going to be launched ad-free at launch across all subscription tiers.
But theres no immediate plan to do so.
Will you do marathons and stunts on these P+ live channels to create events around certain programming?
You do some of that already with Pluto, though it seems like you could be doing more.
I mean, its everything that you might do with live content that drives scarcity, immediacy, FOMO.
Live doesnt end with the launch of a live channel.
Live allows for all sorts of powerful moments.
We would certainly be exploring what else we could do as we grow it.
Obviously, these live channels will help curate your ever-increasing content library.
I think that weve got a very solid offering today.
But we are just nine months into this, and we are really just getting started.
But we are working really hard to take the product to the next level.
