New York (CNN Business)ViacomCBS has been heavily advertising Paramount+, its new streaming service, with an ad campaign that has some of its biggest stars — everyone from James Corden to Beavis and Butt-Head — on an expedition to scale Paramount Mountain.
On Wednesday, consumers and the rest of the streaming world discovered what’s at that mountaintop.In a three-hour event from the Paramount lot on Wednesday, ViacomCBS (VIACA) provided the first details for the company’s nascent streaming plans for Paramount+, which launches March 4. Paramount+ is a rebranding of the company’s current service, CBS All Access.
“This is not your father’s Viacom, and it’s not my father’s either,” Shari Redstone, chairwoman of ViacomCBS and daughter of the late media mogul Sumner Redstone, said as she opened the Paramount+ event. “This is a ViacomCBS that’s been reimagined for a new kind of marketplace and a new kind of consumer.”
After a wild 2020, all bets are off in this year's streaming warsParamount+ will launch in the US and Latin America with a slew of content from the company’s biggest brands. That includes more than 20,000 episodes and movies from Paramount Pictures, CBS, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, BET and MTV, as well as live programming such as sports and news — a rarity in the streaming space.Read MoreIn addition to details including pricing and new content, the company also announced that it now has roughly 30 million streaming subscribers globally, 19 million of them in the US. The company also said that Pluto TV, its ad supported streaming service, now has 43 million monthly active users.Bob Bakish, president and CEO of Viacom, said at the event that Paramount+ will lean heavily into scripted dramas, reality TV and children’s programming. That includes debuts of 36 original series over its first year.
“Paramount+ comes to the marketplace with real advantages that our competitors do not have,” Bakish said. “As you’ve seen from our marketing campaign, we have a mountain of entertainment… How big is that mountain? As you’ll see today, it’s a lot bigger than you think.”This is a developing story.
Source: edition.cnn.com