Strong TV Helps Drive Streaming For Paramount

Paramount Global President-CEO Bob Bakish continued to be bullish on growth for the company’s streaming platforms — Paramount+ and Pluto TV — even as some Wall Street analysts questioned whether the streaming market is reaching saturation. In the company’s quarterly conference call Tuesday morning, he insisted that there is “tremendous runway ahead of us” in the streaming business. And he tied that into the legacy TV business.

“Many of the cornerstones of our CBS lineup — fan favorites like Ghosts, NCIS and FBI — are also among the strongest performers in streaming. To date this season, CBS has been the source of 17 of the top 30 titles on Paramount+. And on Pluto TV, CBS content accounts for 10 of the top 30 series in the quarter,” Bakish told the analysts.

“This multi-platform advantage also benefits our advertising partners. When advertisers see the massive scale of our linear and streaming offerings … they instantly recognize that we provide access to a highly valuable, diverse audience in a manner and scale that is hard to match,” the CEO said.

Bakish also bragged that CBS continues to be the most watched network, despite not having either the Super Bowl or Olympics this season.

For the TV Media segment of the company, Paramount reported revenue down 6% year-over-year to $5.6 billion, with the lack of the previous year’s Super Bowl partially offset by higher licensing and affiliate revenue. The negative impact of not having the Super Bowl was pegged at eight percentage points.

“TV Media advertising declined 13% [to $2.5 billion] from the year-ago quarter, which included a 17-percentage-point impact from the Super Bowl. Adjusted for the Super Bowl, total TV Media revenue grew 2% and TV Media advertising grew 4%,” CFO Naveen Chopra said.

“Q1 was a solid growth quarter for us,” Bakish said of advertising in his Q&A with analysts, noting the adjustment for the Super Bowl.

“We were up 4% in TV Media, and that was based on strength in local and in national. Sports too,” he said.

“We had strength in a bunch of categories, like travel, like movies, like retail. We also saw some weakness in categories like wireless, auto, pharma. And that weakness was really driven by a mix of supply chain [problems] and what I call a general ramp out of COVID headwinds. I would point out as we look at the market that we see political as a very significant plus in the second half,” Bakish said.

“We’re super excited about the Upfront. As you know, we’re coming back to Carnegie Hall in real life — live and in person on May 18. We’ll showcase the power of Paramount. We’ll show our full range of demographics, the combination of our linear and digital platforms, including, of course, EyeQ, which gets you 80 million total viewers. We’ll show you advanced advertising solutions, including the use of three alternate measurement currencies — you get some optionality in the marketplace. Obviously, we’ll bring our best-in-class ad creative and integration. And it is built off our truly incredible content line-up,” the CEO said of the Upfront pitch to advertisers.