Assessing Paramount+ Demand Ahead Of Launch

Saturday, 6 March 2021, 5:08 pm
Press Release: Parrot Analytics

Ahead of the Paramount+ launch on Thursday, Parrot Analytics has analyzed where the platform will stack up against its competitors based on demand for its original series, demand for the established TV franchises it plans to expand on, and demand for Viacom's content library.

Demand for Paramount+ Launch Day Originals.

Paramount+ will launch with strong demand for its 'Star Trek' series and original dramas.
Paramount+ has seven originals at launch that rank in our 'Outstanding' category of demand (8x-32x market average), placing them in the top 3% of all TV series by demand.
The fact that the platform's top three series are all from the 'Star Trek' world suggests the emphasis on Paramount+ as the home of Star Trek could be a winning strategy, ala Disney+'s use of 'The Mandalorian' and 'Star Wars: The Clone Wars' to build a massive subscriber base.

Demand for Paramount+ vs. Peacock Originals

Paramount+ is outranking its most direct competitor - Comcast's Peacock - in US demand for original programming.
When compared to Peacock originals, Paramount+ has the top five and seven of the top eight most in-demand original series between the two platforms.
Paramount+ has seven different series with "Outstanding" demand, compared to just one for Peacock.

Paramount+ has chosen several highly in-demand TV franchises to reboot or expand, targeting many different audiences, from anime, to sitcoms, to procedural dramas to children's series.
CBS hit 'Criminal Minds' will get a reboot. The show is currently drawing 36.5x the demand of the average series in the US, putting it in the top .2% of all shows by demand. Considering it has been off air for more than a year and it's still drawing this much demand, new content featuring this franchise will likely expand on its already massive audience.
'Avatar: The Last Airbender' is another franchise that is ripe for audience expansion. The show quickly became one of the top ten most in-demand shows in the US when it debuted on Netflix last summer, so Paramount+ getting the shows' creators back in their fold looks like a savvy move.

Another way to look at potential for any given streaming service is to analyze the content libraries controlled by leading public media companies, including all titles they are able to regain once all licensing rights sold to third parties expire.
In this regard, Viacom stacks up pretty well in its long term potential, finished just a hair behind AT&T, but well above Comcast and Netflix in the battle for library content demand.
Paramount+'s strategy of doubling down on the 'Star Trek' franchise while rebooting older highly in-demand TV content, along with its differentiators in the sports and news space, should place it in the middle tier of the streaming competition.

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Parrot Analytics

Global television demand measurement

Parrot Analytics is the leading global content demand analytics company for the multi-platform TV business. With the world's largest TV audience demand datasets, the company currently tracks more than 1.5B daily expressions of demand in over 100 languages from 200+ countries to reveal the content consumers engage with and watch the most across platforms.

As a trusted partner to some of the biggest media companies and content creators in the world, Parrot Analytics optimises content workflows in real time. The company's TV analytics products result in better production, distribution, acquisition and marketing decisions, as well as accelerated SVOD platform success.