Kelly Day On Putting Paramount Plus, Pluto Across The Planet

It’s a big planet, with a lot of TV watchers. And getting as many of them a chance to watch Paramount Plus, Pluto, and now, SkyShowtime, is Kelly Day’s job as ViacomCBS’ president of international streaming services.

Day just finished installing SVOD service Paramount Plus in Australia, one of 25 countries where ViacomCBS has launched its flagship streaming service this year, mostly in Latin America and the Nordics. She’s also overseeing the expansion of FAST provider Pluto in 45 markets, with many more to come.

And just to add a certain Continental frisson to Day’s work, Viacom just announced a major partnership with Comcast to create a new streaming service called SkyShowtime in 22 European markets. In three of Europe’s biggest markets – the U.K., Italy and Germany – ViacomCBS and Comcast are taking a different tack, pairing Paramount Plus with the existing Sky Cinema service in a premium content one-two punch.

“We are certainly excited about the opportunity with SkyShowtime,” Day said Tuesday in a conversation I moderated at Cynopsis’ That Big TV Virtual Conference. “We’re going into these markets with a joint-venture partner, which is a fantastic opportunity for us to really expand our footprint and expand our leadership in the streaming space. We think that this is the best of both worlds: We’ve got a fantastic partner with Sky and NBCUniversal, and we have an incredible content offering. It’s a way for us to continue to expand while sharing some of the costs and some of the investment.”

It’s a slightly different approach with the three big Euro markets getting the Paramount Plus/Sky Cinema bundle, Day said.

Kelly Day, ViacomCBS President of International Streaming Services

“It’s been important to make sure that we go into those markets with an incredibly strong content offering, and with great distribution and a great partnership.”

“The U.K., Italy, and Germany obviously represent some of the largest and most strategic markets in Europe,” Day said.” So it’s been important to us for quite some time to make sure that we go into those markets with an incredibly strong content offering, and with great distribution and a great partnership. What we’re going to be doing is partnering with Sky in those three markets to not only bring Paramount Plus to the consumer as a direct-to-consumer offering, but also as a bundle with Sky Cinema. The partnership there really focuses on this bundle, where current subscribers to Sky Cinema, beginning in 2022 will now have access to the full suite of Paramount Plus content in those markets as well.”

The key is leveraging all that Paramount Plus has to offer with the strategic help and resource sharing possible under the Comcast partnership, Day said.

That’s important for a mid-sized media company such as ViacomCBS, especially as it seeks to extend its reach around the globe, sustain its many legacy operations and relationships, and still compete with some of the world’s richest companies. Day’s team has to figure out which markets make the most sense to open up first, based on a bunch of parameters.

“The ultimate vision is we want to operate a leading global streaming service, in pretty much every country in the world” Day said. “But it’s not quite as simple as flipping the switch and being in 188 countries.”

Unlike Netflix, which actually did triple its reach to 192 countries with a metaphorical flick of a switch a few years back, Day’s team has to grapple with several factors, including technology and existing partners and distributors, but also its legacy relationships and deals across all those territories.

“The first gating factor, the first consideration is to really look at is how much content do we have available in a given market,” Day said. “We’ve been operating a scaled content business. We own a number of successful studios. We’ve been running those businesses a long, long time. Previously a lot of that content had been licensed out to partners.”

Now that’s changing, and Day is certainly an experienced hand well versed in navigating a complex business that’s really only existed for maybe a dozen years.

She got her start in e-commerce with AOL, The Knot and Discovery, ending as EVP and GM of digital media and commerce at the latter. Day jumped fully into digital video as CEO of startup Blip Networks in 2012, then became chief digital officer/chief business officer for teen-video favorite Awesomeness TV.

In 2017, Day was named president of Viacom Digital Studios to help the pay-TV power improve its online game. Plenty of corporate changes and a big merger later, Day heads international streaming for ViacomCBS.

She’s also again working closely with former Awesomeness boss Brian Robbins, a former child actor (Head of the Class) who founded and later sold the service to DreamWorks early in the MCN era. In a nice closed-circle moment, Robbins left DreamWorks and became head of ViacomCBS family programming and Nickelodeon, which in turn acquired Awesomeness.

Now Robbins has an even bigger remit, recently named chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures, while keeping his Nickelodeon and family programming oversight. The Robbins takeover at Paramount was widely regarded as a signal of ViacomCBS’s increasing focus on streaming, and keeping more of its creations in-house.

“Brian is a longtime friend and colleague and obviously I’m personally quite thrilled for him,” Day said. “He’s incredibly talented and a very passionate filmmaker and creative executive. And so I’m absolutely thrilled to see him have this opportunity.”

Robbins succeeded long-time film executive Jim Gianopulos, who was credited with getting Paramount studio operations back on a solid footing with a series of well regarded features, some of which were sold mid-pandemic to other streaming organizations. Now expect less work for hire, and more working for the family operations.

Another big signal was August’s mammoth $900 million deal announcement, renewing South Park for five more years. The deal also commits creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone to create 14 South Park features and other programming specifically for Paramount Plus (streaming rights for the first 25 seasons of South Park are licensed for now to HBO Max).

Those moves punctuate Robbins’ own statements that Paramount will focus more on output for ViacomCBS’ online outlets. That makes Day’s work all the more important, as does ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish’s background restructuring Viacom’s European units, which helped him win the CEO job at the merged company.

“It’s been an area of focus for Bob for a long time,” Day said. “Even beyond that, if you think about streaming and as the company transitions from linear TV to streaming, operating as a global business is critically important to our success.”

All told, 45 territories are on the Paramount Plus road map to launch by the end of 2022, Day said. With streaming, bigger is much, much better.

“The economics of running a streaming service very much drive wanting to build a scaled global business,” Day said. “That’s why we want to be in pretty much every market in the world.”

The subscription and ad-based services build on each other in various ways, with cross-promotions and even ad-supported channels built around favorite ViacomCBS franchises.

“We definitely don’t view it as an either/or (proposition going into a territory), but instead really look at what the market opportunity is for both products and for each product individually,” Day said. “Then we assess what we think the investment opportunity and the total addressable market is around each of those products.”

Pluto usage often helps Day’s team understand programming preferences of a given local audience, Day said. The company then leverages that data to promote awareness and interest in Paramount Plus.

“I think Pluto is a tremendous complement to Paramount Plus,” Day said. “If you look at LatAm, we operate both there. We’ve seen them complement each other very well. We are pretty strong believers in SVOD and AVOD together.”

Pluto already is on schedule to top $1 billion in ad revenues this year, a promising sign for a service with another 150 or so territories to conquer. But its value proposition travels well, Day said.

“There is an audience that genuinely loves the value proposition: it’s free, widely distributed, doesn’t require registration, you can turn it on and leave it on,” Day said. “There is a real uniqueness, I’ll say even quirkiness, to the service that people really appreciate that is different from what the expectation is of a premium SVOD service that’s driven by big-budget premium content.”