Ahead of the Paramount+ launch last Thursday, Parrot Analytics 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 ViacomCBS's content library.
Paramount+ launched with strong demand for its “Star Trek” series and original dramas. The platform has seven originals at launch that rank in Parrot’s 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, similar to Disney+'s use of “The Mandalorian” and “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” to build a massive subscriber base.
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.
Furthermore, 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,” for example, will get a reboot. The show is currently drawing 36.5x the demand of the average series in the United States, putting it in the top 2% of all shows by demand.
“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, ViacomCBS 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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