Pluto TV is significantly expanding its on-demand content offering, adding 6,300 new classic episodes from CBS hit series such as “Cheers,” “Frasier,” “Star Trek” and “Criminal Minds” before the end of the year.
Pluto TV, the Paramount-owned free ad-supported streaming TV service, said the additions triple the amount of CBS series currently available on-demand on the platform. New series and episodes, along with certain linear channels will come to the platform throughout November and December.
As a FAST, Pluto offers both on-demand content and live linear channels – the latter which provide a user experience more akin to traditional pay TV where users can pop in and out of a channel as it airs without needing to select a specific episode or title.
Of the new CBS content coming to Pluto, nine new series will debut on Pluto owned-and-operated channels. That includes “Star Trek” – which is getting two channels: “Star Trek: The Original Series” will be available on a Star Trek channel, while “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” will be available on Pluto’s More Star Trek channel.
Those are coming sometime in November or December along with “Frasier” and “Cheers” on the Sitcom Legends channel, “Have Gun – Will Travel” and “The Wild Wild West” series on Westerns TV channel, and “Petticoat Junction” on the Classic TV Comedy channel.
The on-demand offering is seeing almost 50 series or new seasons joining Pluto TV including classics like “The Brady Bunch” and “The Twilight Zone,” popular crime drama series “Criminal Minds,” “CSI: Miami,” “CSI: New York” and “Hawaii-Five-O” and ‘90s classics “Beverly Hill 90210,” “Sabrina The Teenage Witch,” and “Sister, Sister,” among others.
Both owned by Paramount, CBS has been boosting its presence on Pluto TV since the FAST launch – starting with three channels to grow to now more than 40, including over 100 series.
In spinning up single-series channels, Pluto noted it launched the CSI: Miami and CSI New York channels last month, as well a branded channel for news program 60 Minutes.
As TVREV analyst and co-founder Alan Wolk recently told Fierce, single-series or topic channels appear quite popular and remove the need for searching for specific episodes or shows, helping to combat some of the consumer content choice fatigue.
The notion, Wolk said, is if the media company has “a series that has hundreds of episodes, why make someone choose a new one every time they tune in? We’ll just have a linear channel for them and they can just dive in where we have it.”
According to Pluto, CBS has been the number one driver of audience engagement and revenue on the FAST platform. The free streaming TV service noted that last year CBS added “the rolling four” to Pluto – bringing the most recent four in-season episodes of primetime for Pluto users to stream on-demand for free.
In a statement, George Cheeks, president and CEO of CBS, pointed out that putting CBS programming on the FAST platform benefits both businesses.
“Pluto TV and CBS are a great example of how having a BIG network and studio partnered closely with a FAST platform can supercharge our streaming ecosystem,” Cheeks stated. “Both of our teams are continually benefiting from insights and learnings around FAST programming performance to help define future strategies that benefit each of our businesses."
Specifically, Cheeks called out “the overwhelming success” of CSI and 48 Hours channels on Pluto as two recent examples “of how our broadcast franchises are connecting with a growing and often unduplicated streaming audience.”
“We think we’re just getting started in how we can work together with Pluto TV for the benefit of our content and the company,” he continued.
Pluto TV offers over 300 linear channels in the U.S. and more than 1,000 globally. It’s gearing up to launch in Canada this year on December 1, in partnership with Corus. That follows international expansion in the Nordics in May where it teamed up with local AVOD service Viafree.
The platform has gained notable traction in the U.S. – last month capturing 1% of total TV usage across streaming, broadcast and cable, according to Nielsen’s The Gauge. It marked a first not only for Pluto but FASTs overall as the first to break out of the “other streaming” category.
In terms of consumers seeing value in the free streaming service, Hub Entertainment Research found that 78% reported “excellent” or “good” value from the service.
As of the end of June Pluto TV counted 69.9 million monthly active users. Paramount reports third quarter results on Wednesday, November 2.