Just came across this item from a few days ago... don't ever take a good thing for granted!
I find Cordcutters jumps the gun on these supposedly Streaming Services being sold give it a few days and they will issue a new rumor.
2 Likes
Let's hope so... sounds like the current owners have 45 days to change their minds.
1 Like
100% agree. Cordcutters is clickbait. I quit visiting their site after realizing there is not much to the site, yet they pump out "new" articles constantly that read like prior articles.
3 Likes
Saw this today as well
1 Like
To be clear, the title of this thread is misleading, Pluto TV itself is not being sold off. Instead it is being reported that Skydance and Paramount (which owns Pluto TV) will merge. Now things are never certain when a merger or acquisition takes place, but Pluto TV was not axed in the most previous round of cost cutting at Paramount which saw the removal of TVE streams and video libraries on individual sites (Comedy Central, mTV, mTV News). This is obviously a good thing for Pluto TV on the other side of a merger.
Pluto TV and most FAST platforms owned by distribution houses are easily profitable but not very valuable when sold. The reason is the licensing of content. Pluto mainly runs programming it already owns the rights to. This means it doesn’t have to pay to license the material it runs but it still brings in ad revenue. Other FAST channels included (ones that are found on other FAST services) may charge a nominal fee to Pluto for carriage but the vast majority of them are looking to broaden viewership thereby increasing their value to advertisers. All of these factors make for low overhead costs. I would venture a guess the most expensive aspect of the Pluto TV operation is the software, hardware, programming and people to make it all run.
Pluto is safe for the foreseeable future, mergers take a while, and Paramount has already backed out of 2 other tentative deals this year so who knows if it will stick. The most likely outcome post merger is that Pluto may be rolled into Paramount+. This seams to be the industry standard moving forward. Peacock already does this and Disney+ is said to be doing the same in the coming months. This would ad value to a streaming platform that is currently in last place and once the merger is complete seems like something a new executive would seek to implement.
2 Likes
Fixed that.
3 Likes
1 Like