Oct 31, 2018

"Our goal is to get people who are already on cable to spend more time with us," says MTV President Chris McCarthy.

Viacom's ambition to become a prime producer of content for digital content hubs—including platforms like Netflix and Facebook—means the shows and movies we know fans will love are available to stream.

Early efforts include a reboot of MTV's "The Real World" that will air on Facebook Watch and a sequel to the Awesomeness film "To All the Boys I've Loved Before," which stands as one of Netflix's most viewed original films ever.

As a recent article in "The Wall Street Journal" highlights, it's a move that enables us to capitalize on our creative programming mojo and legacy properties in the era of streaming, without undergoing the capital-intensive process of creating our own streaming service.

Per WSJ:

While rivals such as Walt Disney Co.—which is poised to absorb Fox's film and television studios—and the recently Time Warner-enhanced AT&T Inc. plan their own streaming platforms to take on Netflix, Viacom is seeking to become a studio that mines ts library of intellectual property for content to sell to the streaming services and other third parties.

Paramount Television has been producing shows for streaming services since it launched in 2013, including "Jack Ryan" for Amazon and "13 Reasons Why" for Netflix. But now, Paramount's film arm will begin to develop movies specifically for streaming services, thereby avoiding the typical theatrical release rollout that demands a large marketing budget. The move is "still largely uncharted territory in Hollywood."

The article is available here for WSJ subscribers, or you can download the full article PDF here.