Livewire! 7/19
Amy: It's time for...........
Your news......with sass. Presented by Halos. When you die and go to heaven, you'll be a good angel with halos. Now from the newsroom, it's Pierre Kelly!
Me: Hi everyone, good afternoon from the Pacific Bay area and TGIF! Hope you are well. And if you aren't well, well........
As Paramount Global evaluates its strategy for all of its linear and streaming assets, multiple sources tell me that Pluto TV’s co-founder and current CEO of Paramount Streaming has been in discussions with the company about repurchasing it. These discussions started before the Skydance deal was announced, but I’m told no valuation has been placed on Pluto TV, and no official offer numbers have been exchanged.
Interestingly, during the Paramount Global all-hands meeting on June 25th, employees say the company didn’t mention or include any reference to Pluto TV during the newly announced go-forward plan. Those who sat in smaller internal meetings also say the brand was absent from the discussions. Since the Skydance deal was announced, Skydance has featured Pluto TV as one of the six core pillars of the company on slide ten of its presentation. However, that doesn’t guarantee that Pluto TV, or any other content brand, will be part of the company going forward. During a call with investors after the Skydance deal was announced, Jeff Shell stated, “Current management is also talking about a couple of transactions that, if they get the right price, we’ll be supportive of.” So Paramount Global’s current management team can sell off assets and make deals they think will help the new management team as long as the new management team is consulted.
The financial metrics of Pluto TV and its platform usage have been a mystery since Viacom acquired it for $340 million in cash in January 2019. In 2022, several Pluto TV executives said the company exceeded $1 billion in revenue in 2021 and was profitable. However, I have not encountered any SEC filing that provides detailed P&L metrics for the company or mentions its profitability. If I missed a filing, I would welcome correction. When a co-founder of Pluto TV mentioned on LinkedIn that the company was profitable, I found it interesting and reached out to Paramount Global’s IR department, which said they “Would not confirm” Pluto TV’s financials. Executives I privately asked within the company said they were unwilling to comment on Pluto TV’s financials, even off the record.
Previously, Viacom, and now Paramount Global, have not broken out revenue, detailed profitability, advertising ARPU, or discussed how they define a monthly active user on Pluto TV’s platform, which totaled 80 million when they last reported it about nine months ago. Pluto TV disclosed that in 2023, users streamed seven billion hours of video, up 40% from 2022, but total viewing hours alone isn’t a useful metric. In a LinkedIn post two months ago, Tom Ryan said Pluto TV had “record viewing hours” in Q1, but no numbers were highlighted.
Jason's Four Leaf Clover collection
We now join Adrian Wolfe of "Lucky 13" via Microsoft Zune and he joins us now on Livewire!
It’s nice to meet somebody who’s got a show away in this climate. Tell us about the origins of Lucky 13.
It’s one of those things where – it’s fantastic, I’m delighted – but it’s taken a while to get here.
It’s a pre-Covid baby, it was 2019 that we started, but the way I describe it it’s been 25 years in the making because it shares a lot of its DNA with Millionaire which I oversaw the launch of and was very involved in its international roll out. Slice me open and you’ll still find Millionaire in my blood.
Lucky 13, even though the gameplay itself is very different, shares a lot of the DNA. With Millionaire the beauty was the simplicity – 15 multiple choice questions, three lifelines. That’s the format. It’s really simple, and then execution is nine tenths of it.
I think these days when I look at game and quiz shows on many occasions producers over-complicate the formats. They do it because if you go in and pitch something as simple as Millionaire you won’t get it away – Millionaire took three years and every broadcaster turning it down. Lucky 13 has taken five years, and lots of broadcasters turning it down, because of its simplicity. The format is to win $1m you answer 13 true or false questions, and the twist is to win the money you have to know what you know and also what you don’t know, which questions you got wrong. If I was to pitch that to you you’d think what am I going to see for an hour? You’ve got to bring it to life? And that’s what happened.
How did you bring it to life?
I started pitching it in 2019. Didn’t get any bites. Covid came along, and then it was the beginning of last year that I decided that if I was to stand any chance of getting the show away I needed to bring it to life. So we went out and we raised some significant money and made pilots, basically a broadcast standard pilot. I wanted to put all the production values into it because I wanted to give myself the very best shot. We also attached Kevin Bacon to the project. The deal we’ve got with ABC is very exciting and we’ve been filming in Vegas ahead of a launch next Thursday.
People trying to get their own shows away will be interested in the funding you got for that development – where from, how much?
Without going into specifics on the numbers, I went out into the market and talked to investors who understand this world in this space. And they bought into the potential opportunity of the value of the format and the IP. Having been on that journey once, I think that there is significant opportunity with Lucky 13 on screen and off.
It was backed by individuals who had been partners at a private equity firm that was very involved in media investment so understand the space. It’s a sophisticated investor rather than dumb money. They’ve bought into the format and the experience behind it.
Is this the game now?
Money and commissions are scarce. That’s the reality. When we went out to pitch this the market was tough.
Particularly here in the UK. In the ideal world we would have been producing this in the UK first from a rights position. It’s the holy grail if you can do those deals. But they’re impossible to do at the moment. We’ve seen really talented, really experienced producers go out of business because the business just isn’t there. It’s a really tough climate that we’re operating in. I guess one of the advantages, if you can call it that to some degree, is because I’ve been around so long and because of the nature of what I did when I was running Celador. I still enjoy relationships with international broadcasters across multiple countries.
Studio One as a business is not simply a production company – it’s production and distribution and licensing, even though at the moment we’re tiny. The foundations are there in the background and it’s been a matter of waiting until the first format launches and then hopefully we can put all of those things onto into practice. Over the last four years since launch on the business I was looking at launching a show in Greece, I was looking at launching the show in Germany, because it’s so hard to get things away.
A US commission is great obviously but most producers are paid fees for making the show. That model was not going to work for us if we were to be able to be able to unlock the value in the IP, which is necessary to give returns to investors and everything else. To realise the vision it was essential that we be able to control global distribution rights and also ancillary rights in the US as well. Being able to do that kind of deal with an American network is not a normal kind of deal.
So how is the deal structured?
It’s more of a partnership. I guess it’s more akin to a film financing deficit funding model. We made an approach to the networks and said, look, we are willing to take financial risk on this show and deficit finance, but there are certain things that we need, and that’s the way that we structured the deal. I could not be more thrilled with the partnership that we have with ABC. The network has an amazing heritage for gameshows, and were the home of Millionaire in the US.
And what do you intend to do with those rights other than simply trying to get it remade in as many territories as possible?
There are a lot of conversations going on. It’s nice when people start calling, usually it’s me knocking on doors selling. I think we’re talking to potential broadcast partners in 18 countries at the moment. We’re doing the distribution in-house so we can be nimble and make our own decisions. We’ll work with certain other people in territories where I’m not experienced and don’t have the contacts.
As the world tunes in to the Olympic Games this summer, the BBC is offering viewers a nostalgic alternative on Freeview and BBC iPlayer
Starting Saturday, July 27, the BBC will air a three-week season of nostalgic programming, featuring entertainment and gameshows from the past five decades.
From the laughter of The Generation Game to the playful banter of Blankety Blank, viewers will be treated to a rich selection of formats that will satisfy that nostalgic itch many of us have.
The season will also include episodes of Noel’s House Party, Bob’s Full House, and even the very first episode of Strictly Come Dancing from 2004, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.
The BBC’s decision to air these classics comes as an answer for those seeking alternative viewing options during the Olympics or simply wishing to indulge in some timeless gameshow fun between events.
https://youtu.be/EIIxvbonsrA?si=s49Qpu_YGfYi5XmJ
And now for your Twitch Clip of the day.
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When I'm not putting the stories together to get this blog all ready for you. I like to look at Kickstarter campaigns and I found one of them by a Jeopardy! legend. Would you like to click it?
America watched an episode of Judge Steve Harvey last night and one of the cases involves Pickleball. Watch the case today in...................
Then you know it's time for Livewire! Until next time, play on playas.
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