Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Viacom Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Vice President of Investor Relations, Mr. Anthony DiClemente. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you our President and CEO and Navin Chopra, our CFO. Please note that in addition to our earnings release, we have trending schedules containing supplemental information the presentation and remind you that certain statements made on this call are forward looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties are discussed in more detail in our filings with the SEC. Some of today's financial remarks will focus on adjusted results. Reconciliations of these non GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings release or in our trending schedules, which contain supplemental information and in each case
Thanks, Anthony. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. It's been about 10 weeks since we laid out our streaming strategy and goals at our investor event. Since then, we successfully launched Paramount Plus in March, and I'm thrilled with where we are in streaming and overall. On today's call, I'll cover 3 topics.
First, ViacomCBS' strong Q1, momentum, which is clearly visible in the metrics across fee, pay and premium and momentum, which gives us even more confidence in our strategy. Then I'll hand it over to Devine to provide additional financial and operational detail Well, I'm pleased to say we achieved another quarter of year over year growth in revenue, adjusted OIBDA and adjusted EPS, further demonstrating the strength of ViacomCBS and our related recovery from COVID's impact on the business. It all starts with the power of our content and its enduring popularity with audiences. In Q1, ViacomCBS had the number one share of viewing in the U. S.
Across key demos. As part of that, CBS currently ranks number 1 among all broadcasters and will finish the 2020 2021 season as America's most watched network among persons 2 plus and persons 18 to 49 in the quarter. And Showtime had the top 2 scripted shows on premium cable. In social, ViacomCBS was the number one company among broadcast, cable, radio and film properties in global social views. And as you'll hear momentarily, streaming consumption is on a powerful growth trajectory.
That performance Translated into total revenues of $7,400,000,000 a 14% increase year over year driven by strength across key revenue types, Including advertising, affiliate and streaming. In advertising, which now excludes streaming, revenue grew 21%. The big picture here is that underlying advertising demand is strong and trending in a positive direction as the reopening of the economy gains momentum. And of course, we clearly benefited from our broadcast of the Super Bowl and NCAA tournament games. In Affiliate, which now also excludes streaming, we're seeing the power of the combined company manifest itself And since our last call, 14 ViacomCBS cable networks, including Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon and BET went live on Hulu's vMVPD platform.
We also completed a new distribution deal with Frontier, further demonstrating our valuable partnerships and must have content. And we've seen robust growth in global streaming revenue, We have substantially strengthened our financial position, benefiting from the $1,700,000,000 of adjusted free cash flow we generated in the quarter strategy and execution in streaming. Starting with free, where Pluto TV is the largest free ad supported streaming service across all metrics, monthly active users, total viewing hours and revenue. This based on all publicly disclosed information. Clearly, the top of funnel continues to be robust, particularly as Pluto TV added 6,000,000 MAUs in the quarter, Bringing the total globally monthly active users to nearly 50,000,000, reflecting continued domestic growth and international expansion.
And that user growth is translating into strong advertising performance. Across all our streaming advertising businesses, we saw a 62% surge in year over year growth in streaming advertising revenue, reaching $428,000,000 in the Q1. That growth was led by Pluto TV, where revenue more than doubled year over year. High value connected TV usage making it a very desirable advertising platform for our clients. To build on this growth, Pluto TV continues to substantially scale its content offering.
During the quarter, Pluto TV launched 19 new channels, a bold new update and expansion, essentially doubling Pluto TV's U. S. Hispanic offering to nearly 50 channels and 20,000 hours of content. This alongside the existing English offering makes it ideal for bilingual audiences as well. Internationally, we also continue our expansion of Pluto TV.
During the quarter, we launched in France Bottom line, Pluto TV has seen robust global growth in usage, monetization and sell through, In premium streaming, Showtime OTT had its strongest quarter ever, delivering another record setting quarter in sign ups, And then there's Paramount Plus. As I said at our Investor Day, Paramount Plus comes to the streaming space with real competitive advantages and with a strategy that's unique to the marketplace. As a result of the strong launch of Paramount Plus on March 4, and the continued momentum in our other streaming services, We added 6,000,000 new global streaming subscribers in the quarter, bringing our total global streaming subscribers to 36,000,000. Needless to say, we're thrilled with these early results. We're clearly seeing the benefit of putting the the full power of ViacomCBS behind Paramount Plus.
The service benefited from a dramatically expanded and diversified content slate The consumption was strong with watch time per active subscriber up 17% year over year. The broadening of the service is clearly working. In fact, almost half of subscriber engagement came from originals as well as And our diversified content mix, including kids content, content from MTV and sports like soccer, We're excited about the ad supported Paramount Plus 4.99 tier, which will be coming in early June. Paramount Plus joins Pluto TV's premium digital inventory as anchors of our ViacomCBS IT advertising offering, providing us with another powerful tool to showcase the full advertising power of ViacomCBS and our ability to satisfy the growing demand among advertisers in the category. Internationally, We launched Paramount Plus in Latin America, Nordic and Canada, and these markets are also showing strong initial performance when it comes to Paramount Plus by signing creative partnerships with leading MVPDs and e commerce platform.
For example, in April, Paramount Plus launched on Mega Cabo, one of the largest cable operators in Mexico. Also in April, Paramount Plus partnered with MercadoLibra, the largest e commerce ecosystem in Latin America, with recent launches in Brazil and Mexico. Another international transaction I want to highlight is our agreement to acquire Chile Vision, the leading broadcast network in Chile. This deal will strengthen and expand our presence in the Southern Cone of Latin America and help accelerate our streaming strategy in the region Thierry Vazion will contribute to ViacomCBS International Studios becoming one of the largest content creators Spanish language globally. And it's a great promotional asset for our streaming product offerings as well.
Stepping back from this, It's clear our unique strategy across free, premium and paid is working, which is why we're leaning in even more. As you know, we completed a $2,700,000,000 capital raise in March. Navin will speak about this in greater detail in a few minutes. But know that we did this transaction because we saw an attractive opportunity to raise capital to fund incremental content and other investments to further drive our streaming ambition, and we've already begun to move on a few early opportunities in this regard. I want to finish by speaking a bit more of what's to come, particularly from a content perspective.
In February, We laid out a content strategy for Paramount Plus, a strategy focused on key pillars that differentiate the service in the market: sports, That content has already started to scale and show real momentum. There's no question that live sports And breaking news clearly differentiates Paramount Plus and Q1 saw a series of important events in this lane, including the Super Bowl, UEFA, the NCAA Men's Tournament, the PGA Tour and Oprah's interview special with Meghan and Harry. These events were key engagement and sign up drivers. And looking forward, we're excited about our expanded soccer slate, to the NFL, college football and more. Speaking of football, as you know, in March, We extended our partnership with the NFL for another decade.
This is a partnership we're thrilled about and streaming rights are a critical component of that deal. Among other things, Paramount Plus will have the flexibility to distribute NFL games on both the premium tier at 9.99 And the new 4.99 ad supported tier. And as we announced in February, inside the NFL will be exclusively available on Paramount Plus Executive U. S. Rights to Serie A, the premier Italian soccer league.
It's another major step in us becoming the number one destination for soccer fans With an unbeatable portfolio of now over 1400 soccer matches each year, with teams including Juventus, Real Madrid and Chelsea. This on top of all the other marquee CBS sporting events we deliver. Moving to kids. Thanks to our Nickelodeon brand and massive library with renowned characters and global franchises, Subscribers are discovering new content or rewatching some of their favorite shows. Since the Paramount Plus launch, We've seen robust audience engagement with kids and family content.
Nickelodeon Originals like the Spongebob Movie, Sponge on the Run, Camp Coral as well as library content like PAW Patrol were some of the strong performers in the quarter, And we're excited for the upcoming launches of Rugrats in May and iCarly in June, new versions of 2 iconic franchises that have fans buzzing in social. In unscripted and reality, the fastest growing genre in streaming, we saw solid early momentum. Exclusive original shows like MTV's The Challenge All Stars And unscripted, originals like The Stand, Younger and Star Trek: Discovery are performing extraordinarily well. New drama series like the 1st Yellowstone spin off, Y 1883. Female led dramas like Why Women Kill and The Good Fight.
Comedies such as Inside Amy Schumer, Trevor Noah Weekly and The Game and original franchises like Star Trek Prodigy and the 4th season of Star Trek Discovery. In addition, we're expanding our global Paramount Plus pipeline. As a first step in this endeavor, we're adding a number of originals produced by Viacom International Studios. This will start as soon as this summer with scripted content produced in Latin America and factual content produced out of the UK. Finally, turning to movies, where we are poised to dramatically enhance the scale of our offering.
In fact, We will shortly kick off a mountain of movies marketing campaign, where we will highlight the thousands of new movies we're adding to Paramount plus including blockbuster hits and exclusive originals. We start by greatly expanding the depth of the film library on the surface. 1,000 additional movies are going live in early June, with additional titles following through July, bringing the total to over 2,500. Hips like the Avengers and Skyfall will be available on the service soon as well as a bunch of great Paramount and I'm thrilled to announce that Infinite, a sci fi thriller starring Mark Wahlberg will premiere exclusively on Paramount Plus in June. That will be followed by the streaming premiere of A Quiet Place Part II after its 45 day theatrical run, And we will follow that with the PAW Patrol movie, a treat for families eagerly awaiting a feature length version of the most popular preschool characters in the world.
In addition, new original movies like Paranormal Activity and The In Between will premiere on Paramount plus by the end of 2021. And all of this is a preview to a substantial ramping up of original movies next year, where we expect to begin averaging an original movie a week in 2022. We'll have more on this in the months ahead. And finally, we're moving to accelerate Paramount Plus' global expansion. We have already established ourselves in Canada, the Nordics and all of Latin America, including Brazil.
Next up is Australia on August 11, a launch that will include Paramount Movies, Showtime and Paramount Plus Originals in addition to a cross section of product from our cable brands and Network 10. By the end of 2021, we'll have launched subscription streaming services led by Paramount Plus in 25 markets. And now we plan to almost double that by the end of 2022 when our global streaming footprint will reach 45 markets, all in less than 2 years. Net net, we're thrilled with the performance of Paramount Plus thus far. Our strategy is working.
Now I'll turn it over to Naveen to cover the quarter's financial performance in greater detail. Naveen?
Thank you, Bob, and good morning, everyone. As Bob mentioned, we had very strong financial results Our results reflect robust growth in streaming, where we saw record subscriber additions and revenue growth We added 6,000,000 global streaming subscribers in Q1, marking a record quarter of subscriber growth And of those, the significant majority were domestic customers. The combination of subscriber growth and increased engagement Help streaming subscription revenue grow 69% to $388,000,000 These results include the impact of subscribers whose Free trials extended beyond quarter end and international subscriber growth where ARPUs are generally lower relative to domestic subscriptions. Turning to streaming advertising, the largest driver of growth came from Pluto TV, where we added 6,400,000 global Pluto TV MAUs in Q1 and now reached nearly 50,000,000 MAUs globally. Pluto TV engagement also continues to improve.
Average monthly watch time per domestic user increased 28% year on year in the Q1. The increased engagement combined with domestic sell through rates that were up 600 basis points drove significant improvements in Pluto's domestic ARPU. The evolution of Pluto's domestic business also gives us confidence that a similar pattern of international monetization growth Overall, Pluto TV revenue more than doubled in Q1 on a year over year basis The strong advertising performance from Pluto TV and our other brand specific streaming sites and apps, executives, all of which are critical drivers of our IQ digital ad platform, drove a 62% increase in streaming advertising revenue to $428,000,000 Advertising revenue, which excludes streaming, grew 21% in the quarter to $2,700,000,000 Neither of which aired on CBS in the prior year period. Advertising demand continues to improve with strong scatter pricing relative to the upfront and last year's scatter market. Affiliate revenue, which also excludes streaming, grew 5% in Q1 to 2,100,000,000 We continue to benefit from distribution renewals signed in 2020 that included incremental carriage and improved economics Licensing and other revenue grew 11 percent to $1,800,000,000 Keep in mind that licensing revenue is reported on a consolidated basis Theatrical revenue was insignificant in Q1 as we had no releases in the quarter.
We are looking forward to our first theatrical release in over a year the A Quiet Place 2, which debuts in theaters on May 28. Total revenue was $7,400,000,000 And diluted EPS was $1.52 up 36% year over year. The growth in adjusted OIBDA Q1 adjusted free cash flow was $1,700,000,000 benefiting from OIBDA growth and the timing of cash production spend executives and favorable collections among other factors. Moving to the balance sheet. During Q1, we redeemed $2,000,000,000 of debt In combination with our strong free cash flow generation, these transactions resulted in $5,500,000,000 of cash on hand I'd now like to share some insights regarding the Q2.
We expect continued robust growth in streaming revenue With the Q2 growth rates for total streaming revenue, streaming advertising revenue and streaming subscription revenue, Turning to affiliate revenue, we expect to see modest acceleration in the year over year growth in Q2 relative to Q1 As we continue to benefit from several new distribution deals signed in 2020 early 2021, which include increased pricing and expanded distribution. For content licensing, we expect revenue to decline year on year because Q2 2020 included significant revenue in OIBDA the licensing of South Park. In regard to Q2 adjusted free cash flow, we expect some reversal of the working capital tailwinds, which Looking further out, our enthusiasm for the potential of streaming continues to grow. The streaming market is global, it is growing fast The unit upside is especially true internationally, where streaming allows us to reach beyond the pay TV universe, which has limited penetration in many international markets. And when it comes to ARPU upside, we think that over time, The per subscriber economics of streaming can be accretive to linear when considering the combination of advertising and subscription revenue expand our content offering to deliver greater and greater value to customers.
And we see even more growth potential in advertising ARPU where both Paramount Plus and Pluto TV will benefit from increased engagement, improved targeting, dynamic ad loads and sell through optimization. I would also note that in most instances outside the United States, streaming economics are already accretive This attractive market opportunity is one of the primary reasons we decided to raise capital in March. We intend to use the additional investment firepower to take our streaming efforts to the next level, building on the consistent momentum we have demonstrated over the past few quarters and leading even more aggressively into streaming. You will see us deploy new capital in 4 major areas. 1st, We intend to fund development of more original series and movies exclusively for streaming.
2nd, we will pursue incremental streaming sports rights. 3rd, we will look to accelerate international launches and market expansion. And 4th, we plan to further reduce the amount of content we license to 3rd party streamers, instead preserving more of these assets We're moving quickly to start deploying this capital. In fact, Bob shared some of our early investment initiatives, Nonetheless, the bulk of our investments will occur in 2022 and beyond. In the months ahead,
conducting a question and answer session. To the line Michael Morris with Guggenheim. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you, guys. Good morning. A couple of questions on the streaming business. First one on Paramount Plus, I appreciate all the detail on Sign ups and engagement, there's a lot in there. Hoping to dig a little bit more on trend.
I know we're only a couple of months into Paramount Plus, but we do have some good historic data on with All Access. So I'm curious if you can talk about how engagement Churn has sort of trended with the new product availability, the expanded product. And if anything on the content side in particular has maybe And then also on Pluto, I think ad revenue growth is outpacing that sort of combination of usage and per engagement growth Engagement per user growth. Is that accurate? There's a couple of moving parts in there.
And can you kind of provide any context for what the upside
Yes. Thanks, Mike. Nice, meaty 2 parter to open here. So in terms of your first question, We are super excited about what we're seeing with Paramount Plus. And I'd say, it start with the overwhelming learning And importantly, that includes adding younger subs with an average age of new subs down 6 years.
2nd point is Paramount Plus is showing great lines in terms of engagement. In fact, the percent of our daily subs, Which are active actually percent of our total subs, I should say, which are active on a daily basis, is up sequentially and up year over year. And we see strong double digit growth in hours per active user. In fact, that's up about 17% in March versus the prior year. When you look under that in terms of content, which is obviously the key driver, we continue to see the power of what worked before.
That includes sports, where we obviously benefited from the Super Bowl, the NCAA, Golf and UEFA, as we said. It includes originals, including The Stands, Star Trek and others, and includes CBS content. Live content is strong as our shows like NCIS and Hawaii Five 0. But the real news is it's now broader. Nickelodeon in particular is turning into a powerful driver of subs and engagement Probably more quickly than we would have thought.
It's a clear sub driver since the relaunch and it's now accounts for a strong double digit share of And that's really because of the combination of compelling exclusive originals, of course, the SpongeBob movie, Sponge on the Run I think it's also worth noting that the SpongeBob franchise in totality quickly moved to the top of the rankers at Paramount Plus. And probably what's most important here is this is an example of us replicating our strength in a legacy linear position So early days for Paramount Plus, but we very much like what we see in terms of consumer reaction to the product. And as you know, Based on that, we're leaning in even more. Moving to the second part of your question on Pluto. As you heard today, Bluemontv continues to be an incredible growth engine for this company.
And when we look at it, We see 4 really powerful underlying growth drivers for Pluto TV, all of which are delivering now and all of which have That's up about 90%, slight a hair more year over year, and we have substantial momentum and opportunity ahead. It then moves to engagement, where we see time you mentioned it, time spent per user continues to increase. And this is particularly as users gain familiarity with the product and as the volume of quality content Continues to increase now about over 1500000 hours in the U. S. We also look at sellout.
That was actually up about 600 basis points year to year, but we're nowhere near 100%. And so we do have substantial room to run. And equally importantly, if you look at ad load on Pluto TV versus linear, the Pluto TV ad load is substantially below that of linear. And then there's pricing. We see advertisers with significant demand for, in particular, connected TV inventory And that in turn is supporting a great pricing dynamic.
We haven't actually pushed pricing on Pluto TV In the last 2 years, so it's really one of the most efficiently priced products on the marketplace and that gives us a really great pricing lane Going forward, when we choose to pull that lever. Last thing I'd say is Pluto TV revenue now And that's a combination of MAUs and time spent. Again, we haven't pushed the price lever and we haven't pushed sell out much. And that's part of our overall streaming growth story. It's the biggest part and it's what helped push us to 62%.
So net net, we're in a great situation here on so many levels.
Thanks a lot, Mike. Operator, let's take our next question.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brett Feldman with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks. And 2, if you don't mind. So just following up a little bit. As you had noted, the quarter end global subscriber number would include anyone still in a free trial period and with Paramount Plus having launched in early March, anyone who signed up after the launch would have been in their free trial at the end of the quarter. So You're now 2 months past the launch.
Many of those customers have gone through the 3 months. Some of them have gone through a paid month. Can you give us any insight into what the And then Navin, thank you for the color around sort of the four areas you're looking to sort of lean in with your investment on streaming. Can you give us any context? Are certain of those a little more front burner than others.
You said we might start to see that in the financials next year. What does that mean? And then really the more important question is, If you're investing more, how should we think about seeing that payoff? Do you think you can meet your long term target sooner? Do you think there's upside?
Any further insight there would be greatly appreciated.
Yes, sure, Brett. So look, to your first question, We like what we're seeing, in general with respect to conversion and churn. Unpacking that a bit, conversion rates from trial to pay are consistent with what we've seen historically with All Access and that's despite the fact that we've ramped And so we're not seeing any kind of degradation in quality as we widen the subscriber net. That's a good thing. It's particularly a good thing given that we had the Super Bowl this year, which clearly brought in a bunch of folks, for the Super Bowl.
But as with the broader Specifically to your question of the 30 day free trial, which we did for launch, I'd highlight 2 points. One is, Believe it or not, the conversion rate was actually marginally above our historical trial conversion rate. So we are happy about that. And second, that particular program, the 30 day free trial ended on March 31 and is no longer in the market. By the way, a little look forward past the end of the quarter, both conversion and churn improved in April, both versus prior year and versus March.
So net net, we feel great about what we're seeing in this area. I'm going to flip it to Navin in a second for the second part of your question, but I do want to say, he highlighted the 4 investment areas. Probably the biggest investment area when push comes to shove will be more originals. We're very excited about What we have in the pipeline on the series side and we see our studios be that Paramount, be that Nickelodeon, be that MTV Entertainment, Ramping original studios as part of this capital raise and we're working on that. And of course, we talked about movies And how we're ramping that, and really excited about moving to an exclusive original movie per week as we get part of the way into 2022.
So a lot going on there in terms of our plans to deploy that capital. Naveen? Yes. So let me try to
add a little color in terms of how we see the deployment of that capital playing out. You heard Bob talked today about some of the ways in which we're already starting to deploy that capital, which as a reminder, it's things like the addition of Syria Football on Paramount Plus, the Infinite movie, being released on Paramount Plus, Significant acceleration of our international expansion plans, and starting to ramp up to getting, an original movie each week on Paramount Plus. So those things will allow us to start deploying some of the incremental cash, As I said in the second half of twenty twenty one. That being said, we're obviously not going to spend $2,700,000,000 overnight. So The bulk of the investment will happen over a multiyear period of time.
And we are continuing to be diligent in executing a variety of different investment options against one another, and we're very focused on the ROI of those across all of the different buckets that we articulated. So I would expect that as we commit to some of those specific plans, We'll look to share more about the expense magnitude, the timing of the cash versus the expense, which could be different by the way. Is to try to exceed some of the goals that we've already set for ourselves. One other point that, I think is important just to be aware of from a timing perspective. As I said, we are starting to fund some of those these early initiatives this year.
Though I'd note that our expectations for full year OIBDA So that it's hopefully helpful to you in terms of thinking about some of the timing elements of this.
Thanks a lot, Brett. Operator, let's take our next question.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ben Swinburne with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.
Good morning.
Bob, can you talk a little bit
more about what we should be expecting with the June
product? I don't know if you
could call it a relaunch or the new tier? Anything to add on distribution, partners or kind of marketing push? And then, Navin, I'd like to just take another swing at one of the the Investor Day, which is your content spending company wide. Post the capital raise Sitting here today, can you is there any way to help us think about how you think about the overall growth in content investment for ViacomCBS over the course of the sort of forecast period you talked about at Investor Day. Thanks both.
Yes. So we'll take this sequentially, Ben. So On the $4.99 product, we're really excited about it. It obviously brings live sports, breaking news and amount of entertainment, including this expanded original slate to the market at a lower price point. That's great from a consumer perspective.
For us, it also has cost advantages, which improve margins versus the legacy $5.99 product, which we will be discontinuing from a new subscriber standpoint. If you step back from it, we believe 2 tiers of Paramount Plus really maximizes its ability to drive the total addressable market. Obviously, this lower price point at $4.99 is good for the more cost sensitive consumer and thus helps maximize total subscribers for Paramount Plus. It also adds another important asset for us Higher ARPUs over time than the $9.99 product. So it really is quite exciting there.
I'd also point out that adding this to our quiver broadens the portfolio we have to work with distributors to meet their objectives, Really strengthens our position as a supplier of choice. We add that to our existing offerings both in free with Pluto TV Paramount and Showtime OTT and BET plus paid products. Obviously, it's at the lower end of the price point, So it could work for a subset of their consumer base. It also related to the cost structure gives us more flexibility on promotions, and so that's something we're excited to deploy. And lastly, I'd note, it will launch in early June with broad distribution.
So Very excited about the $4.99 product and how it will continue to drive Paramount Plus. Navin?
Yes. So on the content expense, As you will remember, Ben, from our Investor Day, we highlighted the fact that we expect streaming content expense to increase materially between 2020 2024. And I'd say that our plan for This year 2021 does incorporate some rapid progress in ramping up streaming content investment. In fact, Streaming content expense in 2021, I think will more than double relative to 2020. Now it's important to remember that not all of the expense and cash impact is incremental to total company spend, Because we do expect to continue to reallocate content from linear to either a shared context where it's doing double duty on both linear and streaming or Exclusively on streaming.
That being said, we do expect that what we've described as sort of roughly $15,000,000,000 of total company content expense to increase modestly over the next few years. So not the entire amount of the increase of streaming investment will not be incremental to the total company, But there will be some increase. Now that's all pre capital raise. With the additional capital, We now have the ability to invest more aggressively, and so I would expect that streaming content expense and total company expense Should be somewhat higher, but very importantly over time generate return in the form of incremental subs and they use streaming revenue. And as I said earlier, most of that impact will really start to be seen in 2022 and beyond.
And the piece that we're funding in 2021, as I said earlier, I think is largely offset by some of the over performance we've seen in Q1.
Great. Thanks, Ben. Operator, next question please.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alexia Quadrani with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you. Just staying on Paramount Plus, we've seen some of your competitors experience a pull forward which accelerated subscriber growth. I'm curious how you're thinking how we should think about growth in subs at Paramount Plus over the next couple of quarters? And then my follow-up question is just sort of circling back to your comments on international expansion also on Paramount Plus. You highlighted a bunch of markets, you gave us some great color, which I really appreciate.
I'm curious, where you see the biggest opportunity, what markets? And outside of Spanish language, are you ramping up in local language like your peers as well?
Yes. Sure, Alexia. Let me take both of those. So actually, I don't think a comparison to peer services and how they did or didn't pull forward subscriber growth with COVID Is really the right question for us and that's simply because Paramount Plus just launched and it's in a bit of a different situation. With PAMA Plus, we're ramping up product for new consumers and so we're focused on generating awareness to those consumers and obviously converting them into subscribers.
To that end, we're focused on executing against The content strategy that I articulated, the specific content additions that we talked about coming in particular as 2020 1 continues to play out as really the primary driver of growth. And I'd remind you that the good news Matt, tip is that we have a really exciting content slate coming, whether you look at the kids space, things like new version of Rugrats, new version Vivekarlie, both of which are in the current quarter and then of course, Prodigy later in the year and those are just examples. Scripted space, I'm super excited about the first Yellowstone spin off. That's something that franchise has a big fan base. And so Bringing a new version exclusively to Paramount plus late in the year will be great and that joins a whole bunch of other scripted shows, some that are coming back like Why Women Kill and Star Trek: Discovery.
Reality, really a wheelhouse for us. And related to that, the music space, which is more general unscripted, I mean, this cradle to stage show we have with Dave Grohl is cool. RuPaul has a huge fan base, so a new version of RuPaul coming, etcetera. And we got comedies. We talked about movies.
Our movies push Starting in June is massive. And by the way, it's true to the Paramount name. So I think movies will have a great home and be a great product for Paramount Plus. All this content to varying degrees will be supporting with marketing to make sure again consumers have awareness and we convert them into subscribers. The biggest piece probably will be our movie campaign, a mountain of movies, which is about to kick off.
So you should look to us to continue to build our global sub base and actually accelerate revenue growth as the year goes on. To your second question on international, Content is of course key to that. And this company really has critical mass across genres and across geographies. See that starts with the Viacom Media Networks and that includes Channel 5, Network 10, 10 FA, MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central. They bring library, they bring local format derivatives and they bring made for market local content.
That library gets a scale out of the gate. The local content, both format and originals add really critical elements for subscriber acquisition and retention to To your question, international content will also be an important part of fortifying the global Paramount Plus It's not just about Spanish, I would highlight. It's about using our international studio assets to create a robust pipeline for Paramount Plus executives. Because those studio assets outside the United States bring benefits in terms of access to incremental creativity, We're at the very early stages of bringing this to bear, but it's going to be another exciting piece of the equation. At Of course, we've got output deals that routinely come up, giving us incremental access to content from Paramount and CBS and Showtime.
So put it together, we've got a lot of content to work with outside the United States for Paramount Plus and a lot more is coming. And when you look at international and ViacomCBS and Paramount Plus, it's not just a content story. The other differentiating piece here is our on the ground operations and they bring real additional advantages to unlock in that streaming opportunity. That starts with relationships, whether they're creative or commercial, and you heard two examples of that coming to life In my remarks with MegaCable and MercadoLibre, those are on the ground relationships that we were able to convert into streaming opportunity. As we look out, it's possible that we'll do some partnerships in select international markets, additional markets.
But net net, I look at this and I'm super excited about the global opportunity for Viacom, CBS and streaming, And we really do see a strong runway of growth outside the U. S.
Thanks, Alexia. Operator, next question.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Rich Greenfield with Leithead Partners. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks for taking the questions. A couple of them. First, I want to just dig in a little bit deeper into the comment about what people are actually doing on Paramount Plus. It seems like Nickelodeon, just looking at like sort of the top shows every day, seeing things like SpongeBob and PAW Patrol, It seems like they are driving a very substantial part of viewership. And wondering like when you look at sort of the promotion, you talked about and some of the stuff that you have and you certainly have had some originals, but it looks like the kids stuff is really driving viewership.
I guess a big picture question is like, You said double digits, like is it half as kids? Like how substantial is kids programming? And how do you get more viewership of some of the adults skewing fair? I'd be curious how you're thinking about the marketing message because it seems like kids has been a very powerful force for you. And then I just want to follow-up on 2 things.
One, you said, you haven't commented, are Paramount plus subs higher today than $36,000,000 Could you give us any clarity on that? And then I think you mentioned one movie, one original movie a week in 2022. Does that include the 45 day after Movies that are coming out in theaters or is that a dedicated original movie every single week? I just wasn't clear what you meant by that.
Sure, Rich. A lot there. So on Paramount Plus and Kids, clearly Kids is working for us And no, it is not half of the consumption. Again, material double digit percentages, but nowhere near half. What's Driving that relative to the other call it genres and demographics is really the fact that we were able to at launch provide not only critical mass of library product, which we could do in other categories, but volume of Citing exclusive originals linked to known franchises.
And that in particular was the combination The SpongeBob movie, which obviously was a theatrical movie we chose to redeploy on Paramount Plus and the new SpongeBob series, Camp Coral. We had that ready to go, because we had a movie for theaters and because we had a series that we were going to launch on Nickelodeon, call it linear. As you look forward, those kind of things start to happen in the other genres. I mean, I'm very excited about what's going on with reality. As you know, we launched with Real World New York.
It was only a couple episodes, so it wasn't really volume. And MTV The Challenge, there was a little more volume, but it's the first series. As the year plays out, We basically have one new exclusive original in the reality space and unscripted space every month. So that's more fuel for that tank and that should start converting that genre lane for Paramount Plus and we will Mark at that particularly leveraging our linear networks and social where we know those fan bases are. The other one I'd really highlight is movies.
I mean, we have Paramount we have movies on Paramount Plus but frankly today, but frankly not that many of them. That game changes dramatically In June, where we first dropped an additional 1,000 and they're real movies, they're not deep library. Then we late in June have Infinite, which should create a lot of noise. I've seen the film. It's a fun film.
People love Mark Wahlberg. And then that leads to I call it library, again, not deep library, including PayOne library So we got a lot going on and people love movies in premium television. They love movies in streaming. They already Based on engagement, love movies on Paramount plus we just don't have the volume we're about to have. Let me use that to actually go to your third question for a second, which is around OMUVIA Week, does it include short window Pay 1 or not?
Yes, it includes short window Pay 1, Call that a dozen pictures a year. The original movie per week will be an exciting movie per week. It will be a range of different kinds of movies. Some of them will be blockbusters that are heavily marketed from theatrical, the A Quiet Place 2 type films. Some of them, the vast majority of them will be made for Paramount Plus.
Those will be sourced from Paramount through our Paramount Players Studio or Sub Studio, as well as through other studio operations we have including Nickelodeon, as you know, we have the awesomeness side of Nickelodeon, which has done a great series of You movies, including for streamers. So really excited about deploying that and getting that to have something on the platform every week that's fresh for someone to watch. Your second question, I have a mark here of 36 plus. Yes.
I think he was asking about the Subs post the end of the quarter. We're not providing any numbers, but just remember the 36 is total global streaming subscribers, Rich, not just Paramount Plus.
Our next question comes from the line of John Deandis with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you. Bob, A lot of questions have been coming up about the value of traditional reader networks and the historical pricing model breaking as direct to consumer rollouts Accelerate. So I wanted to ask you, to what extent do you see changes in pricing for TV or cable networks Paramount plus scales into the tens of millions domestically. And then separately, how are you thinking about the go to market strategy and programming budget Going forward for Showtime, is a range of 10 to 15 originals a year in the ballpark? Or does that need to be stepped up?
Yes. Sure, John. So on your first question, I'd start with the fact that ViacomCBS It's a critically important content supplier to the MVPD ecosystem. Why do I say that? We do have the number one linear portfolio on share and We do lead on a range of key demographics.
Within that, we have must have content, including sports, including the NFL. Beyond that, we have a really broad opportunity to work with them to create value. And you see that, for example, as we deploy our assets in the advanced ad space. And we have advanced ad partnerships with most of the large MVPDs at this point. And more recently, we've become a supplier to the app space with both free and pay streaming products And we supply those to both their set top box and their broadband only infrastructure, things like Flex.
So that gives us even more to work with. And you look at 2020 and you look at through the Q1 of 2021 And you see that we're using that asset base to consistently close deals, deals with companies that are formidable, the likes Comcast, Verizon, YouTube, Hulu. And when you take the When you take that and then you combine the contractual rate increases for deals that are in flight, You've seen that drive affiliate growth and incremental distribution in linear. So It's a powerful combination. As we look forward, including to a world as you described with D2C and Paramount Plus growing, etcetera.
We like our position. We are among the most important content suppliers in the industry. We know how to get deals done. The addition of streaming, including Paramount Plus gives us even more to work with. And remember, that helps us drive value for those customers and simultaneously helps them evolve their business As consumers increasingly embrace broadband versus say set top box, and our ability to do that in turn drives Real revenue and asset value for ViacomCBS.
So yes, negotiations might be a little more complicated than they have been in the past, But I feel very good about our asset base. We have the best affiliate team in the business, and I feel great about the outlook of our partnerships with MVPDs. To your second question, Showtime. Showtime is on a really nice role. It produces great content.
And as we look at the segmentation of the consumer in the United States, there's no question There's a significant market for a more upscale, more coastal, more R rated offering. That's what premium is. And as you saw Showtime really continued its great run-in the Q1. It had the top 2 scripted premium series With your Honor and Shameless, it had record OTT sub growth and growth in total subscribers and it had record engagement. So it's working.
The fundamental driver here is content, originals in particular, again, shameless in your honor, in the Q1. Movies are important too, as they always have been in the premium category. As we look forward with Showtime, This is part of your question. We like our slate. We currently have about 10 or 12, 10 pole series per year, And we support that or package that with 3 to 5 kind of lower cost original series.
You look what's coming, it's the return of Dexter, it's the return of 1,000,000,000, a new series called American Rust with Jeff Daniels, a new series called Yellowjackets with Juliet Lewis and Cristina Ricchi. That's pretty hairy kind of series. It's about a plane crash in Latin America and a girls soccer team and kind of what happens in that. We're doing a great project on First Ladies. You could think quasi crown of the U.
S. And then starting with Viola Davis playing Michelle Obama, really excited about that. We're going to do a Ray Donovan movie. So The list goes on, and that product by the way is not only good for Showtime in the U. S.
Where it will continue to drive engagement and performance in the category, but it's also going to increasingly benefit Paramount Plus outside the U. S. Where Showtime product is an integral a component of the offering. By the way, the movie outlook is good for Showtime too and we have So we're feeling great about Showtime, both standalone and as an integral part of ViacomCBS, including in streaming. So with that, in closing, I just want to say a couple of things.
Clearly, very exciting times at ViacomCBS. We have strong operating momentum, we have amazing content and we have a streaming strategy that is really delivering. You see all of that in our Q1 That's true overall and certainly with respect to streaming as we build on these strong early results and momentum, particularly with respect to Paramount Plus. It's a differentiated product. It's a product with real competitive advantages and we're investing to deliver on its promise.
So thank you for your time today. Thank you for your And finally, I'd like to thank all the ViacomCBS employees for all they do every day to drive our company forward. Stay well, everyone.
Thanks, Bob, and thank you all for joining us. That concludes our earnings call.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That concludes today's conference. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.