Similar to what we have seen recently from other platforms like Max, Disney+, and Hulu, Paramount+ has announced a raft of shows and movies being cut from the platform. Perhaps the most surprising of these was Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies which just had its finale on June 1st. Within weeks of the finale, Paramount announced that the show was not only cancelled but would also be removed from Paramount+ entirely. The musical comedy which is a prequel to the original Grease movie premiered on April 6th and struggled to take off until its final weeks when it reached its highest levels of demand, peaking at 20 times the average series demand the day after its finale. Unfortunately for fans of the show, it won’t be getting a longer runway to make further inroads with audiences.
Another surprise among the list of shows being cut was Star Trek: Prodigy. Paramount+ has built a reputation as the home for all things Star Trek and, given the many other Star Trek series that remain on the platform and form an important pillar of what it has to offer subscribers, it is hard to imagine that there is a more logical home for this show. The last time we measured the relative contribution of Star Trek to this platform, the franchise accounted for nearly a third of demand for all Paramount+ originals.
We measured the impact of these cuts to the demand for content on Paramount+. The removal of Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, Star Trek: Prodigy and other shows amounts to cutting 1.7% of the total demand for all shows on Paramount+ as of May. This is not a huge dent to the platform’s catalog but to put it in perspective, collectively these shows attracted more demand than RuPaul’s Drag Race, the second most in-demand show on Paramount+ in May.
As a point of comparison, when we measured the impact of Max’s first round of cuts last year they amounted to 2.1% of the total demand for shows on that platform (about the scale of removing Game of Thrones from Max). When Disney+ announced cuts to its platform recently, the more than 30 titles removed made up 1.9% of demand for all shows and movies on the platform. This means that the recent cuts to Paramount+ are slightly less drastic than the scale of cuts at other streamers.
What is behind the cuts being made by streaming platforms? Hollywood’s renewed focus on profit margins is driving recent belt-tightening moves. Paramount as well as other companies that have made cuts have been able to claim a tax write-off. Additionally, streamers still have to pay licensing fees to keep content on-platform so removing shows can help cut back on costs. Finally, there is financial potential in licensing these shows to another platform like Warner Bros. Discovery did with Westworld and The Nevers after removing them from Max.
While recent cost-saving moves like this rarely seem consumer friendly, it provides an opportunity for streamers to make sure they are laser focused on either serving their existing audience or attracting new users by rationalizing any content that might not be furthering either of these goals. In many cases, the shows being taken off a platform might be a better fit for another streaming home even. There is certainly no shortage of platforms that would be happy to pick up new content, whether that is FAST service looking to monetize content in a different way or another SVOD home as we saw with the recent news that HBO was considering licensing some of its content to Netflix.
