Paramount Chief Programming Officer Tanya Giles on the future of streaming

 

I started at CBS in 1995 in the research department before the first merger and my job was to come in at 7 a.m. and pull the ratings. I took the elevator upstairs to the president's office and delivered the ratings to his desk. I quickly realized that I was the first person at CBS each day to see the ratings from the night before. That was pretty thrilling and intoxicating. I learned that being in research is really where the business moves.  I moved from the analytics side of research at CBS to the other side of research, which was speaking to audiences. That's when I moved over to Nickelodeon because I had a deep passion for kids’ television. My first job at Viacom was in the Nickelodeon research department. I like to say that my claim to fame is that I was the researcher who showed children SpongeBob SquarePants for the first time.  It was thrilling to see children have deep connections to the content and characters and stories. I knew that there was something powerful to that as well. There's the power behind the numbers in the business, and how the fans feel about the content you bring to them is why we do what we do.  In 2002, I went from the kids' side of the business to more of our adult-focused brands. Eventually, I was overseeing research for all of the entertainment brands, which at the time included Comedy Central, TV Land, and Spike (now Paramount Network). Research has always been highly valued in this company and I always had a seat at the table.  

 

I was involved in many of the big decision-making conversations around content, how we're moving audiences, and how we're growing these brands. I was able to really develop my strategic programming skills, including how the shows and the decisions get made. I met enough people in the company where I built a reputation for my executive sensibilities. So, when there was an opportunity to become a General Manager for Comedy Central, I jumped at it, Kent Alterman was the president of Comedy Central at the time, and he needed somebody to be his right hand on the business functions—overseeing research, programming, marketing, social, and digital—in the New York office. Once the content was made, it moved its way to our department to determine the best way to deliver it to the fans.  

 

Being in a seat where I was the decision-maker was a big switch. Knowing that the buck stops with me required a whole new muscle. I worked in tandem with programming and marketing, etc., but really understood how those processes work and how those decisions get made on putting together a schedule and what is needed to put together a campaign. That's what I truly understand from soup to nuts and has helped me become a more holistic executive. When it comes to streaming, in order to run the programming business, I have to be the spoke in the wheel for a lot of our internal studios. It’s that central position where I’m setting the programming strategy and the content strategy for streaming.

 

One of the great advantages of Paramount+ is that it’s part of Paramount’s fantastic ecosystem. We can promote shows on linear, but we also have tremendous opportunities to partner with the networks or even the shows themselves to launch new content.  One example, of course, is Yellowstone. We knew Season 4 was coming back. The fan anticipation for the show was at max highs. We waited to launch Yellowstone when we knew we would have two shows that were also coming from the Taylor Sheridan universe for Paramount+, including 1883 and Mayor of Kingstown. Yellowstone came back with huge numbers in the first week and then in the second week, we aired Mayor of Kingstown right after Yellowstone on linear and premiered it on Paramount+. So, fans of Yellowstone were exposed to it on Paramount Network with the promise that you could immediately go to Paramount+ and watch episode two of the new original series.  We did the same thing with 1883 a few weeks later in November. Then in December, we followed up with Yellowstone episode eight, where there was a flashback to the origins of the Dutton family where audiences saw Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, who are characters in 1883. They could immediately see the premiere of 1883. If they went to the service, then the first two episodes were available.

 

We saw that about 30% of the audience who came to Paramount+ to watch 1883 started with episode two, so we know that that was a huge driver. We've done that in other ways with Seal Team, which was a great show on CBS, and this season we knew it would be a fantastic addition to the Paramount+ lineup. We wanted to have a seamless handoff so the fans understood where to find it. Three episodes premiered on CBS where we promoted that it would be moving over to Paramount+. Then, in episode four, we made the handoff and it was available on Paramount+. The audience followed, which is great to see.  We also have huge opportunities for cross-promotion with the NFL. We premiered the Big Nate trailer during the Wild Card game that was on Nickelodeon and debuted the Halo trailer in the AFC championship game. It’s truly a competitive advantage, in streaming especially, that we have the enormous power of Paramount to create and promote content.  

 

We're going global. Expanding around the world is truly exciting. So many of our franchises have fans around the world, so to be able to extend franchises for those fans is fantastic. And of course, all the exciting content we have in the pipeline from Halo and Star Trek: Picard to The Fairly OddParents: Fairly Odder and the second season of iCarly. We have amazing in-house studios that are producing this content on behalf of the service and we have created a total household platform where SpongeBob can live alongside Beavis and Butthead and Jean-Luc Picard and James Dutton and Halo’s Master Chief