• by Wayne Friedman , November 4, 2021

While legacy TV advertising revenue for Viacom was virtually flat -- up 1% -- in its third-quarter reporting period at $1.86 billion, its streaming advertising business rose sharply.

Advertising revenues at its Pluto TV and Paramount+ grew 48% to $531 million, with subscription revenues up 79% to $548 million. Overall streaming revenue rose 62% to $1.08 billion. Paramount+ global streaming subscribers were up 4.3 million to total 47 million.

Paramount says high subscribers were due to engagement in specific content, a major movie release “Paw Patrol: The Movie” and NFL games.

Viacom says streaming pay TV service Pluto TV had revenues double versus a year ago, with monthly active users up to 54 million.

The company's 1% advertising revenue gain in the period reflected the absence of the CNET Media Group, which was sold in the fourth-quarter 2020.

Viacom says cable TV network advertising was up 6% to $917 million, due to an improved marketplace versus the pandemic third-quarter 2020 period.

Content licensing and other revenue, fees from TV and film programming across third-party platforms, as well as fees generated from home entertainment, consumer products and live events, grew 18% to $1.5 billion.

Theatrical revenues were at $67 million versus $6 million in the third-quarter 2020, where pandemic issues kept movie theaters essentially closed.

Overall revenue was up 13% to $6.6 billion.