Paramount’s Dan Cohen at MIPCOM

Dan Cohen, the chief content licensing officer at Paramount, weighed in on new licensing models in his MIPCOM keynote conversation with World Screen’s Anna Carugati before being joined on stage by the stars of NCIS: Tony & Ziva, Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo.

Paramount arrives in Cannes with a wealth of talent—it hosted a screening on the weekend of Morris Chestnut’s Watson; Cohen was introduced on stage by Tom Kenny and Bill Fagerbakke, voice cast of SpongeBob SquarePants, which marks its 25th anniversary; and Weatherly and de Pablo are in town to help launch the latest expansion of the hit NCIS franchise.

“SpongeBob is one of our most important franchises, and we are doing a year-long celebration,” Cohen said. “We culminate it with a big new SpongeBob theatrical film for 2025. So, you’ll see a lot of things along the way, including what my team and I love to do, the licensing of the library.”

Carugati asked Cohen, who also serves as president of Republic Pictures, about the company’s movie distribution strategy outside of the theatrical window. “One of the things we talk a lot about with films—also with television content—is windowing. In the film world, it has evolved a lot. For many years, the windowing for theatrical films was very set and traditional. A movie was released in the theater. Six months later, it was released in home entertainment, even though it had probably left theaters four or five months earlier. You had this dead time with the films doing nothing, and audiences had to be reminded of what it was for home entertainment. And then six months later, it would come to the first television window. That was after the home-entertainment window, where 80-plus percent of your revenue would be generated in the first two months. If you look at that landscape today, all of that happens typically in three months, sometimes a little bit longer. You’re seeing windows accelerated. It used to be the first TV client and then the second wanted exclusivity. HBO output deal, completely exclusive, and you might follow with basic cable, where there’s ads introduced, but exclusive. We live in a world now of co-exclusive deals, non-exclusive deals. Films move much more quickly. One of the new innovations [is that] we might license a movie to a FAST channel for a weekend.”

On finding new ways to window content, Cohen discussed the Paramount+ branded destination deals the company has been signing since its first one with Cosmote TV in Greece, announced at MIPCOM last year. “Consumers would see ‘Paramount+,’ but it is a licensing deal; it isn’t a service our company owns and operates.” It just clinched a new one with beIN Media Group for the Middle East and Africa. “Last year, we announced the first market; we’ll now be in 80 markets.”

He continued, “It’s really a triple win. It’s great for our licensing business. It’s great for our partners, and the real winner is the consumer because Paramount+ is now in their market faster and in a better business model than if we had to wait until we felt the market justified us coming in and building and operating.”

Cohen also discussed the AVOD and FAST space, noting that Paramount partnered with Frequency Networks to build turnkey premium channels. “We now have seven channels, and we’re working with great brands like Miramax, a movie channel; National Lampoon, a comedy channel; we have two with The CW; and two with Tyler Perry and BET. We’re really pleased with the results. It’s another way for us to do business with clients. Typically, we will bundle in with that AVOD content. It’s been heavily U.S.-centric thus far, but I had more discussions about FAST and AVOD the two days I’ve been here this year than prior years.”

Cohen also highlighted the value of the Paramount Global Content Distribution library. “We have over 3,000 movies. We have over 10,000 episodes of television, and we’re constantly keeping those in circulation. They generate a lot of revenue for the company. NCIS is our biggest television franchise; it is a global juggernaut. In Germany, the new episodes are on ProSieben, but there are library episodes on Kabel Eins, 13th Street, Paramount+, Sky and Warner. ProSieben has an AVOD service with about 900 episodes. You’re constantly able to window, circulate and monetize. That franchise alone, there are 1,000 episodes. We’ve done over $4.5 billion of licensing of NCIS. That is a massive business, and that greatly helps fuel the production of new things.”

Weatherly and Cote de Pablo joined Cohen and Carugati on stage to talk about the latest spin-off, NCIS: Tony & Ziva.