Free Streamer Pluto TV Gets a Lifeline in Paramount-Warner Bros. Consent Decree

The headline items — rightfully so — in the consent decree between Paramount and 12 states are an increased commitment to production in the United States, an “editorial independence board” for CBS News and CNN and the fact that the combined company will still have to negotiate as two separate entities for cable carriage fees.

Deeper into the document, though, is a carve-out for another piece of the Paramount empire: Pluto TV.

The free, ad-supported streaming service has been something of an afterthought in the abundance of discussion and negotiations about the megamerger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. It’s the only free streamer either of the two current companies currently operates, and because of that, Pluto received its own protections under the consent decree.

Specifically, for the five-year term of the settlement, “The [merged company] shall continue to maintain and make available a free, ad-supported streaming service under the Pluto TV brand or a successor or substantially equivalent replacement brand or service.” ParaBros is also obligated to maintain “service and quality levels at or above the service and quality for the service as provided” on the date the consent decree goes into effect.

In other words, the merged company will have to keep a free streaming service in its portfolio for at least five years after the deal closes and make an effort to keep Pluto TV (or a rebranded successor) viable.

Pluto offers live channels, a good-sized movie and TV library and after-air streaming of some CBS series. It’s among the larger free streaming services on the market, though its reach isn’t quite as wide as the Roku Channel and Tubi. Paramount+ and Pluto TV combined typically command about 2.2 percent of all TV use in the United States, based on figures from the monthly Nielsen Gauge reports. Pluto TV on its own hovers around 1 percent.