Pluto TV is primed to make its biggest international launch yet with the help of Corus Entertainment.

The free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) platform made its Canadian market debut official, announcing its Dec. 1 release date along with a preview of its more than 20,000 hours of content available at launch, including more than 100 “curated” linear channels in addition to video-on-demand (VOD) options.

Pluto TV’s introduction to the Canadian market was first unveiled during the June Upfronts, where Corus Entertainment and parentco Paramount Global announced a partnership that sees Corus offer a slate of original Canadian programming, in addition to serving as the ad representative for the platform in Canada.

Olivier Jollet, EVP and international GM for Pluto TV, tells Playback Daily that having a local partner is crucial for the platform’s international launches, and Corus was a natural fit between its catalogue of Canadian originals and established expertise in the domestic advertising market. The company is currently available in approximately 30 international markets, according to Jollet, with the upcoming Canadian launch serving as one of their largest to date.

The Canadian programs available at launch will include lifestyle and factual titles such as Love It or List It (pictured), Chopped Canada and Border Security, in addition to an array of popular U.S. scripted franchises such as NCIS, Hawaii Five-0 and The Love Boat, and unscripted classics like Judge Judy. The Pluto TV app will be available in Canada on Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Android TV, Chromecast, Samsung and LG devices.

Jollet says more Canadian content will be added after the initial Dec. 1 launch, and notes they’re also working with other partners in Canada to build out its domestic content library. The platform has previously worked with Toronto-based Blue Ant Media to license more than 650 hours of content for several key territories.

He adds that Pluto TV performed a lot of market research into what Canadian audiences are looking for, naming true crime as a key genre, as well as factual content and films. There are several FAST channels dedicated to genre-based features available at launch, including Pluto TV Comedy, Pluto TV Drama, Pluto TV Action, The Asylum (for “guilty pleasure” sci-fi and horror titles), Christmas 365, and Thriller 365.

Jollet says Pluto TV has been a “pioneer” in the AVOD space since its founding in 2014. “The conventional wisdom [at that time] was that the world TV business was moving to a VOD future only,” he says. “A lot of experts believed that viewers would no longer tolerate advertising and therefore even pay subscription to remove ads.”

He points to the creation of cheaper ad-tier options on top SVODs such as Netflix and Disney+ as a sign that ad-supported streaming is only set to grow and support the health of the advertising market, even as the world faces a growing economic crisis.

However, Jollet says Pluto TV is less about competing with the SVODs and the cable providers of the world, and more about providing a complementary service for consumers to have as much choice as possible.

“There are a lot of articles about cord-cutters, and about Pluto TV being the perfect solution for cord-cutters, but we see that a lot of our users are also cable subscribers, and they’re using Pluto TV in a different way,” he says.

“Our market research [says] people are creatures of habit and they don’t want to spend 20 minutes trying to find a piece of on-demand content every time they want to be entertained,” adds Jollet. “That’s where the power of linear is.”

Image courtesy of Corus Entertainment