Paramount+

[gottago]

Queue thousands of Irish Trekkies (where Pluto TV isn’t available) exclaiming “That’s just made it worse!”.

I had to resort to watching it on Pluto the other day as my pal who'd been torrenting it had forgotten to throw it into the dropbox folder.

What a bizarre concept for a service. Basically a series of linear channels but with no catchup associated (the on-demand services are completely separate), US style ad break timings (eg before the credits), and no ability to pause live TV. So despite having my fancy pants Virgin TiVo service I have to be ready to watch it at precisely 9pm on a Friday like it's the 90s.

I think the USP of Pluto is it's for an "if it's on, it's on" kind of audience, which when you think about it is kind of how much of the Freeview EPG operates beyond the first page of channels. There's a market for familiar stuff you'll just put on in the background without having to actively select a show to watch from the beginning. Shows that you'd never go out of your way to actually seek out to watch on demand but would happily watch if you saw it was on a Saturday morning on Pick, for example. My colleague would leave the Hell's Kitchen Pluto channel on all day while on maternity because it was just easy and she could get on with her day and whenever a bit of drama started she'd pay attention for a bit and then get back to whatever she was doing when it subsided.

Star Trek is unique in that they needed somewhere to put it last minute on a service they owned in multiple territories and Pluto was all they had and that's just how the service operates. And I can imagine they also want to make it less convenient for people to watch in the hope they might eventually subscribe to Paramount+ when it launches. But evidently Pluto isn't normally going to air 'appointment to view' style shows.