Viacom continues to focus on helping distributors implement...

said. But it’s “going to be really important both in retention and expansion” of the number of viewers, he said. If distributors don’t make the content available where viewers want to view it, other companies will come in “to do it,” he said. Viacom’s content must be distributed in a “measured way because that’s how we can get the advertising revenue direct from it,” he said. Viacom content viewers are heavy consumers of the content on multiple platforms, he said. “If we can” get Viacom content “out there more effectively, if we can get it measured,” which is starting to happen, and if Viacom can create content for those new platforms, “particularly small mobile devices, as opposed to the tablets,” it represents a “very significant opportunity” for the company due to the demographics of its viewers, he said without elaborating, although many of its properties skew young. Viacom is “working very hard” with its distributors to achieve all that, he said. The on-demand content offering from traditional distributors, meanwhile, “has not been all that robust,” but the amount of content being offered by at least some of them has been improving, allowing users to “look back” to see older programming, he said. “A lot of it’s been a capacity issue,” Dauman said. “As there’s been more capital spending on the infrastructure, that problem has been alleviated,” he said. Viacom is focused on rolling out and building its apps, as well as increasing mobile distribution and creating content for mobile devices, he also said. Viacom’s Paramount division recently restarted TV production and the company will be announcing a number of greenlit series “over the next several months,” he said. It is doing that with “low overhead” and in an “opportunistic way,” he said. Viacom is, meanwhile, “seeing clear signs of recovery” in Europe and it’s “feeling” that in its ad business and on the “distribution front,” he said. The company sees a “big, big opportunity” in growing its “footprint internationally,” he said. Its MTV brand is distributed globally in many markets and it’s been rolling out its Nickelodeon and Comedy Central brands in more markets also, Dauman said. The latter is now available in 60 territories and Viacom is “continuing to grow it,” he said. As Viacom rolls out its Paramount channel globally, it will roll out another brand globally “behind” it, he said. Viacom will probably expand its Spike brand to more global markets, he said. The company has been creating a lot of original programming on Spike in the U.S. and believes that a lot of it will travel well to other markets, he said.