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Paramount+ begins building local team ahead of launch

ViacomCBS’ Paramount+ has started to assemble a local team ahead of the streaming platform’s launch in the Australian market later this year, after last week’s roll out in the US and parts of Latin America.

Chris Ledlin has been appointed senior director of streaming, leading business development and commercial partnerships in the market and reporting to the streaming platform’s senior vice president of revenue and operations, Angela Heckman, who is based in the US.

Ledlin joins after three years at Nine, where he was most recently overseeing operations and partnerships for the network’s broadcast video on demand (BVOD) platform, 9Now.

He spent an additional three years at Nine earlier in his career, before leaving for stints at Twitter and Southern Cross Austereo.

Ledlin

Ledlin is joined by Aaron Bishop, who has relocated back to Australia to take up the position of senior director, user acquisition and retention. Bishop started out in local roles for The Walt Disney Company and Webjet, before a stretch working in London at companies including The Times, and in New York, where he was at Amnet and Calvin Klein.

In his new role, he is based in Sydney, and reports to the senior vice president of marketing and growth, Marco Nobili, in the US.

Bishop

The streaming platform – which joins a market cluttered by Netflix, Stan, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, Hay U, and BritBox – is actively recruiting for the rest of its Australian-based team, including building its marketing team from scratch.

While it doesn’t launch in Australia until the middle of the year, the concept of Paramount+ was first announced last August, with its name and branding unveiled in September. It replaces Ten All Access, and will host original series, Showtime premieres, Paramount Pictures movies, and CBS, CW and Ten content.

Existing Showtime content including Homeland, Billions, and Shameless currently sits on – and, as Mumbrella understands, will remain on – competitor platform Stan. Last year, ViacomCBS said Paramount+ plans to “match or exceed” such competitors.

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