Nickelodeon, in conjunction with parent company Viacom and its other brands (including MTV), look to diversify and grow as they branch out to Netflix with an all-new exclusive series. Pinky Malinky follows a normal teenager, doing normal teenager things: hanging out with friends, posting on social media, and navigating all the pressures of an everyday teen--but, naturally as a talking hot dog.
He is just the first character to jump outside of Viacom as an exclusive on a third party network, but he won't be the last. Viacom, with it's eyes set on growth as a leading factor, will begin producing new episodes of their fully owned intellectual properties for third parties.
A leading factor as stated by President and CEO Bob Bakish, is to pepper a little bit of Nickelodeon and MTV and other Viacom entities throughout different global platforms almost as a sampler, which in turn should bring consumers back to their own distributions.
"Building on the success of Paramount Television and Telefe's quickly growing production business, we're going to much more aggressively tap into the huge demand for content and unlock more of our IP and production and creative capabilities to drive incremental revenues from third-party platforms," Bakish said. "This isn't just an idea. ... there is a lot of interest from SVOD partners in licensing library properties from MTV and Nickelodeon IP for brand-new interpretations. At the same time, we're also developing new IP for the sector and have already closed deals for brand-new original Nick IP and animation with third parties and we see more in the pipeline."
Pinky Malinky is expected to release on Netflix later in 2018, no further details on exact date.