Showtime gets its own special parent company rebrand
The premium cable network will officially become "Paramount+ With Showtime" on January 8
Aux News Showtime
Remember when HBO Max became just “Max,” and it was kind of stupid? Remember how much fun we had making Social Network jokes? “Drop the ‘HBO,’” we crowed, “it’s cleaner.” Well, here’s round two: the linear network once known as Showtime becomes “Paramount+ With Showtime” on January 8. “Add the ‘Paramount+ With,’” some executive somewhere said. “It’s clunkier.”
The rebrand will go into effect just about a year after it was first announced, meaning no one in all that time came up with any better ideas than “Paramount+ With Showtime.” Starting next year, customers formerly known as Showtime subscribers will have access not only to Showtime series (i.e. Fellow Travelers, The Chi, The Curse, Yellowjackets, and Your Honor, as well as new shows like A Gentleman In Moscow, The Department, The Woman In The Wall) but also to Paramount+ shows like Halo, Mayor Of Kingstown, Star Trek: Discovery, and Wolf Pack. The network will also air the new Paramount+ original Sexy Beast and the upcoming second season of Halo.
In a statement (via Variety), Paramount said, “The move aligns the brand with the Paramount+ With Showtime plan, a cornerstone integration for the streaming service, making this the first of its kind multiplatform brand that integrates streaming and linear content.” However, according to Variety, not all current Showtime subscribers will have access to the Paramount+ With Showtime streaming plan; cable subscribers will instead be able to access programming “online via the authenticated streaming apps of pay-TV partners.”
Over the summer, Paramount condensed its streaming offerings into one app, migrating Showtime originals over to Paramount+. That app now has two tiers: “Paramount+ Essential” for $5.99/month and—you guessed it—“Paramount+ With Showtime” for $11.99/month.
17 Comments
Wow, dumb.
Yep I just started watching Penny Dreadful and Showtime Anytime tells me it’s shutting down.
But… Paramount + Showtime was right there.
Or just…. Tim. It’s no less stupid than Max. Let’s just give them all people names.
Nickelodeon once considered making Nick it’s official name.
2Para2Show
“making this the first of its kind multiplatform brand that integrates streaming and linear content.”
Yeah, except for Max. And Hulu. And Peacock.
Scanning this article, I was intrigued by the new show, “A Gentleman In Moscow, A Woman In The Wall.”
Should’ve named itself “Cine,” so it and HBO could troll Cinemax together.
I wonder who still subscribes to Cinemax. They haven’t had any original programming in several years and most of what they show is 5 -40 year old movies. I’m guessing most people that still have it subscribed to it 20 years ago through their cable company and haven’t realized they’re still being charged for it.
I do not but I still see it when I scroll through the guide. Sometimes they have stuff I’d watch, but as you say it’s all older movies that I know will make their way to HBO or Showtime eventually, or that I can already stream somewhere else. People only used to subscribe to Cinemax for the late Saturday night offerings, but that’s free all over the internet now. lolMy parents have all the premiums, but yeah they’re old and just haven’t reevaluated their cable service, plus they don’t stream.
Paramount+ With Showtime With Ads
I will never stop ranting to anyone who will listen (which is to say, almost nobody) about how badly ViacomCBS fucked up their streaming platforms. They were WAY ahead of the game in comparison with the other competing conglomerates, considering they had full streaming episodes of shows like South Park and Chappelle’s Show (for free, too, at least for a while) back when Netflix was just mailing DVDs and Blockbuster was a still-thriving enterprise. And yet, nobody at Viacom seemed to grasp the future potential of this feature and thus treated it as a little bonus to cable subscribers and nothing else.Then they beat everyone else to the punch AGAIN with the first true streaming hub, CBS All Access, long before D+/Hulu (in its current iteration, not counting the original NBC/Fox venture), Peacock, Max, or any of the other corporate content repositories. Of course, nobody used CBS All Access because someone had the bright idea to use network branding that 1) is exclusively associated with the elderly, and 2) belongs to a free OTA network, confusing people as to why they’d pay extra for something that was already free since they did such a bad job of marketing what it actually was.Then, after everyone else had created robust streaming hubs, Viacom tried again, and promptly fucked up the branding AGAIN with Paramount+, using the name of their studio which has absolutely zero cultural cachet in the 21st Century to somehow reflect the whole breadth of their holdings—the most desirable of which were certainly in the TV realm. Why they didn’t go with the name “VIA” (or VIA+, if that element is completely necessary) is completely baffling to me; it has the same name recognition/clout as Paramount for the general public (which is to say, none) and yet is punchy, memorable, evocative, and more accurately reflects the nature of the service as a comprehensive source for ViacomCBS properties. This new rebranding just underlines how gobsmackingly stupid the marketing of their streaming services has been.
I have no idea what this means for me as someone who pays for the Showtime add-on to hulu.
You know how Monarchies decay very easily, in large part because there’s no guarantee your genetic successor is going to inherit the necessary personality and attributes to be a good ruler? How is that corporations are getting stupider and shittier CEOs when they’re not bound by descendancy, and even though meritocracy isn’t real, still in theory should be capable of at least maintaining a status quo when promoting successors?
Interesting. I subscribe to Showtime for its handful of news-ish shows like Vice and the since-ended The Circus, good movies of course, and boxing. It sounds like I’m getting… more TV shows I won’t watch? Hm.
You are missing The Curse. Great new series on Para.. um Sho… well, whatever it’s called. I am guessing you have seen Yellowjackets, Billions, House of Lies.