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Showtime gets a rebranding...


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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2/11/2023 at 5:58 PM, NewEgg00 said:

The streaming service? Cool. The premium cable channel? There's no way they'll rebrand to such a long name like that. 

Anything Paramount has a penchant for excessively long names: "CBS News Bay Area Evening Edition at 5". 

 

You dont have to slap your name on everything Paramount, it creates a generic feel for all your products. 

 

Off topic but was Paramount the most famous brand in ViacomCBS to justify naming the entire company after it? At least if you named it CBS Global or something they could've slid the CBS eye logo next to everything -- like Comcast does with the Golf Channel NBC peackock logo -- to  have an easy identifier.

Edited by iron_lion
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Pick a name. Either call it Paramount+ or just call it Showtime Extended or something. 

 

To call the literal cable channel Paramount+ with Showtime. Imagine what BET will be rebranded to.  

 

Tyler Perry's Paramount+ with BET, CBS, whatever shows we would have sold to the CW, Showtime, KCAL News, CBS News New York and everywhere else, Nickelodeon, MTV, Gayle King, Star Trek, Moesha reruns, Yellowstone spin-offs and other Taylor Sheridan creations but not Yellowstone itself cause we let that go to Peacock, who may or may not merge with Hulu, and also we aint got  Comedy Central cause we let that go to HB...Disco...whatever the heck they'll call it.

 

Y'all know you're thinking it. 

Edited by ColtFromGulfcoast
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On 2/11/2023 at 4:58 PM, NewEgg00 said:

The streaming service? Cool. The premium cable channel? There's no way they'll rebrand to such a long name like that. 

"Honey, you want me to tape that movie on Showtime Extreme on Showtime with Parmount+?"

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14 hours ago, ColtFromGulfcoast said:

Pick a name. Either call it Paramount+ or just call it Showtime Extended or something. 

 

To call the literal cable channel Paramount+ with Showtime. Imagine what BET will be rebranded to.  

 

Tyler Perry's Paramount+ with BET, CBS, whatever shows we would have sold to the CW, Showtime, KCAL News, CBS News New York and everywhere else, Nickelodeon, MTV, Gayle King, Star Trek, Moesha reruns, Yellowstone spin-offs and other Taylor Sheridan creations but not Yellowstone itself cause we let that go to Peacock, who may or may not merge with Hulu, and also we aint got  Comedy Central cause we let that go to HB...Disco...whatever the heck they'll call it.

 

Y'all know you're thinking it. 

It would make sense not to rebrand Showtime at all, considering it’s an established brand, plus the “Paramount+ with Showtime” naming scheme is very unwieldy for a linear network, even moreso when applying it to Showtime’s multiplex channels or its sports and documentary units… and don’t get me started with branding the network’s boxing and Bellator MMA broadcasts using that name. (Showtime underwent a brand refresh in August of last year, anyway, with a minimalistic black/red/white graphical look that replaced the shattered glass graphic scheme used since January 2011.)

 

The “Paramount+ with Showtime” branding would only work in application to the linear channels in the way HBO co-brands its seven-channel linear tier with HBO Max on most pay TV providers, by only conveying that Paramount+’s ad-free Showtime tier is accessible via provider login as a complimentary offering to Showtime linear subscribers. If anything, Bakish and company should have thought of co-branding Paramount+ and Showtime as ParamountShowtime (a la the SkyShowtime streaming partnership with Sky plc in Europe).

Edited by T.L. Hughes
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On 2/13/2023 at 1:03 PM, T.L. Hughes said:

It would make sense not to rebrand Showtime at all, considering it’s an established brand, plus the “Paramount+ with Showtime” naming scheme is very unwieldy for a linear network, even moreso when applying it to Showtime’s multiplex channels or its sports and documentary units… and don’t get me started with branding the network’s boxing and Bellator MMA broadcasts using that name.

 

I can't wait to see how they re-brand The Movie Channel. "Paramount+ with Showtime and The Movie Channel"?

 

This just feels like Paramount is either raising the white flag of surrender and acknowledging HBO's superiority in the premium cable space...or doing the equivalent of saying, "Hey! No one messes with my son Shoey! He's a PARAMOUNT!"

 

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34 minutes ago, mre29 said:

 

I can't wait to see how they re-brand The Movie Channel. "Paramount+ with Showtime and The Movie Channel"?

 

This just feels like Paramount is either raising the white flag of surrender and acknowledging HBO's superiority in the premium cable space...or doing the equivalent of saying, "Hey! No one messes with my son Shoey! He's a PARAMOUNT!"

 

The Movie Channel and Flix have been the Meg Griffins of the Showtime Networks family since shortly before the 2005 CBS-Viacom split. Neither TMC, TMC Xtra nor Flix are even available as live feeds on the Showtime streaming service, or on the Showtime add-ons sold through channel stores (Apple TV, YouTube Primetime Channels, Roku and Prime Video) and live TV streaming services (Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo, etc.); this is likely also true on the Paramount+ Showtime tier.

 

TMC and Flix barely get any promotion aside from references by pay TV providers that sell the Showtime channel package, haven’t even been given a full slate of multiplex channels (The Movie Channel just has TMC Xtra and Flix has no additional networks), and haven’t updated their branding since the former debuted its current logo and graphic scheme in 2006. 

Edited by T.L. Hughes
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24 minutes ago, T.L. Hughes said:

The Movie Channel and Flix have been the Meg Griffins of the Showtime Networks family since shortly before the 2005 CBS-Viacom split. Neither TMC, TMC Xtra nor Flix are even available as live feeds on the Showtime streaming service, or on the Showtime add-ons sold through channel stores (Apple TV, YouTube Primetime Channels, Roku and Prime Video) and live TV streaming services (Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo, etc.); this is likely also true on the Paramount+ Showtime tier.

They're simply an artifact of the late 90s when we thought multiple networks and pay-per-view movies with staggered start times were the future, not realizing we'd need all the bandwidth they took up for on-demand services where waiting for "VCR Theatre" would be pointless because the movie could be accessed at 2:47pm in a few remote commands rather than 1am on a VHS tape set on a timer. They remain only the same reason we still have an MTV2 or Nicktoons Network; PG won't pare them out until they have to capitulate to provider demands. Nobody needs a live and streaming version of Flix because their movies are already in the Showtime streaming tier.

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2 hours ago, mrschimpf said:

They're simply an artifact of the late 90s when we thought multiple networks and pay-per-view movies with staggered start times were the future, not realizing we'd need all the bandwidth they took up for on-demand services where waiting for "VCR Theatre" would be pointless because the movie could be accessed at 2:47pm in a few remote commands rather than 1am on a VHS tape set on a timer. They remain only the same reason we still have an MTV2 or Nicktoons Network; PG won't pare them out until they have to capitulate to provider demands. Nobody needs a live and streaming version of Flix because their movies are already in the Showtime streaming tier.

It never made sense to me that TMC and Flix haven’t been made available as livestreams within Showtime’s streaming add-ons, especially when you consider that they (along with Starz’s Movieplex channels) are the only premium channels whose feeds are not available on streaming in some capacity. WBD sells Cinemax and MGM/Amazon sells ScreenPix as standalone vMVPD and channel store add-ons (despite some library content redundancies with those of their sister premium channels, HBO and MGM+ [the network formerly known as Epix]), and Lionsgate includes live feeds of the Starz Encore channels on Starz’s streaming add-ons.

Edited by T.L. Hughes
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On 2/14/2023 at 6:23 PM, mrschimpf said:

They're simply an artifact of the late 90s when we thought multiple networks and pay-per-view movies with staggered start times were the future, not realizing we'd need all the bandwidth they took up for on-demand services where waiting for "VCR Theatre" would be pointless because the movie could be accessed at 2:47pm in a few remote commands rather than 1am on a VHS tape set on a timer. They remain only the same reason we still have an MTV2 or Nicktoons Network; PG won't pare them out until they have to capitulate to provider demands. Nobody needs a live and streaming version of Flix because their movies are already in the Showtime streaming tier.

 

I for one am looking forward to the great culling of cable channels. It's long overdue. The multiplexes should be among the first to go, of course -- all the extra HBOs, Showtimes, MTVs, Nicks, VH1s, etc. It's 2023; who needs eight flavors of HBO (plus their west coast feeds) when you have HBO Max?

 

But the absolute first channels that need to go? Music Choice and its ilk.

 

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  • 10 months later...

As of the date of this writing (January 8), Showtime has officially rebranded as Paramount+ with Showtime; interestingly the name change only applies to the primary channel.

 

Paramount Global wisely chose not to rename its six multiplex channels, keeping the standalone Showtime brand on those channels rather than applying what would be a janky and unwieldy naming scheme to them (meaning, for example, SHOxBET didn't become the math equation sounding Paramount+ with SHOxBET). Confusingly though, that means the linear network now has two separate brand schemes (the Paramount+ co-brand for the main channel, and the standalone Showtime brand for its other channels).

 

The screenshots below illustrating the two-tiered naming scheme are from my YTTV account:

Screenshot2024-01-08at2_31_33PM.jpeg.thumb.png.801181a21a1e48932dd6b2f5508c38ff.png

Screenshot2024-01-08at2_33_27PM.jpeg.thumb.png.9368cf2c94ada7145d774702878282c9.png

The Showtime-branded multiplex channels continue to use the promo graphics introduced in August 2022 for their "up next/tonight" bumpers.

Edited by T.L. Hughes
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