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Television Movies

Showtime May Be Merged Into Paramount+ (cnbc.com) 40

Posted by BeauHD from the two-in-one dept.
"Paramount Global executive David Nevins, who has run the premium network Showtime since 2016, is leaving the company at the end of year," reports CNBC. According to the report, it may help give the media conglomerate "more flexibility to potentially merge Showtime into Paramount+." From the report: Along with his departure, Paramount Global is restructuring Showtime in ways that could give the company flexibility to effectively end Showtime as it's existed for decades -- as an independent premium cable network churning out prestige hits such as "Dexter," "Weeds," "Billions," "Homeland" and "Yellowjackets." Paramount Global announced Thursday that it's moving Showtime's network business under the leadership of Chris McCarthy, who runs other linear cable networks such as MTV and Comedy Central, and the streaming service under Tom Ryan, who runs Paramount Streaming.

The moves come as the company is considering the idea of merging Showtime into Paramount+ and using the network's hit programming to fuel Paramount+ subscriptions, according to people familiar with the matter. The company's goal is to have Paramount+ be one of the five largest global streaming services, along with Warner Bros. Discovery's HBO Max, Amazon's Prime Video, Netflix and Disney+, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. No decisions about Showtime's future have been made, and no changes are imminent, the people said.

One obstacle to pushing Showtime together with Paramount+ is existing pay TV distributor agreements. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Paramount has discussed simply shuttering the standalone Showtime network with at least one pay-TV partner. Another idea under consideration by Paramount Global executives is to move Paramount+ originals and movies to Showtime, effectively making Showtime a mirror to Paramount+'s content that doesn't appear on other TV networks, two of the people said. That could assuage pay-TV providers, who could adjust pricing against the merged streaming product. [...] Eliminating Showtime as an independent entity would also come with cost savings from head count reductions, such as Nevins' departure, and technology and marketing duplications.
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Showtime May Be Merged Into Paramount+

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  • buy showtime and get free Paramount+ can work (Score:3)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Thursday October 06, 2022 @06:00PM (#62945111)

    buy showtime and get free Paramount+ can work just like HBO MAX

  • Southpark was right (Score:3)

    by jonathantn ( 6373084 ) on Thursday October 06, 2022 @06:08PM (#62945139)
    Butter's speech in the streaming wars was spot on.

  • Wow this is exciting (Score:4)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Thursday October 06, 2022 @06:20PM (#62945163)

    *Yawn*

    Personally, I don't really give a damn who makes what show or movie. 95% of any of these company's output is utter crap anyway. That you can be certain of. So they're definitely not worth the subscription money.

    So the only question really is: where can I download the few good things that'll come out or one, the other, or the merged company?

  • ...but I have zero interest in streaming. Why? No DVR. If I like a piece, I want to be able to call it up and see it / show it to others at my choosing. It's about that time it joins the lists I keep seeing about "going away this month on NetFlix". They quit providing, I then can't see it or play it for others.

    I currently subscribe to no streaming, have plans to avoid doing that, and have 2 DVR's and cable and (almost) all the premium cable channels. If Showtime disappears from cable, they lose my

    • That makes no sense. Normally you just stream the show you want to watch. You don't need a DVR anymore.
      Now, I'm aware you can stream live tv on like Sling and some others, but I'm pretty sure that's the minority of streaming that people are talking about.

      • Of course it makes sense. Why? Because you can't stream just anything you want to watch, you have to stream whatever they decide to provide. If you decide you want to watch "Forbidden Planet" or "The Day The Earth Stood Still", I mean the original version, good luck finding it. But it was once on cable where it could be DVR'd, and I now have it. And will continue to have it whether they decide to keep providing it on some streaming service or not. Make sense now?

        • Forbidden Planet was on Criterion Channel a month or two back. It may not be up there now, but they've got about twenty-five 1980s horror films, a bunch of vampire movies, and a bunch of Universal horror up for Halloween. I highly recommend the streaming service if looking for something a bit more artistic than the norm. They rotate through different categories of movies every month and there always something good.

          The Day the Earth Stood Still is available for free with ads on YouTube. I know, ads (b

        • Of course it makes sense. Why? Because you can't stream just anything you want to watch, you have to stream whatever they decide to provide.

          A DVR won't help you there.

          If you decide you want to watch "Forbidden Planet" or "The Day The Earth Stood Still", I mean the original version, good luck finding it.

          I've had copies of both of those for decades now.

          But it was once on cable where it could be DVR'd, and I now have it. And will continue to have it whether they decide to keep providing it on some streaming service or not. Make sense now?

          No, because the last time I had a DVR, it automatically removed everything from it that wasn't available on the service anymore.

    • I suppose you're making the standard case for physical media, and I get that. In the nuclear scenario, I can still watch "The Sopranos" so long as I can keep the hamster on the treadmill to keep the generator running. But honestly, how large is the collection of things you really want to re-watch, and what subset of them will vanish?

      And honestly, if something you like becomes unavailable, what's the actual impact, other a sigh and a wistful thought? You pick something else you like, or, god forbid, pick som

      • Christ, have y'all not been paying attention to various recent content stories? He's not advocating for physical media. He's making the case for independently saving and storing content due to various changes in circumstances on streaming services that could make it unavailable tomorrow. This could happen because a service loses the rights to stream something (i.e. Netflix) or because they only have the rights to stream the current season and not back seasons (Yellowstone on Paramount+) or because, fuck

        • I only mention physical media as an example of local storage, not because it's the only such method. The same is true if you're talking about Plex server, or NAS, or anything else. The more fundamental point I was making is that if access to a piece of media is lost, the impact is probably not significant, and the cost/benefit favours streaming.

          Streaming services would be dead in the water if they wanted $20 for each movie. Having the permanent copy is only useful if periodic rewatching is inevitable. And

          • Having a permanent copy is useful for even *providing* the option to rewatch. That's the point! These streaming services are creating a modern memory hole that favors content that is less than five years old. This is the way movies use to be pre-VHS. You watched a movie in the theater and then generally never saw it again as the physical media was unavailable.

            For a brief moment in time (80's until recently) people could own copies of content themselves and preserve it. Rewatching something was actually

  • Please, all streaming networks should just buy each other. We don't need more than one streaming provider. I've had it with having to switch streaming apps to search for shows. Call it Parapeaflixhulunetshowyouamacockmountmaxtubeapplezontimehbo or something. I don't mind having to type that out in the URL bar if it buys me some convenience.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cstacy ( 534252 )

      Please, all streaming networks should just buy each other. We don't need more than one streaming provider. I've had it with having to switch streaming apps to search for shows. Call it Parapeaflixhulunetshowyouamacockmountmaxtubeapplezontimehbo or something.

      "Pepe" for short.

    • And then, since this one streaming service has all the content, it would be able to charge basically whatever price it wants. They would start with "basic streaming" that includes only stuff nobody really wants, and add "premium packages" of content that is divided into categories in such a way that you need 5-6 of these premium packages to get the variety you're looking for.

      In other words, we would have gone full circle, back to...cable TV.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by teg ( 97890 )
      If you just have one streaming channel, the price would be enormous. Not even because of "I'm a monopoly, I can charge what I want" but because of the income needed to sustain the production of the content. Creating video content is orders of magnitude more expensive than creating music,

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Please, all streaming networks should just buy each other. We don't need more than one streaming provider. I've had it with having to switch streaming apps to search for shows. Call it Parapeaflixhulunetshowyouamacockmountmaxtubeapplezontimehbo or something. I don't mind having to type that out in the URL bar if it buys me some convenience.

      We did. We called it "Cable TV".

      Then we demanded options, Cable TV refused to do so, so streaming providers were created to give us options.

      Now that we have too many opti

  • Please put Big Brother on Canadian Paramount+. Thanks.

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