STREAMING SATURDAY: Will more streamers follow Paramount’s lead?

After essentially killing off the Showtime app on streaming and folding that content into Paramount+, the parent company (also called Paramount) has taken the next step and rebranded its pay TV product as “Paramount+ with Showtime.” They are promising a selection of content that was previously only available on streaming. We’ll see how much content actually migrates over and whether the newest stuff will make it there.

The weirdness​

So if you’re a pay-TV subscriber, at this moment you get Paramount+ with Showtime, and you also don’t. Despite the streaming service and the pay-TV channel now having the same name, you can’t use your pay-TV credentials to log into the streaming app. That link was broken last year and I have to say I wasn’t happy about it. It only seems fair that if you’re going to call the two things with the same name you should be able to use both of them.

Will new series actually play on pay-TV, or will they be streaming only?​

I have to say that I don’t have a lot of confidence here. I think Paramount really did the wrong thing in not letting pay-TV subscribers have some sort of access to the app. Maybe they still intend to and they can’t figure out how to do it. But as I said I don’t have a lot of hope.

I guess we’ll see what happens when we start to see some new content on Paramount+. That may be a while. I’ll admit that I have no handle on the Yellowstone universe, so I don’t know when they will have a new version of that. I know that Star Trek, aka the only reason I ever open the Paramount+ app, won’t be back for a few more months. Episodes of Star Trek Discovery are on pay TV, but this is a show from 2017 and arguably the weakest of the newest generation of Trek shows.

A trend or nothing to worry about?​

When Netflix decided to continue charging for their 4K tier (which now costs a blistering $23 a month), I hoped that wouldn’t be the norm. It looked like Netflix was an outlier until Max decided to do the same thing, and exclude pay-TV subscribers from that tier to boot. So far no other streamer has followed suit, but I’m beginning to believe that you’ll see the trend continuing.

So it has me wondering, will other streamers rebrand (or introduce) a linear tier? Will your local network soon call itself “Peacock with NBC?” Will Jeff Bezos announce a linear version of Prime Video? At this point all bets are off. I think it would be smart to align streaming and traditional pay TV a little better, and I think that pure streamers like Prime and Netflix would benefit from getting into pay TV. Why? Because never mind all the naysayers. Pay television is bouncing back, because — and I never thought I’d be able to say this — it’s a better value than streaming.

What do you think? Will Paramount get its act together and let pay TV customers who pay for its service also stream its service? Will more streamers come to pay TV? If you’ve ever read these articles and thought I was full of “it,” now’s your time to be part of the conversation!

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[navychop]

I think it would be smart to align streaming and traditional pay TV a little better, and I think that pure streamers like Prime and Netflix would benefit from getting into pay TV. Why? Because never mind all the naysayers. Pay television is bouncing back, because — and I never thought I’d be able to say this — it’s a better value than streaming.

QFT. Or so I hope.

 

[Bruce]

So if you’re a pay-TV subscriber, at this moment you get Paramount+ with Showtime, and you also don’t. Despite the streaming service and the pay-TV channel now having the same name, you can’t use your pay-TV credentials to log into the streaming app. That link was broken last year and I have to say I wasn’t happy about it. It only seems fair that if you’re going to call the two things with the same name you should be able to use both of them.

Will new series actually play on pay-TV, or will they be streaming only?​

I have to say that I don’t have a lot of confidence here. I think Paramount really did the wrong thing in not letting pay-TV subscribers have some sort of access to the app. Maybe they still intend to and they can’t figure out how to do it. But as I said I don’t have a lot of hope.

What do you think? Will Paramount get its act together and let pay TV customers who pay for its service also stream its service? Will more streamers come to pay TV? If you’ve ever read these articles and thought I was full of “it,” now’s your time to be part of the conversation!

When did you write this?

DirecTV, Spectrum and YTTV have access to the app, Spectrum/YTTV since launch, a few days now for DirecTV.

 

[NashGuy]

There may be multiple reasons for the integration of Showtime and Paramount+ but one of them, I believe, is cost-cutting. Looking at the calendar going forward for Showtime original content, it looks pretty sparse.

In the past, there were typically two Sunday night original series from Showtime running with new episodes at any given time. As of this Sunday, there's only one (The Woman in the Wall, which is actually a BBC import). And after that, there's only two more Showtime originals that have been announced for 2024 (A Gentleman in Moscow and The Department). I'm not aware of anything else in the near-term pipeline at Showtime now, other than perhaps a second season of Uncoupled. (Its first season ran on Netflix but Showtime acquired the series.) Lots of Showtime originals that had been in development or even filming got cancelled last year, and then the strikes happened, adding to the content drought.

Meanwhile, Showtime Sports has been shut down (so no more live boxing or MMA), they've killed off their talk shows (Desus & Mero, Ziwe), and some of their past original series have been sold off and aren't even offered by them for on-demand streaming any more (e.g. Shameless, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Nurse Jackie, Masters of Sex, Weeds, City on a Hill, etc.). And on top of that, the only significant movie output deal that Showtime has in place, with the studio A24, is ending soon; new and catalog A24 theatrical films will be airing/streaming on HBO going forward. AFAIK, the only other output deal they have is with Amblin Partners, which will probably release only one or two theatrical films in 2024, after which that output deal ends too.

So it looks like Showtime is being hollowed out. Looks like Paramount is definitely spending less on that brand going forward. So what are they doing to fill in the gaps, at least to some extent? Paramount+ originals like Halo, The Mayor of Kingstown and Sexy Beast.

If I had to guess, I'd bet that their content spending on all of Paramount+ with Showtime (across both brands/tiers) this year won't be any more than it was for just Paramount+ last year. Paramount is just too small and cash poor to run two a la carte services, so they had to collapse them into one.

 

[Bruce]

some of their past original series have been sold off and aren't even offered by them for on-demand streaming any more (e.g. Shameless, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Nurse Jackie, Masters of Sex, Weeds, City on a Hill, etc.).

Those were all made by others, not Paramount, so I would guess the licensing expired.

For example, Weeds/Nurse Jackie are from Lionsgate, Masters of Sex was Sony, etc, etc.

Shameless was made by Warner, which is now on Netflix.

 

[NashGuy]

Those were all made by others, not Paramount, so I would guess the licensing expired.

For example, Weeds/Nurse Jackie are from Lionsgate, Masters of Sex was Sony, etc, etc.

Shameless was made by Warner, which is now on Netflix.

True. But Showtime didn't spend the money to extend the licenses to keep those Showtime Originals on their platform. Their programming library has shrunk, both in terms of older shows as well as current/new stuff. What is now branded/categorized as Showtime is, quite literally, just a piece of a subscription service. I wonder if the brand will even survive the next few years...

 

[Bruce]

I wonder if the brand will even survive the next few years...

Doubtful, looks like the goal was to make everything look better on the books, so to make a sale.

Unfortunately, still a bad time to do so, be better off if they can wait a year.

 

[NashGuy]

Doubtful, looks like the goal was to make everything look better on the books, so to make a sale.

Unfortunately, still a bad time to do so, be better off if they can wait a year.

Yeah. But I would argue that Showtime has a certain amount of brand equity and could conceivably still be a profitable little business on its own. Heck, former Showtime CEO David Nevins led a $3 billion private equity bid to buy Showtime from Paramount last year, hoping to save it from the fate he knew awaited it under Paramount.

I think it's entirely plausible that if one of these VCs (Redbird or Apollo) do end up taking majority control and then sell off pieces of the business, as expected, one of the things they would sell off is Showtime and, as was the case last year, the buyer may want *only* Showtime, not Paramount+ or any other Paramount assets. And then Showtime would have to be untangled from Paramount+, causing further consumer confusion...