The Show(time) must go on
Earlier in the year, HBO Max also went through a rebrand when it combined its catalog with the Discovery+ streaming service, forming Max.
For several industry experts, the Max and the Paramount+ with Showtime rebrands are responses to the changing media environment as their respective parent companies look to streamline services. However, some are less than impressed with the name changes.
“Showtime rebranding here is very similar to HBO becoming Max,” Brad Altfest, managing director of media and entertainment at tech and engagement company Agora, told Adweek. “The industry is so impressed with itself that it thinks rebranding ’80s style is enough to capture a new audience. It’s not.”
Altfest sees the Showtime rebrand as the continued consolidation and siloing of content throughout the industry, ultimately increasing costs, reducing consumer choice and pushing viewers away.
“Paramount+ with Showtime is yet the next most literal representation online of bundling not a-la-carte, like the cable companies have provided, to little success,” Altfest said. “With the number of streaming services required to see all the shows one is into, of course, the audience (especially the younger cohort) is coalescing around comments and clips or buying full episodes on social media rather than bothering with multiple individual streaming services.”
Streamers aren’t content with their content
Additional TV rebrands will be “par for the course” in 2024, according to Tameka Kee, deputy managing director at the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement, with more and more companies bundling services and licensing established titles as connected TV competition increases.
Just this week, Fox’s Tubi announced it’s streaming DC titles thanks to a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery, and Disney—a company that made headlines in 2017 by taking a hard stance against sharing its titles on Netflix—is once again licensing titles to Netflix.
It all leads to a more muddled consumer-facing TV landscape. And that isn’t changing anytime soon.
“The rollups and mergers have already made it hard for people to identify which parent company owns their favorite channel, let alone a specific show. It’s also often unclear whether a specific show is accessible via the FAST channel or bundle they may subscribe to,” Kee said. “So while this [Paramount+ with Showtime] rebrand won’t necessarily cause confusion, it doesn’t seem like a move toward clarity.”
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