Wait, Paramount+ Is Doing What Now?

Not to be outdone by its competitors over at HBO, a.k.a. HBO Go, a.k.a. HBO Now, a.k.a. HBO Max, a.k.a. Max, a.k.a. HBO Max again, the executives at Paramount+ have quietly rolled out a rebrand of their own: They’ve sliced the “Showtime” off their Paramount+ With Showtime ad-free plan and renamed it Paramount+ Premium. How Peacock of them!

Users first noticed the change yesterday as an explanatory message hit the Paramount+ support site and its sign-up pages were refreshed to feature the new name. Nothing else has changed. Prices for the rebranded Paramount+ Premium will remain the same, and in the support message, the service promised it would continue to feature as much Showtime content as it has in the past.

Paramount+ With Showtime launched in 2023 after a couple of unsteady years as a bundle of the two discrete services — the stand-alone streamer Paramount+ (f.k.a. CBS All Access) and Showtime (the streaming arm of the cable channel that then went by the same name). The pairing resulted in the shutdown of Showtime’s stand-alone app and the roll-up of all its content onto the Paramount+ ad-free tier. “Paramount+ With Showtime” was a clumsy label, but it was intended to signal the service’s richest tier, on which you could watch “prestige” shows like Yellowjackets and Billions as well as Paramount+ hits like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and the myriad spinoffs of Yellowstone with minimal interruptions. Paramount Global even rebranded the Showtime cable channel to Paramount+ With Showtime, and, weirdly, that name’s sticking around for now, or at least its own update hasn’t rolled out yet.

It’s worth noting that most Paramount+ subscribers likely won’t notice the difference. Most are on the cheaper, ad-supported Essentials plan, which happens to have some Showtime shows. But we’ll pour one out for streaming’s most awkwardly tacked-on prepositional phrase all the same, may it rest.

Related

• Paramount+ and Showtime Hard-Launch Their Merger
• Good Deal, Bad Strategy: Why the Paramount+ and Showtime Bundle Is a Mess