And P+ originals such as Evil could just as easily fit in on Showtime. Showtime and Paramount+, by contrast, are both platforms filled with movies, TV shows, sports, and even information-based programming. ViacomCBS seems to want to emulate what Disney and Apple have done with their digital bundles, but those companies combine at least three services, and those services are actually pretty different: Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ all offer very different kinds of content. And if you get Showtime through cable or satellite, well, unless it’s heavily discounted, you now feel like a sucker for paying more … to get less. Anyone who’s currently paying full freight for digital Showtime now has to figure out how to cancel their current subscription and sign up for the new deal. That would dramatically boost P+’s sub tally while also making Showtime customers less likely to cancel. What’s more, as many commenters pointed out in their replies to my thread, bundling two services for less than the price of one is just sort of … silly? As one person noted, it would make a lot more sense for ViacomCBS to give anyone with a Showtime subscription free access to the ad-supported level of Paramount+. Putting a time limit makes it feel like a marketing gimmick rather than a strategy shift, which I’m assuming - perhaps incorrectly! - is what’s really going on with the bundle offer. But a “bundle” is something you need to educate consumers on, so they understand why it makes sense to order two services instead of one, particularly when one is as brand new as Paramount+. People get the concept of stuff being on sale. It’s one thing to cut the price of a single service for a short time, something HBO Max is currently doing. Despite being a pretty solid value proposition for consumers, when I tweeted the news, much of the reaction I got - particularly from colleagues in the media - was negative. At first I didn’t understand all the hate for the idea, but the more I dug into what was actually announced, the more I agreed with it - to a point.įor one, it’s weird that this so-called bundle is only being offered for a few weeks. If you’re already a Showtime subscriber, that’s an amazing deal, since Showtime’s base rate for a digital subscription is $11 (though it’s been as low as $9 per month via recent promotions). On Tuesday, ViacomCBS announced what it called a “limited time” promotion in which consumers can get a subscription to both Paramount+ and Showtime for as little as $10 per month. This story first ran in Buffering, Vulture’s newsletter about the streaming industry.
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