ViacomCBS is ready to relaunch its CBS All Access service as Paramount Plus on March 4, with a special event to introduce the new streamer on February 24, the company announced today.
The service will also launch in Latin America on March 4, followed by Nordic countries on March 25 and in Australia in mid-2021. The version of CBS All Access that is currently available in Canada will be renamed to Paramount Plus on March 4 , with an expanded offer being made available to subscribers at the end of the year. To better present Paramount Plus and give a more comprehensive view of ViacomCBS’s overall streaming portfolio (which includes Pluto TV and Showtime’s OTT service), the company will hold a two-hour event on February 24th after the results call. from the company.
ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish previously announced in September that CBS All Access would change the brand to Paramount Plus, and noted in a later interview that executives decided on the name because Paramount had more brand recognition than CBS. Paramount certainly has more name recognition internationally where the label was used on more products (Paramount Plus already existed in some areas of Europe), but Paramount in 2021 is not exactly Disney or Warner Bros. The Verge noted earlier:
It would be one thing if Paramount’s name led hordes of people to sign up, because Paramount is synonymous with major franchises in 2020. Franchises like Marvel, Pixar and Lucasfilm are synonymous with Disney (along with the animated and live-action films from Disney) to make Disney Plus work. How many people are walking around saying, “Ah, right, the studio that I closely associate with Mission Impossible, Transformers, and Sonic the Hedgehog movies.”
Still, ViacomCBS will try hard to sell Paramount Plus as a mandatory service for people. Or, more precisely, ViacomCBS expects Paramount Plus to divert attention a little from Disney Plus, Netflix, Peacock, HBO Max, Apple TV Plus, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and anywhere else people are streaming.
To do this, ViacomCBS is presenting a series of new originals for Paramount Plus. These include The ofert, a 10-episode miniseries about Francis Ford Coppola’s production The Godfather, a new iteration of MTV Behind the music, and a revival of The game. In addition, more than 30,000 additional episodes and films from the various ViacomCBS content houses (BET, Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central) are going to the streaming service. This could only be done because of the merger between CBS and Viacom in 2019.