Showtime And Paramount+ To Merge
An article went up on THR two weeks ago about how Hollywood studios are kind of in a bind right now because they bet everything and the kitchen sink on streaming and, though it DOES still appear to be the future, it DOESN’T seem to be as profitable as the old, ad-supported, charge-a-million-bucks-for-cable system was. Interviewed experts differed in their opinions as to what should be done next, but the word “consolidation” was thrown around a lot, a word that tends to make my toes curl (and not in a good way). If we’re talking about the kind of consolidation where studios merge their streaming channels independently and each own a third of the product, like what Hulu used to be, that’s fine. That’s better for everyone. But if we’re talking about a future where we have just two Hollywood movie studios to choose from because streaming was used as an excuse to merge everything, that’s obviously bad. The announcement we’re talking about today, thankfully, is NOT the latter. Paramount