In what's possibly the least surprising streaming news this week, Paramount Global is going ahead with its previously announced plans to shut down Showtime in favor of Paramount Plus, which features programs from the service.
If you're a Showtime subscriber, you should receive a notice that, from April 30, you'll no longer be able to access the service. That means the stand-alone Showtime apps will stop functioning. The notice is also on the customer help page of the Showtime website, and says "now that subscribers can access their favorite Showtime programs on Paramount Plus by subscribing to the Paramount Plus with Showtime plan, the Showtime streaming service will shut down on April 30, 2024."
The notice continues: "Current Showtime streaming subscribers will continue to have access to the Showtime streaming service until it is shut down on April 30, 2024. Beginning May 1, 2024, the only way to stream Showtime programming is with a subscription to the Paramount Plus with Showtime plan on Paramount Plus."
Why Showtime is shutting down
The shutdown was announced last year when Paramount re-branded the streamer to Paramount Plus With Showtime – sorry, Paramount Plus with Showtime – and hiked its monthly cost, and the shutdown is happening later than originally planned: the streaming app was expected to be shut down in late 2023.
As Variety explains, what's happening here is very similar to what Warner Bros. Discovery did with HBO Max. Rather than have multiple streaming services and brands, Warners combined HBO Now and HBO Go into a single service, Max. Paramount Plus with Showtime remains a separate tier for now, but over time it's likely that the Showtime branding will go.
The shuttering of Showtime leaves Paramount Plus with two tiers: Paramount Plus Essential, which is $5.99 per month, and Paramount Plus with Showtime which is $11.99 per month and includes all of the Essential content – TV, movies, CBS News, NFL and the UEFA Champions League – with added Showtime and March Madness. It's also ad-free where Essential is partly ad-supported, and allows program downloads where Essential doesn't.
