ViacomCBS announces new streaming service Paramount+ to launch on March 4
Paramount+ is coming on March 4, 2021
JANUARY 19, 2021 - We finally have a date for the long-awaited launch of ViacomCBS’s new streaming service, Paramount+: March 4th, 2021.
ViacomCBS announced today that Paramount+ will debut in the United States and Latin America on March 4th, with Nordic countries to follow on March 25th, and Australia in “mid-2021”. They also announced that in Canada, CBS All Access will be rebranded to Paramount+ on March 4, 2021, with an expanded offering later in the year.
While it isn’t immediately clear from the press release whether Paramount+ will be its own service or a CBS All Access upgrade, a ViacomCBS representative confirmed to Daily Star Trek News via email that CBS All Access will be rebranded to Paramount+. That plays well with what former Chief Digital Officer Marc DeBevoise said in August of 2020, namely that “if you’re a subscriber, the [CBS All Access] app will turn into the new app.” However, with DeBevoise’s departure last October, his other assertion at the time - that the price would stay the same - is uncertain. The same ViacomCBS representative told us, “we don’t have pricing information to provide yet.”
The launch of Paramount+ comes amid an aggressive strategy by ViacomCBS to expand their global streaming offering. In November’s 2020 Q3 earnings call, ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish cited streaming services as a driver of “strong user growth”, and in December, the company announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services to provide infrastructure for their global content delivery.
And while CBS All Access (soon to be Paramount+) has been steadily increasing its content offering over the past year, Star Trek fans can be assured that the long-running flagship franchise is still seen as a key property: in the Q3 call, Bakish described Trek as “proof-of-concept for CBS All Access” and that it “works well” for them.
Update 19 Jan 2021: A previous version of this article expressed uncertainty over whether CBS All Access in the U.S. would be rebranded, which has now been clarified.
