NEW YORK – ViacomCBS on Thursday launched its re-named streamer, Paramount+, retiring the CBS All Access brand.
However, while all kinds of new originals and other older fare premiere today in the U.S. and other territories, Paramount+ in Canada has a very limited library by comparison, since the rights to so many ViacomCBS titles are owned by Canadian broadcasters and others.
Paramount+ features “more than 30,000 episodes and countless films from ViacomCBS’ family of world-renowned brands and production studios, including BET, CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures and the Smithsonian Channel,” reads the release.
Cartt.ca has made several attempts to contact ViacomCBS over the past two weeks in advance of the launch in order to ask what the plans are to increase the catalogue of content in Canada to make it a more compelling to viewers here and how it might grow in Canada, but we’ve so far been ignored. Not even a “no comment”.
Many of the originals on Paramount+ cited in the release can not be found on the Canadian service, because others own the rights. Those include Star Trek: Lower Decks, Coyote, anything Spongebob related and more. This continues what the streamer was as CBS All Access, a very much stripped-down version of the content available in the U.S.
In the U.S. and other regions, Paramount+ is also offering every UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League match, culminating with the UEFA Champions League Final – all of which can be found on DAZN in Canada.
“A rich library of nearly 7,000 beloved kid’s episodes, including favorites from Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. like SpongeBob SquarePants, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, PAW Patrol, Dora the Explorer, Blue’s Clues, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Henry Danger and Rugrats: All Grown Up; as well as Paramount+ originals, such as WildBrain’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Boat Rocker’s new Danger Mouse and new editions of Lassie, George of the Jungle and Mr. Magoo from DreamWorks Animation’s Classic Media,” reads the announcement release.
None of the titles in that paragraph are available on Paramount+ in Canada.
Canadian viewers will be able to find recent shows such as The Amazing Race, NCIS, Why Women Kill and Hawaii Five-0 and older fare such as Happy Days, Beverly Hills 90210, and The Love Boat. None of those are exclusive to Paramount+ in Canada, however.
The release also says the complete Star Trek Universe, “including CBS All Access originals such as Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Lower Decks, plus all six classic Star Trek series including Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek Voyager,” are on Paramount+. Bell Media owns those titles in Canada. Netflix also has the rights to the older series’ here, too.
Paramount+ has two pricing tiers available to U.S. subscribers, a premium tier at US$9.99/month with no commercials and in June it will introduce a new ad-supported tier, at US$4.99.
Paramount+ retails in Canada for C$5.99/month.
