Paramount Plus Programming Chiefs on Showtime’s Standalone Future, More ‘South Park’ and ‘1883’

variety.com:

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterParamount Plus and Showtime are two separate subscription services owned by the same company in a market that is already overcrowded with streaming and pay-TV competition.

But that’s the way it’s going to stay for the two ViacomCBS brands — for now at least — as Paramount Plus president of original scripted series Nicole Clemens says the young streamer continues to carve out its identity as the home of “big blockbuster originals” versus Showtime’s slightly “more coastal” audience.“I think they’re complementary and I think there’s going to be some overlap in a Venn diagram,” Clemens told Variety Tuesday, following Paramount Plus’ day of presentations at the virtual Television Critics Association winter press tour. “But when you think about Paramount Plus you think of broad, you think of global, the entire country, tentpole, maybe more popcorn; whereas Showtime might play a little more coastal.

Not that they’re playing to the exclusion of the rest of the country, but they might be slightly more boundary-pushing.” However, Clemens says Paramount Plus’ Jeremy Renner drama “Mayor of Kingstown” is about as boundary-pushing as it gets, pointing to that as the overlap between what defines a Paramount Plus show and Showtime series.“But if you think of ‘Grease,’ ‘Fatal Attraction,’ ‘Happy Face,’ ‘The Good Fight,’ you’ve got the ‘Star Trek’ universe and ‘Halo.’ ‘Halo’ is a great example.

You take a show like ‘Halo’ that that was actually being developed for Showtime, and I think it actually performs and belongs better on Paramount Plus because you’ve got the built-in fan base from ‘Trek,’ the sci-fi fans, but you also have a giant swing and a huge event series,” Clemens said. “And I think that’s.