Update from the frontlines of the streaming wars: Paramount Plus finally claims Showtime

This epoch of the streaming wars seems to be all about who owns who, or which corporate buyout decimated swaths of staff, or which shows and movies are being removed and lost forever… oh wait, sorry, these are all just the HBO Max meltdown. Come to think of it, this epoch seems to be all about Warner Bros. Discovery.

Yet there are other players out there in this magnificent game of chess one might call post-Peak Television, and the who-owns-who is still relevant in today’s chapter. We’re talking about Showtime, which is owned by Paramount Media Networks, but has up until now been its own island separate from the Paramount+ streaming service.

Unmoored no longer, Showtime will now be offered as part of a bundle with the Paramount+ app, according to Variety. (There’s a discount, by the way, if you nab it now.) Used to be, you needed two different apps for this kind of thing. The future is really looking… pretty similar, actually, with ever so slight changes.

See entertainment’s major mega-conglomerates gobbling up their own properties and absorbing them into one expensive bundle, like Disney and National Geographic or Peacock and the Real Housewives. Remember when Paramount’s flagship streamer was called CBS All Access? Remember when there was a separate DC Universe streamer, which got absorbed by the new HBO streamer, which is now threatening to become Discovery+? Oh dear; we’ve circled back to the Warner drama again.

The days do inexorably pass, and the streaming wars drag on, and Netflix, the mothership, wanes further into irrelevance as its successors claw for the crown. At least now, you can watch Yellowjackets and Yellowstone in the same place. Just kidding: Yellowstone streams exclusively on Peacock, because much like the setting of Yellowstone, the streaming battlefield is the wild damn west. Don’t try to make sense of it all; just fork over the cash and enjoy your bundle in peace.