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Creator / Paramount+

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/paramountsvg.png
A Mountain of Entertainment.

Paramount+, formerly CBS All Access, is the main streaming service of Paramount Global.

It was launched in 2014 as the first over-the-top (OTT) offering by an American broadcast television network, initially offering on-demand episodes of CBS programming and live-streaming of local affiliates. In 2016, the service expanded to sporting events, as an agreement with the NFL now allowed the viewing of regional NFL games from Week 13 of the 2016 NFL season on, though previous agreements with Verizon meant that this couldn't be done on mobile devices until 2018. CBS All Access started offering original series beginning in 2017, with Star Trek: Discovery intended to be the premiere major franchise series on the service, however, production delays resulted in The Good Fight being the first original series to debut. In December 2019, following the re-merger between CBS and Viacom, children's programming from Nickelodeon joined the service.

Many months later, the announcement was made that CBS All Access would be relaunched as Paramount+, a more all-encompassing streaming platform similar to Disney+, HBO Max, and Peacock.note  The relaunch was set for March 4th 2021, and was teased with a humorous ad campaign, featuring various personalities and characters from Paramount Global (ViacomCBS at the time) IP embarking on an expedition up the "Paramount Mountain" itself (and the various weird juxtapositions that arise).

Like CBS All Access, Paramount+ is also available to buy within streaming hubs (such as Prime Video Channels, Apple TV Channels and The Roku Channel); this meant the service avoided the fights with smart-TV providers that caused prolonged carriage disruptions for HBO Max and Peacock at launch. Paramount+ features select content from Nickelodeon (which continues to operate the preschool-targeting Noggin), BET (which also has their own standalone service in BET+), and other sibling networks, while offering a wide-library of CBS' in-house television library and current-run shows from CBS.

In February 2021, it was announced that some of Paramount's most anticipated upcoming films, including A Quiet Place Part II, Scream, Jackass Forever and Mission: Impossible 7, will be released on Paramount+ as early as 45 days after their theatrical releases while the rest of their films would be on the service as early as 90 days after their theatrical debuts thanks to a new deal with Epix that would run through 2024. Paramount+ later announced it would release a new movie every week of summer 2021; however, only two of the features, Infinite and PAW Patrol: The Movie (the latter released simultaneously in cinemas), were actually new rather than simply "new to Paramount+".

In 2022, it was announced that Paramount+ would be expanded to include all of Showtime midway through the year, though Showtime continued to be available as a separate service until late 2023. During that latter year (and 2024), Paramount+ began purging many of its content and most of its titles that were removed are currently being shopped to other broadcasters, similar to decisions made at Disney+ and Max to cut costs.

Paramount+ is currently available only in select markets worldwide. Outside of the US, it is available in Canada, Latin American countries, the UK and Ireland, the Nordics, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, France, Italy, parts of Eastern Europe and Australia (where it was called 10 All Access; it was rebranded to Paramount+ later). Certain territories such as the Caribbean, Belgium, the Arab world, Japan and South Korea offer Paramount+ content on local services (as part of exclusive agreements with Paramount) instead of launching it separately. The international versions focus more on the Viacom content rather than the CBS content in the US and Canada. In 2021, Paramount+ will expand into European countries; furthermore, a joint venture between ViacomCBS and Comcast NBCUniversal will be launched, featuring content from both companies (including programming made for both P+ and NBCU's Peacock), known as Sky Showtime. SkyShowtime launched on September 20, 2022 in the Nordics and later in Portugal and the Netherlands on October 25 of that year. By 2023, the service expanded to Central Europe, the Balkans, and Spain & Andorra.

While the service doesn't stream Comedy Central's South Park, due to Viacom selling the U.S. streaming rights to Max (previously known as HBO Max), the international versions of Paramount+ may have it, and the service will distribute a whopping 14 original South Park films between 2021 and 2027. Starting in 2024, the service will become the exclusive home for all South Park content internationally. As for the United States rights, they will move over from Max in 2025 as the previous licensing contract expires. However, a lawsuit between Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount would impact this.

Paramount+ original programs with TV Tropes pages:

Programs marked with a * have been removed from the service.

    Films — Animated 

    Films — Live Action 

    Live-Action TV 

    Western Animation 

Tropes associated with Paramount+:

  • Bad Export for You: The Canadian version of the service previously featured limited content from CBS. CBS content that is licensed to other broadcasters such as CTV (for Star Trek content) as well as Viacom content currently licensed to Corus Entertainment/Nelvana (for Nickelodeon programs) and other partners are excluded from the Canadian lineup. However in 2022, Paramount started adding content from the Paramount networks in that region after their program deals expired and in 2023, Paramount began adding Star Trek content to the Canadian version of the service after CTV's streaming deal was up.
    • A separate account is also needed for Paramount+ in Canada and other countries. However, you can’t use your account from the US. This may be due to the US version using the same infrastructure as CBS All-Access and the EyeQ system used for both Paramount+ and PlutoTV for advertising in both services. (which is due to the high price for Paramount+ and PlutoTV being ad-supported) The only way you could get an ad-free experience for Nickelodeon shows (at this moment) is Noggin for their preschool content and purchasing the shows digitally.
  • Banned Episode:
    • The SpongeBob SquarePants section is missing the episode "Mid-Life Crustacean" (which is about Mr. Krabs undergoing a mid life crisis), as Nickelodeon has deemed the content to be no longer be appropriate for the targeted children demographic, due to the episode's infamous "panty raid" scene, which is revealed to have taken place at Mama Krabs's house. This also caused the episode to get removed from digital retailers. Originally, its sister segment "The Great Snail Race" was on Paramount+ by itself, before it was eventually paired up with season 7's "Gary in Love". However, the episode is still available on DVD (through The Complete 3rd Season and The First 100 Episodes), and is retained on the international versions of the service as of August 2021, as the service is handled by Paramount's international networks unit there, rather than CBS.
    • Internationally, the South Park episodes "200", "201", "Super Best Friends" and both parts of "Cartoon Wars" are excluded from the South Park section outside of the US. (If you’re in Europe and Australia)
    • Averted for The Loud House's "The Price of Admission/One Flu Over the Loud House", which was pulled from airing reruns on Nickelodeon in March 2020, due to the latter segment (which is about all the Loud family suffering from the common cold) being seen as in poor taste because of the COVID-19 Pandemic, as it's included in the show's Paramount+ section.
    • The iCarly episode "iLost My Mind" was pulled from the U.S. version of the service in October 2021 due to its plot being too eerily similar to the controversial "Free Britney" movement, which also caused the episode to get banned from airing future reruns on TeenNick and removed from digital retailers. However, the episode is still available to stream on the international versions of Paramount+ and to purchase via The Complete 4th Season DVD set. Strangely, though, "iFix a Pop Star", which featured a direct parody of Britney Spears, is still available to stream on the service...at least for now.
  • Channel Hop: A number of original shows have migrated from ViacomCBS' linear channels (both before and after their premiere), including CBS, Nickelodeon and Showtime. Meanwhile, a series adaptation of The Man Who Fell to Earth initially planned for Paramount+ was later shifted to Showtime. Outside of ViacomCBS networks, Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies was initially developed at HBO Max before moving to Paramount+ due to the service having a major pre-launch marketing push thanks to CBS.
  • Digital Destruction: Just like HBO Max and Disney+, Paramount+ has all programs lacking proper high-definition masters or remasters upscaled to HD. However, live-action shows shot on videotape (such as Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Kenan & Kel) now have a film-like appearance due to de-interlacing, and most animated shows have visible rainbow flickering on outlines due to the service upscaling their TV masters, rather than the original prints.
    • Season 1 of Drake & Josh suffers the worst from the de-interlacing, due to that season being shot on videotape and with Filmwork, resulting in a blurry, barely-watchable presentation of those early episodes. Thankfully, the later seasons, which didn't have the Filmwork effect applied to them, look just fine on Paramount+, though they aren't in their widescreen production aspect ratio.
    • The first few seasons of Blue's Clues didn't exactly follow safe area standards. Rather, episodes were rendered with a lot of overscan that would otherwise be cropped off by most CRT televisions of the era. No attempt was made to fix this when the show became available on the service, so a lot of editing mistakes are very noticeable. Thankfully, the later seasons got better at this, and mistakes there are very few.
  • Missing Episode: A number of episodes of The Ren & Stimpy Show are missing from the service. In particular, any episode that featured the music of Raymond Scott is affected, due to Nickelodeon losing the license to use his work (this also caused most of those episodes to be absent from the show's rotation on NickRewind).
    • The majority of KaBlam is available to stream, but eleven episodes are missing. Most likely due to legal reasons, as the two episodes that featured Angela Anaconda are missing.
    • Though the service does have some episodes that were missing from Hulu, there are still a few episodes from the first two seasons of Drake & Josh that are absent from the service (most notably the show's very first episode), presumably due to licensing issues.
    • ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks is missing six segments from season 2 ("Summer Camp", "Blabber Mouth", "Wacky Wednesday", "The Chipmunk and the Catfish", "Time Flies", and "Prank Calls") as well as all of season 3.
  • Massive Multiplayer Crossover: The promos for the service feature characters from various shows (both live-action and animated alike) dealing with the mountain and its many hazards.
  • Network to the Rescue:
    • After 13 years of not airing anywhere, every single episode of Nick Arcade was posted to Paramount+, meaning viewers could now see episodes that hadn't seen the light of day since 1997.
    • Eureeka's Castle was added to the service in April 2021, the first time any episode of the show has been legally seen since 2000.
    • The ENTIRE pilot episode of ChalkZone was available legally on this service after the series was officially cancelled in 2008 but it was later removed from the episode list in the show's section on Paramount+.
    • This also applies to various seldom seen, or short-lived Nickelodeon cartoons and sitcoms that were stuck in Keep Circulating the Tapes purgatory. Even KaBlam!, House of Anubis, Ride, The Other Kingdom and Hunter Street, just to name a few.
    • Every episode of As Told by Ginger is here, including the U.S. premiere of "Battle of the Bands" and the broadcast premiere of the finale movie "The Wedding Frame", as well as several episodes regularly skipped over on the series' US cable rerun package.
    • Almost every episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) was added to the service after the various DVD sets released pre-Viacom acquisition had gone out-of-print, and digital releases by Nick only covered half of the series. One episode, "Mayhem from Mutant Island" (a special consisting of flash-animated shorts) is not on the service, however.
    • As of June 2022, the service is slowly remastering and uploading the entire original run of Beavis and Butt-Head, not only including episodes Mike Judge had personally considered Old Shame and denied DVD release, but the music videos as well.
  • No Export for You: So far all that has been mentioned are US and European launch dates (as well as Australia), but nothing about launching in Asia, the ex-Soviet countries, and Africa. Puerto Rico does not have Paramount+, either.
  • Screwed by the Lawyers:
    • Co-productions with Nelvana are absent from the Canadian version of the service, due to them having the exclusive broadcast rights to those programs in their native Canada. This affects the early seasons of The Fairly OddParents!, as Nelvana distributed those seasons outside of the United States.
    • Nickelodeon co-productions with Netflix (such as The Loud House Movie and Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus) also are nowhere to be found on the service.
    • The Comedy Central content that is licensed to HBO Max in the US (such as the above mentioned South Park) also aren't present; however, the international and Canadian versions of the service has all of the episodes in the section.
    • Since the distribution rights to The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on The Run vary by region (in international countries, they're with Netflix), it goes missing in the International version of the service.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • ViacomCBS intended to shift Clarice from CBS to Paramount+ for its second season; however, a breakdown in negotiations with Clarice producer MGM Television prevented the move.

 
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"It's a Literal Cliffhanger!"

The Paramount characters are literally hanging on a cliff.

Example of:
Cliffhanger

Alternative Title(s): CBS All Access

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"It's a Literal Cliffhanger!"

The Paramount characters are literally hanging on a cliff.

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5 (11 votes)

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