{"id":628446,"date":"2026-03-03T05:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T05:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/628446\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T05:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T05:07:10","slug":"paramount-wbd-merger-brings-together-former-rivals-showtime-hbo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/628446\/","title":{"rendered":"Paramount-WBD Merger Brings Together Former Rivals Showtime & HBO"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSince the announcement Friday that Paramount<\/a> has entered a merger agreement to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery<\/a>, a lot has been written about the deal bringing together two major streaming platforms, HBO<\/a> Max and Paramount+ (They will eventually become one, Paramount CEO David Ellison said today<\/a>); two major film studios, Warner Bros. and Paramount; and two major TV studios, Warner Bros. Television and CBS Studios. The acquisition putting WBD<\/a>\u2018s HBO and Paramount\u2019s Showtime<\/a> under the same corporate roof has gotten little or no attention.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat is because, under the previous Paramount regime, Showtime over the past several years became a dramatically scaled down version of its former self. Illustrating how differently the fortunes of the two pay TV networks have been trending, as WBD restored the \u201cHBO\u201d in streamer\u2019s HBO Max\u2019s name last May, Paramount a month later dropped \u201cShowtime\u201d from the name<\/a> of its streamer\u2019s highest subscription tier, which was rebranded from Paramount+ With Showtime to Paramount Premium.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne person who noticed the HBO-Showtime subplot in the Paramount-WBD merger is Robert Greenblatt<\/a>, who has history at both networks. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI will just say that it warms my heart to have Showtime and HBO owned by the same company after all these years,\u201d he told Deadline. \u201cThere was a long run of them being good, healthy rivals, but at certain points the competition also became a little over the top.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Six Feet Under\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEverett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tGreenblatt was executive producing HBO\u2019s Alan Ball Emmy-nominated drama Six Feet Under when in 2003 he was recruited to become President of Entertainment for Showtime, a post he held for seven years before leaving to become NBC Entertainment chairman. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I first went to run Showtime in 2003, while I was still producing Six Feet Under at HBO, I was not held in the best regard by some of the people at HBO simply because of the competition,\u201d Greenblatt said. \u201cAnd then I built Showtime up over those subsequent years and gave HBO a little bit of run for its money \u2014 which was fun for all of us at Showtime as well as the whole industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLong before Heated Rivalry became one of the most popular titles on HBO Max, it was a fitting description for HBO and Showtime\u2019s dynamic in the premium original programming space which they owned until the arrival of Netflix. <\/p>\n

\n\tFor a decade, from the mid 2000s until the late 2010s under Greenblatt and his successor David Nevins, Showtime rose from humble beginnings to challenge HBO\u2019s dominance as the two networks went head-to-head at the Emmys, duking it out in the Outstanding Drama Series field with such hits as The Sopranos and Game of Thrones (HBO) and Showtime\u2019s Dexter and Homeland (HBO). <\/p>\n

\n\tThe two rivals\u2019 trajectories eventually diverged. Meanwhile, Greenblatt in March 2019 was recruited as chairman of WarnerMedia Entertainment, then owned by AT&T, and spent a year and a half overseeing the May 2020 launch of HBO Max \u2014 with HBO in the moniker.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHBO continued to flourish, however, and has always been the gold standard of any kind of television programming, and it was my supreme pleasure to finally be there in 2019 overseeing it as well and rightfully putting the HBO name out in front of the new streamer we were creating,\u201d Greenblatt continued. \u201cI\u2019ve felt all along that brand is second to none.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe value of the HBO brand was a major draw for buyers interested in WBD, with its future one of the first questions on everyone\u2019s mind once the Paramount acquisition was confirmed.<\/p>\n

\n\tEllison was quick to squash any speculation today by stating that \u201cHBO should stay HBO\u201d and praising Casey Bloys<\/a>, Chairman and CEO of HBO and HBO Max Content. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCasey and his team are doing an absolutely remarkable job at HBO and we do plan for that to be able to operate with independence, so that HBO can candidly do what it does incredibly well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tHBO\u2019s current roster of popular and acclaimed series includes GoT prequels House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, The White Lotus and The Last of Us as well as The Gilded Age.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Morgan<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tMorgan Spector and Carrie Coon in \u2018The Gilded Age\u2019 Season 3<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHBO Max<\/p>\n

\n\tGreenblatt has remained connected to HBO following his August 2020 ouster in a restructuring as an executive producer on Julian Fellowes\u2019 hit period drama, which he had developed at Showtime and NBC before greenlighting it at HBO.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for Showtime, its current scripted slate consists of the Dexter revival Resurrection, The Agency: Central Intelligence and the final seasons of The Chi and the Emmy-nominated Yellowjackets.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile their content is largely consumed on streaming, HBO and Showtime also remain linear networks with lucrative carriage deals that are delivered to millions of subscribers.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhich means that, along with HBO and Showtime originals co-existing side by side on the future combined streaming platform, their linear versions could be bundled together by Paramount for leverage in carriage negotiations with cable, satellite providers and other MVPDs. That would be a somewhat poetic ending to the brands\u2019 once bitter rivalry.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI love the irony that the once-competitive David and Goliath are now living under the same roof,\u201d Greenblatt said. \u201cEven though Showtime is not quite what it once was. Long may HBO live as the world continues to consolidate!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the announcement Friday that Paramount has entered a merger agreement to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, a lot…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":628447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[171,5560,15329,268161,12135,173,67,132,68,27281,66550],"class_list":["post-628446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-hbo","tag-paramount","tag-robert-greenblatt","tag-showtime","tag-tv","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-warner-bros-discovery","tag-wbd"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116163516557913739","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}