Following through on a plan outlined in February by ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish, the company has launched a co-branded channel to pool content from Showtime and BET.
SHOxBET is a multiplex channel with a mix of series, feature films and documentaries. Its programming is designed to take advantage of its appeal to Black viewers for a number of Showtime series, which matches the longtime mission of BET. The two networks joined the same corporate family last December with the close of the ViacomCBS merger.
Starting Wednesday, the new channel takes the place of Showcase in the Showtime portfolio. (Genre-oriented Sho Beyond is also being phased out as a result of the co-branding effort.) Multiplexing began about two decades ago as a way to take advantage of improved pay-tv bandwidth to offer multiple channels of the same premium service.
SHOxBET will have replays of Showtime originals on the same night as...
SHOxBET is a multiplex channel with a mix of series, feature films and documentaries. Its programming is designed to take advantage of its appeal to Black viewers for a number of Showtime series, which matches the longtime mission of BET. The two networks joined the same corporate family last December with the close of the ViacomCBS merger.
Starting Wednesday, the new channel takes the place of Showcase in the Showtime portfolio. (Genre-oriented Sho Beyond is also being phased out as a result of the co-branding effort.) Multiplexing began about two decades ago as a way to take advantage of improved pay-tv bandwidth to offer multiple channels of the same premium service.
SHOxBET will have replays of Showtime originals on the same night as...
- 7/15/2020
- by Dade Hayes
- Deadline Film + TV
In January, not long after the merger of Viacom and CBS closed, CBS chief creative officer and Showtime Networks chief exec David Nevins asked BET Networks president Scott Mills to share some of the pipeline projects that Mills was most excited about.
One of those series was Lena Waithe’s “Twenties,” which at that point hadn’t yet premiered on BET, the cabler that joined the combined company from the Viacom side. With Waithe’s “The Chi” already popular on Showtime, Nevins asked Mills for a programming window on Showtime for “Twenties.” In turn, Mills asked Nevins for a BET window for “The Chi.”
Showtime and BET’s shared popularity with African American viewers, said Mills, is the reason BET was incorporated into the Showtime premium networks group after the merger. And the “logical progression” of that common audience between Viacom and CBS’ respective cablers is SHOxBET, the Showtime plex channel that launched Wednesday,...
One of those series was Lena Waithe’s “Twenties,” which at that point hadn’t yet premiered on BET, the cabler that joined the combined company from the Viacom side. With Waithe’s “The Chi” already popular on Showtime, Nevins asked Mills for a programming window on Showtime for “Twenties.” In turn, Mills asked Nevins for a BET window for “The Chi.”
Showtime and BET’s shared popularity with African American viewers, said Mills, is the reason BET was incorporated into the Showtime premium networks group after the merger. And the “logical progression” of that common audience between Viacom and CBS’ respective cablers is SHOxBET, the Showtime plex channel that launched Wednesday,...
- 7/15/2020
- by Elaine Low
- Variety Film + TV
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