Three California towns, a concert special and a satellite uplink.

Showtime started small and on the West Coast. English Wikipedia says the channel launched on 1 July 1976 on Times-Mirror Cable systems in Escondido, Long Beach and Palos Verdes, California, taking over the customers of an earlier pay service called Channel One. Exactly a week later it went out on Viacom Cablevision’s system in Dublin, California. The channel was originally owned by Viacom. The same article says the opening programme was Celebration, a concert special with performances by Rod Stewart, Pink Floyd and ABBA.

Distribution went national two years later. English Wikipedia says that on 7 March 1978 Showtime was uplinked to a communications satellite and became a nationally distributed service, putting it in direct competition with Time Inc.’s HBO and other pay-cable networks. In 1979, the article says, Viacom sold half of Showtime to the TelePrompTer Corporation, and on 4 July 1981 the channel moved to a 24-hour schedule.

A sister service joined in the early 1980s. English Wikipedia describes a long series of negotiations in 1982 and 1983 over a combination of Showtime with The Movie Channel, a rival pay film service, which ended with the two channels run together by a joint venture of Viacom and Warner-Amex. In August 1985, the article says, Viacom bought out its partners’ interest and once again became the sole owner of Showtime, together with The Movie Channel. Both brands have stayed in the same company since, and a third film service, Flix, sits beside them.

The 1990s brought extra channels under the same name. English Wikipedia says Showtime began testing a second service, Showtime 2, on 1 October 1991, followed by Showtime 3 in 1996, which became Showtime Showcase on 1 July 2001. Showtime Extreme launched on 10 March 1998, and Showtime Family Zone, Showtime Next and Showtime Women followed in March 2001. Each of these carried the Showtime name with a second word or number beside it, so the master brand appeared across a whole row of listings. The article also records a high-definition simulcast in 2001 and an on-demand service launched in July 2002.

A spotlight logo in 1997 and a series of corporate parents.

A clear change to the look came in 1997. English Wikipedia describes it as a major rebrand, replacing a logo that had been in use since 1981. The new logo emphasised the letters “SHO” inside a circle, meant to suggest a spotlight, and played on the short form of the name used in listings guides such as TV Guide. A new slogan, “No Limits”, came with it, together with a bold red-and-black colour scheme and promotions and bumpers built on surreal imagery. The article credits the campaign to a newly formed in-house marketing and advertising agency, Red Group. The infobox gives 1997 as the start date of the logo still in use.

The earlier mark had a second life. English Wikipedia says the logo used from 1981 to 1997 was also carried by Showtime Australia until 2009, and that it was brought back for the marketing of the 2019 series Black Monday, a drama set in the 1980s. For a few years in the 1980s, the article says, a three-dimensional circle containing a television screen appeared alongside that logo.

Ownership followed the changes at Viacom. English Wikipedia says that when Viacom split into two companies, completed on 31 December 2005, the original Viacom was restructured as CBS Corporation and kept Showtime Networks, along with the CBS television network. During those years the logo was shown with a CBS byline. In 2019, the article says, CBS and Viacom agreed to merge again into a new company, ViacomCBS, which was later renamed Paramount Global.

The streaming era brought a change to the name itself. Variety reported on 30 January 2023 that Showtime would be integrated into Paramount+ across both linear and streaming platforms, and that the US pay-TV channel and the premium tier of Paramount+ would both be renamed “Paramount+ With Showtime”. The report quoted a memo from Paramount’s chief executive, Bob Bakish, and said Chris McCarthy would continue to lead the Showtime studio and oversee the linear channel, working with Tom Ryan on the streaming business. Deadline reported in December 2023 that the linear network would officially take the new name on 8 January 2024, with a launch campaign running on Showtime’s own channels and a second season of Halo timed to the date.

Three letters in a spotlight, red on black.

A broadcaster’s mark has to work on a screen for a few seconds at a time, and it is often redrawn while its core stays put. German Wikipedia says the German shared channel Das Erste took a “1” as its logo with a new corporate design on 1 October 1984, gave it a ring in 2003, and from 28 February 2015 cut it out of a white circle. Horizont reported on 27 November 2008 that a revised on-air design for the channel kept its logo, colours and typography and changed the animated backgrounds around them, with new identity spots showing people in different landscapes and regions.

The initials can also hold steady while the words behind them change. The Irish Times reported on 20 July 2009 that RTÉ’s full name was respelled Raidió Teilifís Éireann, and quoted an RTÉ spokeswoman saying that all on-air logos read simply RTÉ. Idents can change with a channel’s name: Promax Daily Brief reported on 19 September 2014 that RTÉ Two returned to the name RTÉ2 with idents built from footage of young people in Ireland. When reading a broadcaster’s identity, look at which mark has stayed fixed, how long it has lasted, and what the idents and backgrounds around it have been asked to do.

A name kept inside a longer name.

The spotlight still points at the same three letters. Since 1997 the Showtime mark has put “SHO” inside a circle, and the red-and-black scheme of that year set the channel’s colours for the decades that followed. The short form came from the listings pages, where the name was abbreviated, and the logo turned that abbreviation into the picture. For a channel sold as a premium extra on a cable bill, the theatre metaphor of a spotlight on a stage fitted the name.

The name has not gone away. English Wikipedia says the primary channel was renamed Paramount+ with Showtime on 8 January 2024, but that the Showtime name remains in use as a standalone brand for the multiplex channels and for marketing the network’s original programmes. The standalone Showtime app ended on 30 April 2024, according to the same article. On 23 June 2025, the article says, the premium tier of the streaming service was renamed Paramount+ Premium, while the linear network kept the name Paramount+ with Showtime.

That leaves the brand working at two levels. On a programme guide, the main channel carries the parent’s name with Showtime attached; on the multiplex, channels such as Showtime 2, Showtime Showcase and Showtime Extreme still lead with the original word; and in marketing for its series the Showtime name appears as a label of origin. The company headquarters is listed by English Wikipedia at Paramount Plaza on Broadway in New York.

For a design guide, Showtime shows how a channel can survive a change of corporate parent, a satellite launch and a merger of its own name into a streaming service while keeping one symbol, three letters in a spotlight, in the same colours. Compare HBO, the pay-cable rival it competed with from 1978, and CBS, its corporate sibling from 2005. For this guide we use spotlight red, velvet maroon and blackout with a condensed sans-serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Showtime’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.