Yet another streaming service is on the way to Australia, and it might see the Star Trek series booted from Netflix and Amazon.
Australians with a love for anything Paramount and Viacom has produced over the past couple of years might have yet another streaming service to subscribe to by the middle of the year, as ViacomCBS confirms that not only will its America-only CBS All Access service be getting a new name in March, but that it will also be launching in Australia in the middle of 2021.
It’ll now be called Paramount+, and Australia looks set to get it “mid-2021” according to the company, though there’s no word quite on what shows the Australian version will have in comparison to the US counterpart, because locally, some of the shows it has run on separate streaming services.
For instance, if you’re a Star Trek fan, “Star Trek: Discovery” will be a Paramount+ show in America (because it’s a CBS All Access show now), as will “Star Trek: Picard”. Locally, though, those two shows exist on different platforms, with Discovery on Netflix and Picard on Amazon Prime Video.
A few other CBS shows are available on one of Australia’s local streaming services, with “The Good Fight”, “Strange Angel”, “Tell Me a Story”, “Interrogation”, and Jordan Peele’s reboot of “The Twilight Zone” all on Ten’s paid service, Ten All Access.
Currently, CBS All Access and soon to be Paramount+ hosts an assortment of shows also not found in Australia — such as “Star Trek: Lower Decks” — as well as classics on other streaming services locally, such as “Frasier” which is on Stan and Amazon Prime Video, and the original “Star Trek” series which are on Netflix.
Right now, it’s not yet known what the arrival of Paramount+ in Australia will do to these shows across the streaming network divide, though if it’s anything like what happened to Stan’s library of Disney titles just before Disney+ arrived, the good money is on them disappearing from their current places before only appearing at Paramount+.
We’re checking with the streaming networks to get a gauge on what is happening next, and we’ll let you know.
