Showtime

Showtime is a US "premium" channel that shows a mixture of movies, original series, and sports programming, much of it uncut and without commercials. It is most similar to HBO and is considered that channel's rival as far as programming goes. It was owned by Viacom from its inception – although at points other firms have taken a minority ownership in the service (TelePrompTer, Westinghouse, Warner-Amex), Viacom always owned at least a piece of the service. In 2005, when Viacom split into two companies, Showtime became part of CBS Corporation.

So Excited

Showtime began using "Excitement" as its slogan in 1984. By 1985, it had become deeply entrenched in all aspects of its presentation style – rarely was the word "Showtime" seen without the word "Excitement". Dark blues, purples, and reds were the general color scheme, providing an interesting contrast to the brighter colors used on other US networks at the time. Showtime adapted "I'm So Excited" by the Pointer Sisters as its theme music. And again, this was used extensively. "Next" and "Tonight" stings, movie opens, and special opens all used variations of this theme.

1990s

Pittard Sullivan dramatically redesigned Showtime in the early 1990s. At this point, the "circle/TV screen" logo was dropped from use after having been marginalized over the years; the bold "SHOWTIME" logo remained in use, however. Junctions from this time used a new "L-Bar" that not only told viewers what was next, but how many minutes remained until the next show. Showtime's look was more "upscale" than HBO during this time period; the movie opens in particular were visually dense, with layers and layers of images stacked on top of each other to create a distinctive look.

No Limits

The Pittard Sullivan look was dropped in 1995. The new look was simpler, using tasteful typography and light effects in the background. The large L-Bar was gone, replaced by a countdown clock in the top-right of the screen. 1997 brought a somewhat more dramatic relaunch, with a brand new logo – the channel's first one since the early 1980s. The bold red logo uses a spotlight around the first three letters, "SHO" – not coincidentally the channel's abbreviation in TV listings. Accordingly, presentation frequently just uses the abbreviated logo.