Viacom

Viacom was an American mass media company owned by National Amusements. It operated the Paramount Parks chain from its purchase of Paramount Communications in 1994 to 2006, when they sold it to Cedar Fair. Its other assets included Nickelodeon, Blockbuster Video, Comedy Central, MTV, and Paramount. The company merged with CBS in 2019 and the new holding company was called ViacomCBS, eventually becoming Paramount.
== History ==
Viacom was founded in 1952 as CBS Films, a division of CBS. The company would also provide cable. In 1971, after the company was forced to spin-off CBS Films (which had changed its name to CBS Enterprises), the new company changed its name to Viacom. In 1976, it would venture into the cable industry after launching Showtime.
After Showtime proved to be a success, Viacom would create and buy more cable networks. The first of these acquisitions was in 1984. That year, Viacom purchased MTV Networks from Warner Bros. The division contained Nickelodeon, MTV, and Movie Channel. In 1985, Viacom expanded the division by creating VH1 and Nick@Nite. They also added Showtime to MTV Networks. In 1990, they launched Ha! TV Comedy Network, which merged with The Comedy Channel a year later to form Comedy Central.Central.
In the early 1980s, the movie theater company National Amusements wanted to diversify, so they received outside investment. The way they chose to diversify was expanding into mass media. So, in 1986, they announced their intention to buy Viacom. The deal had finished by 1987. Their networks were still successful, so Viacom decided to buy movie companies to grow their presence. In 1994, they bought both Paramount Communications, Inc. and Blockbuster Entertainment. Paramount were the owners of Paramount Parks. In 1998, MTV partnered with Sesame Workshop to found Noggin, a Nick Jr. sister channel.
In 1999, they bought CBS, which owned The National Network. A year later, they bought BET, Inc. They also changed TNN to Spike. They bought Neopets in 2005, spun off CBS that same year, sold Paramount Parks to Cedar Fair, and sued YouTube for copyright. They sold Neopets in 2014, after merging MTV Networks and BET, Inc. to form Viacom Networks. In 2018, Nickelodeon bought the makers of Garfield, and Spike became Paramount Network. Viacom also bought Pluto TV. They merged with CBS in 2019, forming ViacomCBS. In 2021, CBS All Access was changed to Paramount Plus. In 2022, ViacomCBS changed their name to Paramount.