CBS All Access will be rebranded as Paramount+ on March 4, parent company ViacomCBS revealed Tuesday. But exactly what the relaunch will mean for the Canadian market remains unclear.

Outside of Canada, the service will be relaunched with new branding and an expanded content offering in March. For Canadian audiences, the visual aspect of the rebrand will come into effect then, but the expanded content offering won’t arrive until “later in the year,” noted a press release.

While CBS All Access was an early mover in the streaming space (the platform went live in the U.S. in 2014 and expanded to Canada in 2018), the relaunch represents its formal entry into the streaming wars, which has entered a new phase over the last 18 months as legacy media companies such as Disney (Disney+), WarnerMedia (HBO Max) and NBCUniversal (Peacock) launch streaming offerings to take on Netflix.

Exactly what the relaunch of Paramount+ will mean for the Canadian market – where Canadian broadcasters licence a raft of shows owned by ViacomCBS, which formed in December 2019 following the merger of Viacom and CBS Corp. – will likely take some time to become apparent.

When CBS All Access launched in Canada in 2018, series such as NCIS and Seal Team aired on Global one week ahead of streaming on the streaming service. However, in the time since, media companies have started commissioning original content specifically for their streaming offerings, leading Bell Media and Corus Entertainment to ink exclusive deals to exclusively licence HBO Max and Peacock programming, respectively.

The U.S. media company has set Feb. 24 for an investor presentation in which it will further outline its direct-to-consumer strategy.