began a viral marketing campaign to promote its launch in December 2017. The campaign included a Times Square advertisement asking viewers to phone and email Paramount Network's chief marketing officer Niels Schuurmans to protest Spike's "firing", as well as a string of self-deprecating posts by the network's Twitter account about its history and programming (including that "My favorite number is 329 because it's the number of times Cops is on every night", "We had a show called The Joe Schmo Show. Apparently every decent show name was taken", and that "There's a reason all our early shows were CSI, UFC, TNA, MXC, UTI. No one around here knew how to read"). A network executive stated that the campaign was meant to represent a "public meltdown" by a fired employee. The campaign concluded with a live streaming event on January 17, 2018, where users could vote on various ways a crew would deface a large model of the former Spike logo, culminating in its demolition. Paramount Network officially launched the following night at 9:00 p.m. ET, marked by a live, Michael Jackson-themed Lip Sync Battle special from the Dolby Theatre. In May 2019, the Spike brand was relaunched in the U.S. as two streaming channels on Pluto TV, which was acquired by Viacom in March 2019. The relaunch consisted of a main Spike-branded channel and a second channel called "Spike Outdoors". Aborted rebrand as a movie network In early 2020, Paramount Network began to cut back on scripted series development, having dropped upcoming projects such as Emily in Paris (which was subsequently picked up by Netflix), and cancelling 68 Whiskey after a single season. On September 11, 2020, it was announced that Bellator would move to CBS Sports Network in October 2020. It would later move to Showtime in April 2021. On September 22, 2020, ViacomCBS president of Entertainment and Youth Brands Chris McCarthy told Variety in an exclusive that Paramount Network would relaunch as a movie channel "within the next year" (to be tentatively known as Paramount Movie Network). The relaunched network was to focus primarily on original made-for-TV films featuring major talent, with a plan to premiere 52 films per-year. The films would have been largely produced by Paramount Pictures and MTV Studios, with plans for co-productions with ViacomCBS International networks such as Argentina's Telefe, Australia's Network 10, and the United Kingdom's Channel 5. These changes would have mirrored