It also saw the pay-per-view service Viewer's Choice become part of the operation; it merged with rival PPV service Home Premiere Television in 1988, and Viacom ceded control to the cable companies that owned HPT (Viacom still held a stake until the 1990s).

The development of the system—inspired by the advisory ratings featured in Showtime and The Movie Channel's respective program guides and those distributed by other participating premium cable services—was in response to concerns from parents and advocacy groups about violent content on television, allowing the Showtime Networks and other services to assign individual ratings corresponding to the objectionable content depicted in specific programs (and categorized based on violence, profanity, sexuality or miscellaneous mature material).

[3] A revised system—centered around ten content codes of two to three letters in length—was implemented across the Showtime Networks and Home Box Office services on June 10, 1994.

It managed Sundance Channel as part of a joint venture with Robert Redford and NBC Universal until 2008, when it was sold to Rainbow Media (now AMC Networks).

CBS Corporation re-merged with Viacom to form ViacomCBS (now Paramount Global) in early December 2019.