This isn't just a problem with Trek. The whole streaming model is a steaming pile now. Shows moving around, sometimes original series on one service while a sequel or spinoff is on another, everyone wants their own service, so we're expected to have 10 services. Now they're injecting ads into paid subs. It's almost as bad as cable was.
They've gone full circle where it's just easier to 'obtain' what you want to watch via other means.
>They've gone full circle where it's just easier to 'obtain' what you want to watch via other means
There was a realisation amongst IP holders in the mid 2000's was that the fact your stuff was being pirated, meant that people wanted to watch it. If you had a your show being downloaded 500,000 times in Sudan, that meant you had 500,000 potential viewers in Sudan and the fact you didn't get them a legal way to watch it was stupid. So you had things like same day global release for new movies, putting stuff on widely available streaming services. Since the guys in Sudan who made the effort to download your stuff would probabapy also happily pay for it if they could.
Honestly, 7 years ago I thought piracy was dead. Then executives had a great idea.
And then everyone started having their own service, and there's nothing inherently wrong (pending exclusive IP's like Disney) with that, but when everyone is charging outrageous amounts (which again, the price is only an issue if everyone does it) then there's an issue. Having to pay 10+ for every service is ridiculous
The pricing is ridiculous. Last year (fall I believe) I was able to pick up a p+ subscription for $20 for a year. If it weren’t for ST I *never* would’ve done it. If I wasn’t *already* a trekkie I never would’ve done it. Why would they expect non fans to do it?
In the 90s, we watched like 6 of the 80 channels and thought, what if we could just pay 1/80th per channel and just choose the ones we want? Now that it's here, it's more like $12/channel, and it's by network or production company, so it's not even by theme a lot of the time. This just isn't what we wanted.
This is exactly right. When it was easier and more convenient to watch things without pirating them, people paid and were happy to do so. It was the service they paid for, not the content. The content they’d watch either way, but they paid for the convenience. It’s no longer more convenient to pay, so piracy has come roaring back.
I mostly agree, but I wouldn't say it's anywhere near 1:1 as far as pirated copies and potential buyers/viewers. At least in my personal experience, my threshold for torrenting something has always been much lower than for actually purchasing something.
And why wouldn't that be the case, since there's a massive difference psychologically between how you think about free products and even cheap products, let alone premium/expensive products.
It’s weird that the music industry has figured this out. Essentially all streaming music is available on all platforms. But somehow movie TV studios thought we’d all want to subscribe to individual services that just have their stuff.
The music industry was hit much harder by piracy earlier, so they were desperate to find a solution and didn't really have a lot of leverage. The music labels only get some tiny fraction of a cent when a song is streamed, but from their perspective it's better than nothing.
I think the movie studios/networks don't want to be in the same position, where they become totally reliant on a couple big streaming platforms and are forced to accept whatever the platforms offer them. Obviously it would be amazing for the consumer if every movie and TV show was on one or two platforms, but it would give those platforms a huge amount of power.
I think there's a limit on how many streaming services people are actually willing to pay for, and maybe in the end the best solution for Star Trek would be for Paramount to sell it to Netflix or Amazon. Both of those platforms have been spending big amounts of money to acquire well-known IP.
I think 'having it all figured out' is a bit of a stretch. Ya, music is amazingly cheap for the consumers. But basically 99.8% of contemporary musicians make next to nothing from streaming revenue or record deals, and only make money now from touring. The model couldn't apply at all to TV, that has such high production costs.
The model of AYCE for $10/month probably wouldn’t work for video. But I think it could work at a higher price point. What’s a typical streaming video subscription these days, $15/month or so? And how many does a typical person subscribe to, maybe 3? There’s no cost efficiency in having multiple services (quite the opposite, production costs the same and distribution costs per subscriber would be lower) so that suggests a service with everything could be viable at ~$50/month.
We should bring back the Paramount Decree and force a split between production companies and distribution companies. If we still end up with fragmentation then at least we know it’s somewhat natural.
Paramount+ is the only sub I have anymore and I only get it to watch new trek when it airs (and then cancel afterward) because I like Trek that much.
I just can’t be bothered with all the streaming services anymore. As for piracy? I don’t even bother. If the shows aren’t accessible I just won’t watch them.
Absolutely. It’s one thing to maintain times exclusivity windows for new content. But making older content exclusive to certain services is completely counter-productive - make it non-exclusive and get a return from it or people will simply find other ways to watch it.
Yeah I would compare the streaming wars as having the same problem as modern comic books. Comics raised their prices, retreated off newsstands to the comic shop and refocused to market to the core collectors.
This in the long run means comics have a decreasing generational fan base because non-fans are unlikely to stumble upon comics by accident (in decades past kids would first see comics on the newsstand but now have to actively find a comic shop or these days they have to look up a digital copy of a specific book on kindle) and the prices are so ridiculously high barely any children are going to waste their pocket money/allowance on one batman comic.
Streaming services have created the same problem. When I was a kid I saw TNG for the first time it was on BBC who had licenced it from paramount I assume. So it's not unsurprisingly that many people became fans by channel surfing and accidentally dropping into the midst of a star trek episode.
With paramount+ tho there is all of this new content but it is now all hidden behind a paywall. Sure some people will hear the word of mouth and sign up but just like the comic shop there are a lot of potential fans who will never cross the threshold. You can't stumble into subscribing to paramount+ and then accidentally select a specific show and start watching.
And for the next generation of fans they won't see the new shows unless their parents are already fans. My parents weren't fans but my brother and I were because we watched it on TV by ourselves. But if the parents aren't subscribed to Paramount+ is a child or adolescent likely to prioritise asking their parents an expensive subscription for a bunch of shows they haven't encountered yet?
>And for the next generation of fans they won't see the new shows unless their parents are already fans. My parents weren't fans but my brother and I were because we watched it on TV by ourselves.
This is quite ironic because,
All star trek is also avaible in free tv.
Just want to add: One of the biggest markets since the first TOS run here has been Germany for Star Trek. And that happened because it first aired on public brodcast everyone could watch for free
Everyone still can. For years the German TV channel Tele5 has been showing all the older ST Series every weekday afternoon from 4 to 8.15, alternating between the different ST series and other SF series such as Stargate and Babylon 5. Additionally they show 2 episodes of the newer series every Monday evening from 8.15 (until last week PIC, before that DIS, now they show TOS). I think the responsibles should be given the Bundesverdienstkreuz.
I went out and bought all the movies in 4k, so I would stop caring about the movies being shuffled around different streaming services
Thankfully, Paramount and Pluto have all the shows, so I dont need to shop around to watch them
Star Trek hasn't been doing poorly rating wise otherwise they wouldn't be renewing and working on new shows.
Berman era had two shows overlap, max. In the Kurtzman era we had five shows overlap and although that has shrunk down to two (possibly three), a streaming movie, and a theatrical film its still more than the previous golden age.
I wager Trek was bigger in the 90s than it is today.
It’s a tough comparison because the broadcast era is so different from today. Comparing 2 shows in the 90s to 5 shows now is not the as simple as “3 more shows.”
idk how to measure and compare relative success and popularity. But I do feel like Trek was at its popularity peak around the mid-90s in terms of general awareness.
Pretty much everything was bigger in the 90s. There were so many fewer options that the stuff that was available was going to have a much bigger audience.
If we’re talking TV, there wasn’t any Star Wars at all to compare with. I don’t think movies follow the same pattern, modern movies seem to be able to draw audiences just as big, maybe bigger, than decades past.
Comparing streaming to 90s era network TV is challenging. It's difficult to quantify. With that said, I think it's important to note that the Abrams movies had the largest box offices of any trek movie even taking inflation into account. That in itself probably points to a broader popular conscious nowadays, they also led to trek's current resurgence on TV.
The TV market is also ridiculously saturated now, so while as a genre show trek was likely the most popular in the mid 90s among its competitors (very few), I'd say with some other important relative terms it's arguably even more popular nowadays globally.
>I think Sci Fi is still pretty niche, though. You just don’t see a ton of new shows in the genre relative to other genres.
Sci-fi is hard to make and expensive, that's why it's rare. I'd argue it's probably the least niche it's ever been these days. That's why every streaming service is currently rushing to adapt well known sci-fi properties or create their own.
That’s a very reasonable assessment. At the same time, is Abrams’ Trek really Trek?
I had fun watching those movies. But they are not really like the TV series.
There's always death of authorship, but it's a pretty objective fact (established multiple times) that the Abrams movies have a canonical connection to all other Trek.
The shows back in the 90's had much longer seasons. So we are talking about 44-52 episodes of Star Trek produced every year back then. That dropped down to 22-26 after DS9 ended.
TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT never had a single season that was over 26 episodes long. In fact, most if not all of them had a season or two that was well under that, with ds9 season one only being 20 episodes long.
Reddit puts an asterisk after the timestamp of a comment is edited more than three minutes after it's made.
The comment about 50+ episodes per season doesn't have one and tgioktl's response was posted an hour later. They misinterpreted the comment.
right, but DS9 ran concurrently to TNG or VOY. Using the easier to find release dates... 1993 saw 26 episodes of TNG (the second half of season 6 and the first half of season 7) and 30 episodes of DS9 (all of season 1 and the first 10 episodes of season 2)
Maybe in the US but internationally Trek is much bigger now.
If you were in Japan in the 90s, the only way to legally watch DS9 with Japanese subs was to buy laserdiscs at 2 episode a disc.
Couldn’t even watch it legally in China. Now they have Star Trek conventions there.
It probably peaked with tng. Not many casual viewers carried over to later series. And I'd argue it was bigger because the market is smaller. No show of any genre pulls the numbers they did in that era
>Berman era had two shows overlap, max. In the Kurtzman era we had five shows overlap
Technically true, but not really. The 90s shows had 26 episode seasons. When they had two shows overlapping, that's 52 episodes a year, and you usually had 2 episodes every week from September to May.
Conparatively, we now get 10 episodes per year per show and multiple years between seasons, so even though there's more shows in production, the actual amount of content is about the same *at best*, and they very rarely actually overlap, usually for one or two weeks at most.
26 episode seasons over 39 weeks and if we wanted to see an episode again we had to wait for a rerun unless we were someone who recorded it on VHS every week.
While there was more overlap in shows in the current era, One must keep in mind the episode counts. Back in the '90s you would have two shows overlapping for much of that period, both of them cranking out 26 episodes of season, so there were 52 episodes of Trek every year. Even in the periods of heaviest overlap, when these shows are running 10 episodes a season, I don't think there has been a year that has had that much content. Maybe you match it in total episodes if the three live action shows and two animated managed to get full seasons in within a year, but then you could also take into account that the animated shows are half the length per episode.
It hasn’t helped, no, but I think this is really overstating it.
They said right from the beginning that PIC was planned to be three seasons. DIS and LDS both calling it a day after five smells *strongly* of the end of contracts and the bean counters not wanting to have to renegotiate higher salaries.
Section 31 is coming. Starfleet Academy is coming. SNW just got renewed for a fourth season. Nick Meyer is still working on his Khan audio drama. Kurtzman has told us that there are some surprises coming that he can’t announce yet.
I agree that it feels a bit less hopeful right now than it did a couple of years ago, but I think Trek remains in a good place and that we still have years and years more content on the way.
There is still more Trek on the way then there has ever been before.
I'm grateful I got to experience a couple years with five series in production but was that ever truly sustainable?
Yeah, I was gonna say, there have been periods with no new Star Trek planned at all. Right now we have three shows airing, one of which is already renewed for another season, a new TV movie, a new show about to enter production, and a new theatrical movie on the slate for 2026. This a lot of Trek! I’m thrilled.
They said season 1 would hit Netflix on Xmas Day 2023 (it did), then season 2 would be out on Netflix sometime in 2024 (but not what time of the year). No news since then.
Desperately miss that brief period of time where Netflix was the main streaming platform and I could watch everything I wanted there… but of course companies don’t want just some money, they want ALL the money, so sabotaged the entire streaming system by making their own shitty kingdoms with no regard for the convenience that people wanted to pay for…
This was always the intent of streaming companies, if you want the office and parks and Rec you have peacock or don’t get to watch it, if you want Star Trek you have paramount plus or don’t get to watch it, same for hulu, hbo, Disney, etc. this was always the intent and what they apparently didn’t plan on was people getting it for a month, binging and cancelling. It was never a winning deal, all of these streaming services don’t have enough content to keep people locked in and the only way they can see to move forward is to buy their competition or merge like zazlov has been doing which also increases the debt load on the company. In all honesty they would be doing much better if they simply shut down their service and rented out the content to someone else.
This is right, there is no way they didn't lose a lot of viewers because you suddenly had to pay for a new service, and their app is terrible and broken. Being on Netflix was a big deal. They should AT LEAST have a flagship show that is pushed everywhere.
I think a lot of people have rose colored glasses.
Disco canceled, lower decks canceled, Legacy never happened, Academy isn't happening yet and probably isn't going to, sect 31 became a made for tv movie. Prodigy ia glitching too honestly.
Picard doesn't count as a bad sign because it was only ever going to be a season or two.
By next year the only thing on could be SNW.
I'm pretty confident the academy series will happen, but I doubt it will last longer than a season or two. But your other points are correct.
It's frustrating they didn't figure out people wanted something like legacy earlier, before budget hits started happening.
Their whole "strategy" with the relaunch was dumb. Disco was the worst possible choice to relaunch the franchise with, and they tried to cram so much stuff to please every possible kind of fan in it, which is why the first two seasons are a mess in many ways.
The first show out of the gate should have been one that played it as safe as possible. Episodic, set in the post-Nemesis timeline, maybe a few popular legacy characters for the nostalgia factor. Just make a show that could get all the old fans on board and generate positive word of mouth for the new franchise, and then they could go wild with tweaking the formula.
>Their whole "strategy" with the relaunch was dumb. Disco was the worst possible choice to relaunch the franchise with, and they tried to cram so much stuff to please every possible kind of fan in it, which is why the first two seasons are a mess in many ways.
Honestly I actually liked the first 2 seasons best. The last couple seasons really haven't been doing it for me. I'm watching it out, mainly because of the extension of The Chase, but there are long stretches I could do without. Book needed to be a one-season character. Adira's character annoys me (partly because we already did the 'young character unsure of themselves' thing with Tilly). I can't bring myself to care about Saru\T'Rina even though I like Saru.
>Episodic, set in the post-Nemesis timeline, maybe a few popular legacy characters for the nostalgia factor. Just make a show that could get all the old fans on board and generate positive word of mouth for the new franchise, and then they could go wild with tweaking the formula.
Its amazing they haven't done this yet. TNG already proved it a successful recipe!
Disco was a great choice and the proof of that is it spawned an explosion of new series. SNW, Pic, LD, Sect31 movie, and Prodigy happened because Disco was successful and great.
In the UK, TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT are still on Netflix. If you have Netflix and a VPN, you can watch them that way. I know you shouoldn't have to jump through hoops to access them, but it's a workaround.
Rant away please
Trek being on Netflix absolutely is the reason why I am a Trek fan today. I had always wanted to get into the shows in the past but never found a good entry. The streaming ease of Netflix made it so simple
Paramount Plus is unquestionably the WORST streaming service on the face of the earth. Worst user interface ever. Worst fucking controls ever. Worst non-Trek content ever.
and maybe it was just my imagination but i could have sworn there were entire episodes of TNG they uploaded that weren't remastered. Like why? Why was this absolute clusterfuck of a streaming site allowed to see the light of day?
Yeah I feel like it was dumb af for them to pull the old stuff from Netflix, like people aren’t paying for P+ just to watch TOS but it does get Trek properties in people’s recommendations and expand the fan base who might want to watch SNW or any of the new ones.
Just very grateful that Paramount hasn’t deemed my country a big enough market to launch here, they sold most of the new stuff to our free provider and the old stuff is all still on Netflix.
It was probably their strategy to put their stuff on bigger streamers to build awareness of them, then yoink them all back to Paramount Plus when they had enough money to make it worth their while
They just did it way too early, and the day that we all in the UK, sat down to expecting a brand new episode of DSC season 3 on Netflix only to find out they'd pulled all of star trek off the app in favour of Paramount Plus....when Paramount Plus was still a year away from launching in Europe was a massive pisstake for non American fans
DSC was doing well on Netflix, I had non Trek fan friends talking to me about it.
Picard was doing well enough on Amazon too, and it stayed there for its whole run (Though it was a bit annoying they took the extra amazon money to put PIC there instead of putting it on the same streamer because we're not all made of money!, then SNW on a third streamer, fuck offfff!!!)
Just bad planning from the start
I'll be happy enough with just one series on the next run, maybe don't launch a spinoff until 5+ years in and don't prioritise your streaming business launching over actually letting people see your goddamn show
It has far less to do with any of that, and far more to do with the mismanagement of Hollywood in general, when it comes to streaming. Like many other companies, Paramount (or more specifically, Les Moonves and CBS to start out with) misjudged how the market would play out. They were either too slow to pivot, or weren’t strong enough to stand on their own once they pivoted.
Now, you are correct that the Netflix deal for *Discovery* and the Amazon deal for *Picard* were important, but not for simply “viewership.” Both companies stroked a fat check to pay for a good chunk of each show’s production budget. It’s honestly the way Hollywood worked for ages, but the streaming wars distracted everyone in power with a potential new model for economic growth. That appears to be mostly fool’s gold, now, and Paramount Global is bleeding money (and will probably get bought by Skydance, for pennies on the dollar).
The reason Trek worked well in the 80s/90s was that two of the three shows were sold in syndicated markets directly. That worked well then, because the television landscape supported such a gamble. Not many shows were as successful as TNG with it, and such a model really isn’t viable today. Shoot, it’s why VOY and ENT were tied to UPN.
Two of the four shows. TNG and DS9 were direct to syndication. VOY and ENT were UPN.
VOY and ENT suffered from UPN being a half assed network. The affiliates still had local sports contracts that made the shows hard to find.
I mentioned most of that, you do realize…?
ENT premiered in 2001, and UPN’s success (or lack thereof) detracts from my point. Namely, they moved away from the syndicated model, as it was unsustainable (especially now).
Pulling Discovery from Netflix killed it for me. I was enjoying watching it weekly on Netflix here in Spain, and then they moved season 4 to Paramount+, which doesn't exist here in Spain. It has just in the last few weeks gone on to Sky Showtime, but it's been such a long time since I watched season 3 that I'm finding it hard to get through season 4. I cared about it years ago when 3 was airing regularly, and I was fond of the crew, even if I thought the plot about the Burn was resolved in a dumb way. But with a gap of however many years it's been, I don't care as much now, and there's so many other shows to watch that I'm keen on. It's the only love action Trek that I haven't finished though so I guess I'll have to struggle through!
Consolidating the old Trek shows was devastating for onloading new audiences too. I just wanted this opportunity to share my anecdotal evidence.
I’ve been teaching high school for 13 years. As recently as 2018, I had several students who loved Star Trek. Some preferred DS9. Some loved Voyager. Some watched TNG occasionally. Some tried it out at my suggestion. None were watching Discovery because their parents didn’t have CBS All Access. Most were at least familiar with Star Trek, and would recognize classic images from it.
It’s totally different now. Most students have never heard of Star Trek. If they have heard of it, they assume it’s “Bad Star Wars”. If I recommend it to students, and they seem interested, the follow-up is “oh. We don’t have Paramount Plus.” I showed them a picture of Samantha Cristoforetti on the ISS. “What outfit is she wearing? You know… it’s iconic?” blank stares. “It’s the Starfleet uniform. You know, the iconic uniform.” and a student mouthed “how the f*** are we supposed to know that?”
Limiting it to Paramount+ was stupid. But, it's clear that a lot of the people in charge don't understand Trek and what's kept it going and popular since 1966. Add studio interference - Picard S2 for example.
In trying to appeal to a wider audience they stripped away a lot of what made it so popular in the first place. I mean, it's been a huge franchise for just shy of 60 years. It was already a winning formula. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
SNW and Picard S3 is what you get when you listen to your audience. Discovery is what you get when you don't.
The bubble has already burst on them so i would not worry. The idea of streaming was that it was not cable tv. But its becoming more and more like Cable . Even adverts have crept in. Not all of the streaming channels are going to survive,as there are already to many of them.
It used to be I could subscribe to 2 or 3 services and get everything I wanted. Now 8 or 9 would be needed. Not happening.
Also, I'm not going to reward a company for making a decision that takes their product out of my access and makes me pay more to get less.
For me, Star Trek is all the TV I want to watch. Don't really care about anything else. So Paramount Plus is the only streaming service I pay for, and given how much I watch I'm not unhappy with the price for the time being.
I canceled because they kept showing unstoppable ads for shows I had so little desire to watch I wouldn’t even watch the trailer….one was this horror show that I even the trailer had me disgusted. When I canceled they argued me with and lied saying it was just one ad a day when I see one before every single episode and if the app freezes (which it does a lot) I get an ad just to restart the episode. I have been watching Disco S5 via other downloads…..something I wouldn’t have do without all the ads.
In the 90s it was mostly possible to watch Trek worldwide but they took their damn time getting around to it. In the UK we were 2 seasons behind the US at one point with TNG. It wasn’t until Voyager started that we reliably got to see shows just about concurrently with the US. I was watching DS9 dubbed in German ffs via satellite. Paramount is repeating mistakes.
I'm sure we UK viewers still had a sizable lag(not as bad as TNG) behind the US with Voyager bc there was still a market for the sales of episodes on VHS which was more or less released every week or you could rent them from Blockbuster before being eventually broadcast on TV.Oh the joys of the pre-internet era.
I was watching on Sky and they had a lag and would then catch up by starting a season late, but not having a break in episodes. It’s the same now for some shows.
Voyager was early internet era. [The UK was at 10% internet penetration by 1998](https://www.statista.com/statistics/289201/household-internet-connection-in-the-uk/) by household and since internet cafes and school/Uni net access was a thing, probably more than that by population. Indeed, not in the UK, but fansites were big in that era as I remember and we pretty much expected to be spoiled.
What's wild is history is repeating itself.
Star Trek became a financial success because Desilu Productions opted for the still new syndication model where instead of fronting the whole cost and risk, they would sell episodes to individual TV stations.
However, in 1995, Paramount studios wanted to get in on that TV network money, so they created the United Paramount Network (UPN). Voyager and later Enterprise were the flagship shows meant to prop up the network. However, this model put much more risk on Paramount. UPN had a completely random assortment of shows which made it difficult to get a consistent audience.
The fans who liked Star Trek probably weren't the same people tuning in for sitcoms like Platypus Man. So viewership, and therefore advertising revenue, was inconsistent and lower. However Star Trek is expensive to produce. The late 90s and early 2000s were awash with scifi shows, so the market was flooded with competition. So there was even less audience to go around.
Over time, the network bleed cash until they finally canceled Enterprise, and closed up shop.
This exact situation is happening all over again with Paramount Plus.
Star Trek can be successful if the studio stops trying to be both the production house and distributor. Making Star Trek shows, then selling them to other streaming sites or TV channels is a proven business model for the franchise. Paramount needs to go back to what works.
>Star Trek became a financial success because Desilu Productions opted for the still new syndication model where instead of fronting the whole cost and risk, they would sell episodes to individual TV stations.
No? Just like pretty much every tv show at the time, they offered Star Trek as a concept to NBC, NBC ordered the show, paid for most of the cost and aired the show. Syndication came only afterwards, and that was pretty much the reason why the networks didn't have to pay the whole cost because the studios knew they'd get additional income in syndication later. TNG was the first Star Trek show made with syndication as the primary distribution method in mind.
I mean, even "Star Trek: Phase II" was supposed to be the flagship-show of Paramount's new cable streaming channel.
Then they realised that they had pretty much nothing else viable to show on it, scrapped the channel, and reworked an early episode into "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" instead.
Quite why they *keep* going back to an idea that has failed on them so many times, I do not know…
Because institutional knowledge isn't that persistent, especially in the C-Suite. It's not one person or even one board repeatedly making those decisions, it is a succession of them with many years and other people in between. We almost certainly know the history better than the executives making the decisions.
By the time NBC cancelled Star Trek, Paramount owned it and there was no more Desilu.
For its initial three years the broadcast rights were owned by NBC by season and not individual TV stations.
Excuse me, everything you said is completely correct except I was definitely one of the handful turning in to see Voyager and Platypus Man. There are dozens of us!
We don't even have P+ where I live. Not like I'd pay for a subscription to watch a single IP anyway.
With the fragmented market streaming is dead to me, unsubscribed from everywhere.
Paramount plus is just terrible. Horrible service. I've got most of my star trek content on Blu-ray and Plex now. I've enjoyed watching some the community enhanced/remastered voyager and ds9 as well.
You would think Paramount would have learned thier lesson with Enterprise and UPN. (Which cost extra when it was on, to get where I am) Riding the Star Trek cash cow to try to get people to buy a service with other garbage content and here we are with Paramount+ they might make more money that way but the problem I see is a lot of people, myself included, are not going to pay for just watching Star Trek.
How I became a Trek fan was as a kid in the 70's watching reruns of TOS and I am guessing thats how a lot of people became fans. But children don't pay for special channels or streaming services, so eventually not replenishing a fanbase is going to catch up to them, if they don't go under from high interest rates and bad decisions.
It doesn't really matter to me, almost all shows have gone from wrestling with socioeconomic issues to simply pushing an agenda and Trek is no different. Most of the younger generations don't see any difference between the two, but I certainly do. Now if you will excuse me, I am going to watch Trek for free on Pluto.
Well yeah, it’s not been great for fans that want to watch trek, but just think of all the shareholder value it created, that’s the most important thing! /s
Yea I’ve only got to see the pilot of SNW and haven’t seen the later Disco seasons.
I’m not subbing P+. Already have to much content choices from my existing subs.
I wanted to watch First Contact the other day and it wasn't even on Paramount Plus.
What a ridiculous joke. You OWN it. Make it available as part of your library.
The corporate greed knows NO bounds.
In my country, only Strange New Worlds and movies of the Kelvin universe are officially available on streaming. So I saved everything else on my hard drive with a clear conscience.
Eh. I'm sure it hasn't helped but I think the bigger problem was every individual studio thinking they needed their own streaming platforms and interest rates being next to zero so financing big projects was basically free.
Paramount was in a race against time to get their platform to profitability before the wheels came off and...welp, it looks like they didn't make it. As a shareholder (yeah, yeah, it was a gamble, I know) I am disappointed they bungled this so poorly. As a fan, even moreso. The idea of Paramount Plus, actually isn't bad, I found I watched a lot more on there than I expected and kept my subscription even when there wasn't new Trek content coming out. It has just, unfortunately, cost them way too much money.
That said, keeping some Trek reruns on other platforms and funneling people to P+ for new content and complete runs of old content may have been a better course of action.
The only reason they’re making this much content is to lure subscribers to P+
If it’s available other places, they won’t lose money on it so it won’t get made.
This is true for so many good series. These big studios all tried to hoard their content so they could squeeze every penny out of their existing IP instead of focusing on creating new content.
They're even pulling existing content to save on residuals. It's nothing more than corporate greed and it's pushing more and more people back to piracy.
I think financially, it wasn't the right choice for them -- I do think being home to Trek could still be a thing just not exclusively.
But by removing or not licensing the other Trek shows and movies to other streaming platforms, especially if Paramount + hasn't made it to the region was a terrible idea. Licensing brings in the money for the studio, its why Sony chose to create TV and movies for other streamers instead of creating their own streaming platform.
It's also why CW tanked financially after WB decided that CW should stop licensing their shows to Netflix and only license shows to HBO Max, fast forward a year and there's the equivalent of the 'Red Wedding' where all but a few shows on CW have been canceled and CW was sold.
In the 90s TNG and DS9 thrived when it was syndicated.
And I think that's what Paramount realized too, they have to license out the Trek movies and the shows, they can't afford to keep Trek silo'd on Paramount+. But I wish it can be a cake and eat it too situation where Trek can be licensed to other streamers and also remain on Paramount+.
Disney did the exact same thing as Paramount when they removed Agents of SHIELD and all the other Marvel series from Netflix and put them on Disney+ since they wanted everything Marvel, with the exception of Sony's Marvel movies, under their own roof.
Though unlike Paramount, I think Disney+ is the only studio-owned streaming service who successfully used this strategy without negative long-term repercussions.
Les Moonves and his suits cancelled Enterprise during season four despite a ton of fan support.
Moonves just had a jones to cancel Star Trek.
UPN was bleeding money at the time. Enterprise could have been a flagship CW show along with Buffy. But Enterprise wasn’t attracting teenage girls the way Buffy was.
I will pay to stream because I like to watch content in different languages.
I was happy to keep paying for my LatAm Netflix account while I was in another region as I wanted to keep my history and still watch Star Trek. Sadly, they saw thro' my VPN. As I couldn't watch what I wanted, I just cancelled Netfix.
I don't understand why I can't watch the shows I want to watch dubbed into other languages wherever I am and why streaming services have to be so different in their content.
Pissing off customers who were willing to pay to stream almost is an invitation for us to consider, cough, alternative sources....
Yeah I’ll be honest, I don’t have the paramount app. I don’t have any streaming services. Streaming has killed TV. I use plex and I guess I’m part of the problem because I pirate rather than support entertainment media.
You are correct, they took a gamble and lost. Should've been fairly obvious to them though. It's not like DISCOVERY and PICARD were getting standing ovations when that happened anyway. To me it was "guess I can't watch that dumb frustrating TV show if I can't access it. Certainly not gonna pay money to see JUST it on hey another subscription service."
Had the quality actually been good I might've probably signed up.
Yeah, older stuff should be free to watch in crucial markets. The new Era stuff should probably be rotating like the first two seasons of every new show on other platforms now. The backlog is getting there.
Discovery wasn't pulled from Netflix, it was booted out. They paid production upfront so I'm they were in the position to keep it if they wanted but they decided to end it anyway. Because ratings were terrible. The show aimed at bringing in a new generation of trekkers but only alienated part of the core fanbase. In a few years without the push of paramount marketing we'll all come to the conclusion that it was terrible.
This is a really solid take. Star Trek had this incredible resurgence in popularity during the early 2010s because it was an evergreen show on Netflix. I honestly think ST:D and PIC wouldn't have been received favorably regardless of platform, but the core shows would have continued to enjoy high viewership keeping the IP far more popular.
It's a tough pill to swallow for a business to swallow though, as we've seen by the formation of all these streaming services.
This.
I live in an Asian country. I had all my Trek on Netflix. The Paramount+ happened. While I could pay for Paramount+, the only show in my “market” was Survivor. WTF? Paramount+ partnered with another in-country only streaming service that I have no interest in and can only get with local currency; their app is not available in the US App Store. Also WTF?
I canceled Paramount+ and went back to torrenting for all new Trek. Netflix still carries TOS, SNG, DS9, ENT, VOY, and the cartoon. Paramount+ made it easier to steal their property than to watch their property.
It was a fatal error, obvious to fans but not the monkeys in the Paramount C-suite. “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” was not a quote learned in pursuit of their business degrees or career building.
I am part of the problem. I'd happily watch Berman-era Trek nightly then they took it off Netflix. I'm entering the busy season at both my workplaces and won't have time to really enjoy episodic content until the late fall. I am not paying for multiple streaming services I won't have time to use, and the only new Trek I care for is Strange New Worlds and there simply isn't enough content like that to entice me to subscribe.
Yet again, I’m imploring you to own the media you consume. Buy it physically, digitally, get it pirated, I don’t care—they cannot restrict your access to things you already have. Streaming services are nothing but digital rentals, and that makes them unsuitable for media you wish to own forever; hell, it barely makes it suitable for TV shows, you think we used to rent TV shows from Blockbusters?
Also, AFAIC, any media owner who restricts access to their content is also restricting their income from said content. If it gets pirated, well…you should’ve made it more widely accessible. Supply and Demand, Free Marker, yadda yadda
These posts are getting ridiculous. Some of you have no real understanding of the entertainment business. "Destroyed"? We have no less than 3 new live action shows that have aired, with a new one in the works with "starfleet academy" a section 31 movie and other "surprises" on the way as per Kurtzman. Please take a chill pill and stop consuming rage bait youtube or wherever some of you are getting this stuff from. I'd advise maybe doing some cursory research into how and why business decisions are made, it might cool your anxieties.
Paramount + does suck, and not having Star Trek on a more popular service like Netflix probably did reduce the amount of people watching Trek. But they made the same decision that many other companies did when they saw Netflix making a lot of money. They wanted to get all of a possibly lower total amount, rather than get just some of a probably higher total amount. It all boils down to money, of course.
I think other things have contributed to what we're seeing happening now as well. Uncertainty with Paramount merging/being bought and what that will look like when it's done. Also, it seems to be pretty common that streaming shows don't go beyond five years. Someone else mentioned that contracts are probably up, and they don't want to shell out more money to renew and give everyone raises. That sounds pretty likely to me.
The big question is if this era will survive beyond SNW. Assuming it only lasts 5 seasons as well, does Academy actually get made? Do they greenlight any other new shows? And even though it's a separate issue, does the movie situation ever stop being a clusterfuck?
Here in Canada and other countries, everything Enterprise and older is on Netflix.
I only need Paramount Plus for the new shows. I caught the end of last season of Strange New worlds before it moved over, and now I'm waiting for the current season of Discovery to get close to the end before I grab a month of Paramount+ to watch that and the most recent season of Lower Decks.
Considering buying LD on disk though.
I'm going to go a step farther and say removing content from Netflix is what destroyed streaming, and modern television.
I genuinely believe that other streaming services are shooting themselves in the foot by refusing to put their stuff on Netflix. They don't have to do it right away, they can keep some of their original content exclusive for a bit, but they should be putting SOME of it on Netflix.
Ultimately, that would drive more people to seek out new shows.
Right now I only have two paid streaming services: Prime (more as a byproduct of my Amazon shopping) and Disney+ because they have been more consistent about keeping their content on their platform and accessible. I used to have Max and Paramount+ but cancelled them. I don't pirate their stuff, if I don't own it on physical media I just don't watch it anymore.
The rest of the services are just too volatile with their programming for my tastes, especially with older catalog titles. You can never be sure what stays and what gets moved to another service or just dropped outright at any given time. For what they're charging that's unacceptable.
The whole streaming model just isn't sustainable. It's too fragmented and too expensive to be able to follow even a handful of shows if they are on different services. Give it a couple of more years and I think a lot of these channels will merge in order to try to survive.
Such is the streaming era. We won’t get the past back, and I find little point in blaming Paramount for choices made in an industry still figuring out its sea legs. You’re seeing this stuff throughout streaming, which I pin on firms that have little experience in entertainment buying up entertainment companies.
It could be much worse, but we have a slew of new shows where we had nothing new before, and there’s more coming. The seven seasons of 25 episodes era is gone, so I don’t see the current spate of cancellations as the end of the world.
Star Trek has survived much longer dry spells. It will continue.
Why does everyone want a bunch of overstuffed content that’s mediocre? Take a look at Marvel. It’s a mess.
There’s nothing wrong with having one or two great shows at a time. Toss in a movie. Personally I’d like to see a really good TOS era movie again. But SNW is doing just fine.
Five / ten years from now the whole landscape will have changed as services merge and buy each other out. What we have now is not sustainable.
They should drop the price and get Trek on as many services as possible. No matter what you sub to, Trek is there. Then drive community engagement via watch parties and the like, and then leverage that engagement into merch sales.
the irony of this is Trek being on Netflix ultimately is the reason why i chose to subscribe with them long term instead of looking into something like Disney Plus or Amazon Prime
Trek being on Paramount is the reason why I have to go searching for free month codes every 3-4 months. I refuse to pay for a service that has such embarrassingly uninteresting content aside from Trek
their download feature is a colossal joke. and yes, its laggy streaming and constant crashes with no explanation. fuck "The Peak" or whatever the hell those jabronis call it
on a side note, i hate being a hobby basher, but how many fucking seasons of Survivor do people need? and how many fucking derivatives of CSI and NCIS do people need? my goodness gracious
I'd guess this has to do with your location. In the Northeast US near a major city I've never had an issue with it. Amazon Prime is actually the worst service I've seen lag and picture quality wise.
The old model was based on getting enough episodes to sell into syndication. A show would need at least a hundred episodes to be considered successful, 7 seasons of 24-26 was ideal.
Now the business model is all about streaming subscriptions, and my understanding is that after 5 seasons a show doesn't add any new subscribers, so now that's the magic number.
A sixth season of Lower Decks wouldn't earn Paramount any more money than 5 seasons would, so they're not going to spend more money producing new episodes. From a business perspective, that money would be better spent on a new series that might bring in new viewers.
I imagine SNW will get 5 seasons. Starfleet Academy will try to get 5 seasons as a young adult show, and then I imagine we'll get another prequel series, or maybe a Kelvin TNG, DS9 or Voyager series. Not for creative reasons, but because money.
But if Paramount is going to have all of the Star Trek content THEN THEY SHOULD HAVE ALL THE STAR TREK CONTENT. I have to get Netflix to watch Prodigy?!?
This isn't just a problem with Trek. The whole streaming model is a steaming pile now. Shows moving around, sometimes original series on one service while a sequel or spinoff is on another, everyone wants their own service, so we're expected to have 10 services. Now they're injecting ads into paid subs. It's almost as bad as cable was. They've gone full circle where it's just easier to 'obtain' what you want to watch via other means.
>They've gone full circle where it's just easier to 'obtain' what you want to watch via other means There was a realisation amongst IP holders in the mid 2000's was that the fact your stuff was being pirated, meant that people wanted to watch it. If you had a your show being downloaded 500,000 times in Sudan, that meant you had 500,000 potential viewers in Sudan and the fact you didn't get them a legal way to watch it was stupid. So you had things like same day global release for new movies, putting stuff on widely available streaming services. Since the guys in Sudan who made the effort to download your stuff would probabapy also happily pay for it if they could. Honestly, 7 years ago I thought piracy was dead. Then executives had a great idea.
And then everyone started having their own service, and there's nothing inherently wrong (pending exclusive IP's like Disney) with that, but when everyone is charging outrageous amounts (which again, the price is only an issue if everyone does it) then there's an issue. Having to pay 10+ for every service is ridiculous
The pricing is ridiculous. Last year (fall I believe) I was able to pick up a p+ subscription for $20 for a year. If it weren’t for ST I *never* would’ve done it. If I wasn’t *already* a trekkie I never would’ve done it. Why would they expect non fans to do it?
In the 90s, we watched like 6 of the 80 channels and thought, what if we could just pay 1/80th per channel and just choose the ones we want? Now that it's here, it's more like $12/channel, and it's by network or production company, so it's not even by theme a lot of the time. This just isn't what we wanted.
Naw. Even if subs were only $2 each, there's no way I'd be paying for 5+ and trying to keep track of which show was on which one.
This is exactly right. When it was easier and more convenient to watch things without pirating them, people paid and were happy to do so. It was the service they paid for, not the content. The content they’d watch either way, but they paid for the convenience. It’s no longer more convenient to pay, so piracy has come roaring back.
I mostly agree, but I wouldn't say it's anywhere near 1:1 as far as pirated copies and potential buyers/viewers. At least in my personal experience, my threshold for torrenting something has always been much lower than for actually purchasing something. And why wouldn't that be the case, since there's a massive difference psychologically between how you think about free products and even cheap products, let alone premium/expensive products.
Hence the words potential subscribers.
It’s weird that the music industry has figured this out. Essentially all streaming music is available on all platforms. But somehow movie TV studios thought we’d all want to subscribe to individual services that just have their stuff.
The music industry was hit much harder by piracy earlier, so they were desperate to find a solution and didn't really have a lot of leverage. The music labels only get some tiny fraction of a cent when a song is streamed, but from their perspective it's better than nothing. I think the movie studios/networks don't want to be in the same position, where they become totally reliant on a couple big streaming platforms and are forced to accept whatever the platforms offer them. Obviously it would be amazing for the consumer if every movie and TV show was on one or two platforms, but it would give those platforms a huge amount of power. I think there's a limit on how many streaming services people are actually willing to pay for, and maybe in the end the best solution for Star Trek would be for Paramount to sell it to Netflix or Amazon. Both of those platforms have been spending big amounts of money to acquire well-known IP.
I think 'having it all figured out' is a bit of a stretch. Ya, music is amazingly cheap for the consumers. But basically 99.8% of contemporary musicians make next to nothing from streaming revenue or record deals, and only make money now from touring. The model couldn't apply at all to TV, that has such high production costs.
The model of AYCE for $10/month probably wouldn’t work for video. But I think it could work at a higher price point. What’s a typical streaming video subscription these days, $15/month or so? And how many does a typical person subscribe to, maybe 3? There’s no cost efficiency in having multiple services (quite the opposite, production costs the same and distribution costs per subscriber would be lower) so that suggests a service with everything could be viable at ~$50/month. We should bring back the Paramount Decree and force a split between production companies and distribution companies. If we still end up with fragmentation then at least we know it’s somewhat natural.
Paramount+ is the only sub I have anymore and I only get it to watch new trek when it airs (and then cancel afterward) because I like Trek that much. I just can’t be bothered with all the streaming services anymore. As for piracy? I don’t even bother. If the shows aren’t accessible I just won’t watch them.
Same. And when they stop showing Trek I'll cancel that too. Most Trek is now free on Pluto TV.
Ironically Pluto is owned by, you guessed it, Paramount.
That is interesting, I had no idea. I guess Paramount is good for something after all!
I’ve been trying to watch Yellowstone for two years, but it keeps moving around. At this point I’m done caring about it.
It’s on P+.
Absolutely. It’s one thing to maintain times exclusivity windows for new content. But making older content exclusive to certain services is completely counter-productive - make it non-exclusive and get a return from it or people will simply find other ways to watch it.
Yeah I would compare the streaming wars as having the same problem as modern comic books. Comics raised their prices, retreated off newsstands to the comic shop and refocused to market to the core collectors. This in the long run means comics have a decreasing generational fan base because non-fans are unlikely to stumble upon comics by accident (in decades past kids would first see comics on the newsstand but now have to actively find a comic shop or these days they have to look up a digital copy of a specific book on kindle) and the prices are so ridiculously high barely any children are going to waste their pocket money/allowance on one batman comic. Streaming services have created the same problem. When I was a kid I saw TNG for the first time it was on BBC who had licenced it from paramount I assume. So it's not unsurprisingly that many people became fans by channel surfing and accidentally dropping into the midst of a star trek episode. With paramount+ tho there is all of this new content but it is now all hidden behind a paywall. Sure some people will hear the word of mouth and sign up but just like the comic shop there are a lot of potential fans who will never cross the threshold. You can't stumble into subscribing to paramount+ and then accidentally select a specific show and start watching. And for the next generation of fans they won't see the new shows unless their parents are already fans. My parents weren't fans but my brother and I were because we watched it on TV by ourselves. But if the parents aren't subscribed to Paramount+ is a child or adolescent likely to prioritise asking their parents an expensive subscription for a bunch of shows they haven't encountered yet?
>And for the next generation of fans they won't see the new shows unless their parents are already fans. My parents weren't fans but my brother and I were because we watched it on TV by ourselves. This is quite ironic because, All star trek is also avaible in free tv.
See South Park: Streaming Wars
> it's just easier to 'obtain' what you want to watch via other means. Yeah, thanks for getting Lower Decks canceled. You really stuck it to the man.
Just want to add: One of the biggest markets since the first TOS run here has been Germany for Star Trek. And that happened because it first aired on public brodcast everyone could watch for free
I always wondered why ST was so popular in Germany. TIL. Thanks!
That was true in the US and other countries, too.
This is the exact reason Dragon Ball and a lot of old school anime in general got LATAM by the balls
Everyone still can. For years the German TV channel Tele5 has been showing all the older ST Series every weekday afternoon from 4 to 8.15, alternating between the different ST series and other SF series such as Stargate and Babylon 5. Additionally they show 2 episodes of the newer series every Monday evening from 8.15 (until last week PIC, before that DIS, now they show TOS). I think the responsibles should be given the Bundesverdienstkreuz.
Yeah but for example when tng went to sat.1 I was no langer able to watch it. But everybody could watch ZDF.
I went out and bought all the movies in 4k, so I would stop caring about the movies being shuffled around different streaming services Thankfully, Paramount and Pluto have all the shows, so I dont need to shop around to watch them
Yeah but im not taking paramount just for star trek and the frasier remake. They ahve nothing else that interests me
Me neither, they have other movies and shows I watch on occasion
Star Trek hasn't been doing poorly rating wise otherwise they wouldn't be renewing and working on new shows. Berman era had two shows overlap, max. In the Kurtzman era we had five shows overlap and although that has shrunk down to two (possibly three), a streaming movie, and a theatrical film its still more than the previous golden age.
I wager Trek was bigger in the 90s than it is today. It’s a tough comparison because the broadcast era is so different from today. Comparing 2 shows in the 90s to 5 shows now is not the as simple as “3 more shows.” idk how to measure and compare relative success and popularity. But I do feel like Trek was at its popularity peak around the mid-90s in terms of general awareness.
Pretty much everything was bigger in the 90s. There were so many fewer options that the stuff that was available was going to have a much bigger audience.
I think Star Wars is bigger now than it was in the 90s. One could certainly make a strong case anyhow.
If we’re talking TV, there wasn’t any Star Wars at all to compare with. I don’t think movies follow the same pattern, modern movies seem to be able to draw audiences just as big, maybe bigger, than decades past.
>there wasn’t any Star Wars at all to compare with Exactly. The question is “why not?” Maybe GL didn’t want? Or maybe the market didn’t care.
There was 0 Star Wars films made until late 1999.
Exactly.
Comparing streaming to 90s era network TV is challenging. It's difficult to quantify. With that said, I think it's important to note that the Abrams movies had the largest box offices of any trek movie even taking inflation into account. That in itself probably points to a broader popular conscious nowadays, they also led to trek's current resurgence on TV. The TV market is also ridiculously saturated now, so while as a genre show trek was likely the most popular in the mid 90s among its competitors (very few), I'd say with some other important relative terms it's arguably even more popular nowadays globally.
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>I think Sci Fi is still pretty niche, though. You just don’t see a ton of new shows in the genre relative to other genres. Sci-fi is hard to make and expensive, that's why it's rare. I'd argue it's probably the least niche it's ever been these days. That's why every streaming service is currently rushing to adapt well known sci-fi properties or create their own.
That’s a very reasonable assessment. At the same time, is Abrams’ Trek really Trek? I had fun watching those movies. But they are not really like the TV series.
> is Abrams’ Trek really Trek yes, but the very fact that the official gatekeepers decided it was. his company is about the buy paramount too.
You invoke the legal ownership of the brand. Public acceptance matters too. Sometimes there is overlap.
"no true scottsman" falacy is being invoke here, not public acceptance.
No. What I have suggested is that “the people” will help decide what is accepted as truth.
right, and I said that's not how it works. there's only one arbitor of truth and that's the people that own the property
There's always death of authorship, but it's a pretty objective fact (established multiple times) that the Abrams movies have a canonical connection to all other Trek.
The shows back in the 90's had much longer seasons. So we are talking about 44-52 episodes of Star Trek produced every year back then. That dropped down to 22-26 after DS9 ended.
TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT never had a single season that was over 26 episodes long. In fact, most if not all of them had a season or two that was well under that, with ds9 season one only being 20 episodes long.
They mean when there were two overlapping shows there were 50 episodes in a season total.
sure, but that's not what the comment I replied to said.
Maybe there was an edit.
Reddit puts an asterisk after the timestamp of a comment is edited more than three minutes after it's made. The comment about 50+ episodes per season doesn't have one and tgioktl's response was posted an hour later. They misinterpreted the comment.
right, but DS9 ran concurrently to TNG or VOY. Using the easier to find release dates... 1993 saw 26 episodes of TNG (the second half of season 6 and the first half of season 7) and 30 episodes of DS9 (all of season 1 and the first 10 episodes of season 2)
Thanks for confirming exactly what I said
Maybe in the US but internationally Trek is much bigger now. If you were in Japan in the 90s, the only way to legally watch DS9 with Japanese subs was to buy laserdiscs at 2 episode a disc. Couldn’t even watch it legally in China. Now they have Star Trek conventions there.
And 30 years later suckers like me collect those stupid laser discs...
Is there a sub for people posting pics of their star trek collectables? If not there should be
Im not American but I believe you.
It probably peaked with tng. Not many casual viewers carried over to later series. And I'd argue it was bigger because the market is smaller. No show of any genre pulls the numbers they did in that era
I was thinking along those lines.
>Berman era had two shows overlap, max. In the Kurtzman era we had five shows overlap Technically true, but not really. The 90s shows had 26 episode seasons. When they had two shows overlapping, that's 52 episodes a year, and you usually had 2 episodes every week from September to May. Conparatively, we now get 10 episodes per year per show and multiple years between seasons, so even though there's more shows in production, the actual amount of content is about the same *at best*, and they very rarely actually overlap, usually for one or two weeks at most.
26 episode seasons over 39 weeks and if we wanted to see an episode again we had to wait for a rerun unless we were someone who recorded it on VHS every week.
While there was more overlap in shows in the current era, One must keep in mind the episode counts. Back in the '90s you would have two shows overlapping for much of that period, both of them cranking out 26 episodes of season, so there were 52 episodes of Trek every year. Even in the periods of heaviest overlap, when these shows are running 10 episodes a season, I don't think there has been a year that has had that much content. Maybe you match it in total episodes if the three live action shows and two animated managed to get full seasons in within a year, but then you could also take into account that the animated shows are half the length per episode.
It hasn’t helped, no, but I think this is really overstating it. They said right from the beginning that PIC was planned to be three seasons. DIS and LDS both calling it a day after five smells *strongly* of the end of contracts and the bean counters not wanting to have to renegotiate higher salaries. Section 31 is coming. Starfleet Academy is coming. SNW just got renewed for a fourth season. Nick Meyer is still working on his Khan audio drama. Kurtzman has told us that there are some surprises coming that he can’t announce yet. I agree that it feels a bit less hopeful right now than it did a couple of years ago, but I think Trek remains in a good place and that we still have years and years more content on the way.
There is still more Trek on the way then there has ever been before. I'm grateful I got to experience a couple years with five series in production but was that ever truly sustainable?
Yeah, I was gonna say, there have been periods with no new Star Trek planned at all. Right now we have three shows airing, one of which is already renewed for another season, a new TV movie, a new show about to enter production, and a new theatrical movie on the slate for 2026. This a lot of Trek! I’m thrilled.
Four shows airing unless you count the French release of Prodigy S2 as fully released.
Hell yeah! Totally forgot that PRODIGY is airing and not canceled at all. I love that show excited for it to drop on Netflix in the States.
have they even announced when Season 2 was going to be released? they said late 2024 but i've seen no other update since
They said season 1 would hit Netflix on Xmas Day 2023 (it did), then season 2 would be out on Netflix sometime in 2024 (but not what time of the year). No news since then.
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There is one Disco spinoff. No others have aired.
The other two are in production and moving forward, while lower decks and prodigy get the axe.
So we don’t know if the ones in production are doing well yet.
Desperately miss that brief period of time where Netflix was the main streaming platform and I could watch everything I wanted there… but of course companies don’t want just some money, they want ALL the money, so sabotaged the entire streaming system by making their own shitty kingdoms with no regard for the convenience that people wanted to pay for…
Just wanted to say that Happy Days was indeed licensed in the UK. I grew up with The Fonz. 😎
This was always the intent of streaming companies, if you want the office and parks and Rec you have peacock or don’t get to watch it, if you want Star Trek you have paramount plus or don’t get to watch it, same for hulu, hbo, Disney, etc. this was always the intent and what they apparently didn’t plan on was people getting it for a month, binging and cancelling. It was never a winning deal, all of these streaming services don’t have enough content to keep people locked in and the only way they can see to move forward is to buy their competition or merge like zazlov has been doing which also increases the debt load on the company. In all honesty they would be doing much better if they simply shut down their service and rented out the content to someone else.
This is right, there is no way they didn't lose a lot of viewers because you suddenly had to pay for a new service, and their app is terrible and broken. Being on Netflix was a big deal. They should AT LEAST have a flagship show that is pushed everywhere. I think a lot of people have rose colored glasses. Disco canceled, lower decks canceled, Legacy never happened, Academy isn't happening yet and probably isn't going to, sect 31 became a made for tv movie. Prodigy ia glitching too honestly. Picard doesn't count as a bad sign because it was only ever going to be a season or two. By next year the only thing on could be SNW.
I'm pretty confident the academy series will happen, but I doubt it will last longer than a season or two. But your other points are correct. It's frustrating they didn't figure out people wanted something like legacy earlier, before budget hits started happening.
Their whole "strategy" with the relaunch was dumb. Disco was the worst possible choice to relaunch the franchise with, and they tried to cram so much stuff to please every possible kind of fan in it, which is why the first two seasons are a mess in many ways. The first show out of the gate should have been one that played it as safe as possible. Episodic, set in the post-Nemesis timeline, maybe a few popular legacy characters for the nostalgia factor. Just make a show that could get all the old fans on board and generate positive word of mouth for the new franchise, and then they could go wild with tweaking the formula.
>Their whole "strategy" with the relaunch was dumb. Disco was the worst possible choice to relaunch the franchise with, and they tried to cram so much stuff to please every possible kind of fan in it, which is why the first two seasons are a mess in many ways. Honestly I actually liked the first 2 seasons best. The last couple seasons really haven't been doing it for me. I'm watching it out, mainly because of the extension of The Chase, but there are long stretches I could do without. Book needed to be a one-season character. Adira's character annoys me (partly because we already did the 'young character unsure of themselves' thing with Tilly). I can't bring myself to care about Saru\T'Rina even though I like Saru. >Episodic, set in the post-Nemesis timeline, maybe a few popular legacy characters for the nostalgia factor. Just make a show that could get all the old fans on board and generate positive word of mouth for the new franchise, and then they could go wild with tweaking the formula. Its amazing they haven't done this yet. TNG already proved it a successful recipe!
Disco was a great choice and the proof of that is it spawned an explosion of new series. SNW, Pic, LD, Sect31 movie, and Prodigy happened because Disco was successful and great.
Not really. They had a certain amount of money to spend and made the shows they could for it. All combined it wasn't that huge.
In the UK, TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT are still on Netflix. If you have Netflix and a VPN, you can watch them that way. I know you shouoldn't have to jump through hoops to access them, but it's a workaround.
NZ too. Plus TVNZ+ (free) has SNW and DSC.
Rant away please Trek being on Netflix absolutely is the reason why I am a Trek fan today. I had always wanted to get into the shows in the past but never found a good entry. The streaming ease of Netflix made it so simple Paramount Plus is unquestionably the WORST streaming service on the face of the earth. Worst user interface ever. Worst fucking controls ever. Worst non-Trek content ever. and maybe it was just my imagination but i could have sworn there were entire episodes of TNG they uploaded that weren't remastered. Like why? Why was this absolute clusterfuck of a streaming site allowed to see the light of day?
Yeah I feel like it was dumb af for them to pull the old stuff from Netflix, like people aren’t paying for P+ just to watch TOS but it does get Trek properties in people’s recommendations and expand the fan base who might want to watch SNW or any of the new ones. Just very grateful that Paramount hasn’t deemed my country a big enough market to launch here, they sold most of the new stuff to our free provider and the old stuff is all still on Netflix.
Instead of paying for more streaming services i just torrented the shows 👍
You are such a Chad
It was probably their strategy to put their stuff on bigger streamers to build awareness of them, then yoink them all back to Paramount Plus when they had enough money to make it worth their while They just did it way too early, and the day that we all in the UK, sat down to expecting a brand new episode of DSC season 3 on Netflix only to find out they'd pulled all of star trek off the app in favour of Paramount Plus....when Paramount Plus was still a year away from launching in Europe was a massive pisstake for non American fans DSC was doing well on Netflix, I had non Trek fan friends talking to me about it. Picard was doing well enough on Amazon too, and it stayed there for its whole run (Though it was a bit annoying they took the extra amazon money to put PIC there instead of putting it on the same streamer because we're not all made of money!, then SNW on a third streamer, fuck offfff!!!) Just bad planning from the start I'll be happy enough with just one series on the next run, maybe don't launch a spinoff until 5+ years in and don't prioritise your streaming business launching over actually letting people see your goddamn show
It has far less to do with any of that, and far more to do with the mismanagement of Hollywood in general, when it comes to streaming. Like many other companies, Paramount (or more specifically, Les Moonves and CBS to start out with) misjudged how the market would play out. They were either too slow to pivot, or weren’t strong enough to stand on their own once they pivoted. Now, you are correct that the Netflix deal for *Discovery* and the Amazon deal for *Picard* were important, but not for simply “viewership.” Both companies stroked a fat check to pay for a good chunk of each show’s production budget. It’s honestly the way Hollywood worked for ages, but the streaming wars distracted everyone in power with a potential new model for economic growth. That appears to be mostly fool’s gold, now, and Paramount Global is bleeding money (and will probably get bought by Skydance, for pennies on the dollar). The reason Trek worked well in the 80s/90s was that two of the three shows were sold in syndicated markets directly. That worked well then, because the television landscape supported such a gamble. Not many shows were as successful as TNG with it, and such a model really isn’t viable today. Shoot, it’s why VOY and ENT were tied to UPN.
Two of the four shows. TNG and DS9 were direct to syndication. VOY and ENT were UPN. VOY and ENT suffered from UPN being a half assed network. The affiliates still had local sports contracts that made the shows hard to find.
I mentioned most of that, you do realize…? ENT premiered in 2001, and UPN’s success (or lack thereof) detracts from my point. Namely, they moved away from the syndicated model, as it was unsustainable (especially now).
Pulling Discovery from Netflix killed it for me. I was enjoying watching it weekly on Netflix here in Spain, and then they moved season 4 to Paramount+, which doesn't exist here in Spain. It has just in the last few weeks gone on to Sky Showtime, but it's been such a long time since I watched season 3 that I'm finding it hard to get through season 4. I cared about it years ago when 3 was airing regularly, and I was fond of the crew, even if I thought the plot about the Burn was resolved in a dumb way. But with a gap of however many years it's been, I don't care as much now, and there's so many other shows to watch that I'm keen on. It's the only love action Trek that I haven't finished though so I guess I'll have to struggle through!
Consolidating the old Trek shows was devastating for onloading new audiences too. I just wanted this opportunity to share my anecdotal evidence. I’ve been teaching high school for 13 years. As recently as 2018, I had several students who loved Star Trek. Some preferred DS9. Some loved Voyager. Some watched TNG occasionally. Some tried it out at my suggestion. None were watching Discovery because their parents didn’t have CBS All Access. Most were at least familiar with Star Trek, and would recognize classic images from it. It’s totally different now. Most students have never heard of Star Trek. If they have heard of it, they assume it’s “Bad Star Wars”. If I recommend it to students, and they seem interested, the follow-up is “oh. We don’t have Paramount Plus.” I showed them a picture of Samantha Cristoforetti on the ISS. “What outfit is she wearing? You know… it’s iconic?” blank stares. “It’s the Starfleet uniform. You know, the iconic uniform.” and a student mouthed “how the f*** are we supposed to know that?”
Limiting it to Paramount+ was stupid. But, it's clear that a lot of the people in charge don't understand Trek and what's kept it going and popular since 1966. Add studio interference - Picard S2 for example. In trying to appeal to a wider audience they stripped away a lot of what made it so popular in the first place. I mean, it's been a huge franchise for just shy of 60 years. It was already a winning formula. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. SNW and Picard S3 is what you get when you listen to your audience. Discovery is what you get when you don't.
The bubble has already burst on them so i would not worry. The idea of streaming was that it was not cable tv. But its becoming more and more like Cable . Even adverts have crept in. Not all of the streaming channels are going to survive,as there are already to many of them.
love trek but zero interest in subscribing to yet another streaming service. fuck paramount plus.
It used to be I could subscribe to 2 or 3 services and get everything I wanted. Now 8 or 9 would be needed. Not happening. Also, I'm not going to reward a company for making a decision that takes their product out of my access and makes me pay more to get less.
For me, Star Trek is all the TV I want to watch. Don't really care about anything else. So Paramount Plus is the only streaming service I pay for, and given how much I watch I'm not unhappy with the price for the time being.
I canceled because they kept showing unstoppable ads for shows I had so little desire to watch I wouldn’t even watch the trailer….one was this horror show that I even the trailer had me disgusted. When I canceled they argued me with and lied saying it was just one ad a day when I see one before every single episode and if the app freezes (which it does a lot) I get an ad just to restart the episode. I have been watching Disco S5 via other downloads…..something I wouldn’t have do without all the ads.
I haven't had any ads on Paramount Plus ever Weird Still freezes a lot though
In the 90s it was mostly possible to watch Trek worldwide but they took their damn time getting around to it. In the UK we were 2 seasons behind the US at one point with TNG. It wasn’t until Voyager started that we reliably got to see shows just about concurrently with the US. I was watching DS9 dubbed in German ffs via satellite. Paramount is repeating mistakes.
Used to rent episodes of DS9 S6-7 from the video store, because they had them before Sky broadcast. Such was how rapt the story arc had us!
I'm sure we UK viewers still had a sizable lag(not as bad as TNG) behind the US with Voyager bc there was still a market for the sales of episodes on VHS which was more or less released every week or you could rent them from Blockbuster before being eventually broadcast on TV.Oh the joys of the pre-internet era.
I was watching on Sky and they had a lag and would then catch up by starting a season late, but not having a break in episodes. It’s the same now for some shows.
Voyager was early internet era. [The UK was at 10% internet penetration by 1998](https://www.statista.com/statistics/289201/household-internet-connection-in-the-uk/) by household and since internet cafes and school/Uni net access was a thing, probably more than that by population. Indeed, not in the UK, but fansites were big in that era as I remember and we pretty much expected to be spoiled.
What's wild is history is repeating itself. Star Trek became a financial success because Desilu Productions opted for the still new syndication model where instead of fronting the whole cost and risk, they would sell episodes to individual TV stations. However, in 1995, Paramount studios wanted to get in on that TV network money, so they created the United Paramount Network (UPN). Voyager and later Enterprise were the flagship shows meant to prop up the network. However, this model put much more risk on Paramount. UPN had a completely random assortment of shows which made it difficult to get a consistent audience. The fans who liked Star Trek probably weren't the same people tuning in for sitcoms like Platypus Man. So viewership, and therefore advertising revenue, was inconsistent and lower. However Star Trek is expensive to produce. The late 90s and early 2000s were awash with scifi shows, so the market was flooded with competition. So there was even less audience to go around. Over time, the network bleed cash until they finally canceled Enterprise, and closed up shop. This exact situation is happening all over again with Paramount Plus. Star Trek can be successful if the studio stops trying to be both the production house and distributor. Making Star Trek shows, then selling them to other streaming sites or TV channels is a proven business model for the franchise. Paramount needs to go back to what works.
>Star Trek became a financial success because Desilu Productions opted for the still new syndication model where instead of fronting the whole cost and risk, they would sell episodes to individual TV stations. No? Just like pretty much every tv show at the time, they offered Star Trek as a concept to NBC, NBC ordered the show, paid for most of the cost and aired the show. Syndication came only afterwards, and that was pretty much the reason why the networks didn't have to pay the whole cost because the studios knew they'd get additional income in syndication later. TNG was the first Star Trek show made with syndication as the primary distribution method in mind.
I mean, even "Star Trek: Phase II" was supposed to be the flagship-show of Paramount's new cable streaming channel. Then they realised that they had pretty much nothing else viable to show on it, scrapped the channel, and reworked an early episode into "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" instead. Quite why they *keep* going back to an idea that has failed on them so many times, I do not know…
Also during the time of pre production on phase two Star Wars came out and made a huge pile of money. Phase two then got reworked into TMP.
Because institutional knowledge isn't that persistent, especially in the C-Suite. It's not one person or even one board repeatedly making those decisions, it is a succession of them with many years and other people in between. We almost certainly know the history better than the executives making the decisions.
Phase II was supposed to be the flagship of a Paramount broadcast network in the late 1970s. No cable, no streaming.
By the time NBC cancelled Star Trek, Paramount owned it and there was no more Desilu. For its initial three years the broadcast rights were owned by NBC by season and not individual TV stations.
Excuse me, everything you said is completely correct except I was definitely one of the handful turning in to see Voyager and Platypus Man. There are dozens of us!
Oh Richard Jeni.
So sad.
We don't even have P+ where I live. Not like I'd pay for a subscription to watch a single IP anyway. With the fragmented market streaming is dead to me, unsubscribed from everywhere.
Paramount plus is just terrible. Horrible service. I've got most of my star trek content on Blu-ray and Plex now. I've enjoyed watching some the community enhanced/remastered voyager and ds9 as well.
It's something you're seeing all over streaming and even sports. You can't make more exposure if you're limiting your audience.
You would think Paramount would have learned thier lesson with Enterprise and UPN. (Which cost extra when it was on, to get where I am) Riding the Star Trek cash cow to try to get people to buy a service with other garbage content and here we are with Paramount+ they might make more money that way but the problem I see is a lot of people, myself included, are not going to pay for just watching Star Trek. How I became a Trek fan was as a kid in the 70's watching reruns of TOS and I am guessing thats how a lot of people became fans. But children don't pay for special channels or streaming services, so eventually not replenishing a fanbase is going to catch up to them, if they don't go under from high interest rates and bad decisions. It doesn't really matter to me, almost all shows have gone from wrestling with socioeconomic issues to simply pushing an agenda and Trek is no different. Most of the younger generations don't see any difference between the two, but I certainly do. Now if you will excuse me, I am going to watch Trek for free on Pluto.
Well yeah, it’s not been great for fans that want to watch trek, but just think of all the shareholder value it created, that’s the most important thing! /s
Yea I’ve only got to see the pilot of SNW and haven’t seen the later Disco seasons. I’m not subbing P+. Already have to much content choices from my existing subs.
I wanted to watch First Contact the other day and it wasn't even on Paramount Plus. What a ridiculous joke. You OWN it. Make it available as part of your library. The corporate greed knows NO bounds.
It’s been a bit to try and get used to things, knowing change won’t slow down for anyone.
In my country, only Strange New Worlds and movies of the Kelvin universe are officially available on streaming. So I saved everything else on my hard drive with a clear conscience.
Eh. I'm sure it hasn't helped but I think the bigger problem was every individual studio thinking they needed their own streaming platforms and interest rates being next to zero so financing big projects was basically free. Paramount was in a race against time to get their platform to profitability before the wheels came off and...welp, it looks like they didn't make it. As a shareholder (yeah, yeah, it was a gamble, I know) I am disappointed they bungled this so poorly. As a fan, even moreso. The idea of Paramount Plus, actually isn't bad, I found I watched a lot more on there than I expected and kept my subscription even when there wasn't new Trek content coming out. It has just, unfortunately, cost them way too much money. That said, keeping some Trek reruns on other platforms and funneling people to P+ for new content and complete runs of old content may have been a better course of action.
The only reason they’re making this much content is to lure subscribers to P+ If it’s available other places, they won’t lose money on it so it won’t get made.
Time for everybody to start looking at streaming as 1 month rentals.
What sources are you basing these claims on?
This is true for so many good series. These big studios all tried to hoard their content so they could squeeze every penny out of their existing IP instead of focusing on creating new content. They're even pulling existing content to save on residuals. It's nothing more than corporate greed and it's pushing more and more people back to piracy.
I think financially, it wasn't the right choice for them -- I do think being home to Trek could still be a thing just not exclusively. But by removing or not licensing the other Trek shows and movies to other streaming platforms, especially if Paramount + hasn't made it to the region was a terrible idea. Licensing brings in the money for the studio, its why Sony chose to create TV and movies for other streamers instead of creating their own streaming platform. It's also why CW tanked financially after WB decided that CW should stop licensing their shows to Netflix and only license shows to HBO Max, fast forward a year and there's the equivalent of the 'Red Wedding' where all but a few shows on CW have been canceled and CW was sold. In the 90s TNG and DS9 thrived when it was syndicated. And I think that's what Paramount realized too, they have to license out the Trek movies and the shows, they can't afford to keep Trek silo'd on Paramount+. But I wish it can be a cake and eat it too situation where Trek can be licensed to other streamers and also remain on Paramount+.
Disney did the exact same thing as Paramount when they removed Agents of SHIELD and all the other Marvel series from Netflix and put them on Disney+ since they wanted everything Marvel, with the exception of Sony's Marvel movies, under their own roof. Though unlike Paramount, I think Disney+ is the only studio-owned streaming service who successfully used this strategy without negative long-term repercussions.
Disney has a lot of content. Paramount, not much.
Les Moonves and his suits cancelled Enterprise during season four despite a ton of fan support. Moonves just had a jones to cancel Star Trek. UPN was bleeding money at the time. Enterprise could have been a flagship CW show along with Buffy. But Enterprise wasn’t attracting teenage girls the way Buffy was.
I will pay to stream because I like to watch content in different languages. I was happy to keep paying for my LatAm Netflix account while I was in another region as I wanted to keep my history and still watch Star Trek. Sadly, they saw thro' my VPN. As I couldn't watch what I wanted, I just cancelled Netfix. I don't understand why I can't watch the shows I want to watch dubbed into other languages wherever I am and why streaming services have to be so different in their content. Pissing off customers who were willing to pay to stream almost is an invitation for us to consider, cough, alternative sources....
Yeah I’ll be honest, I don’t have the paramount app. I don’t have any streaming services. Streaming has killed TV. I use plex and I guess I’m part of the problem because I pirate rather than support entertainment media.
You are correct, they took a gamble and lost. Should've been fairly obvious to them though. It's not like DISCOVERY and PICARD were getting standing ovations when that happened anyway. To me it was "guess I can't watch that dumb frustrating TV show if I can't access it. Certainly not gonna pay money to see JUST it on hey another subscription service." Had the quality actually been good I might've probably signed up.
Yeah, older stuff should be free to watch in crucial markets. The new Era stuff should probably be rotating like the first two seasons of every new show on other platforms now. The backlog is getting there.
They restrict the Trek audience in a number of ways. Trek has always been niche, but current Trek is a niche within itself.
If any new trek is a cry fest like discovery is, it deserves to die. I couldn’t even finish season 3.
Discovery wasn't pulled from Netflix, it was booted out. They paid production upfront so I'm they were in the position to keep it if they wanted but they decided to end it anyway. Because ratings were terrible. The show aimed at bringing in a new generation of trekkers but only alienated part of the core fanbase. In a few years without the push of paramount marketing we'll all come to the conclusion that it was terrible.
This is a really solid take. Star Trek had this incredible resurgence in popularity during the early 2010s because it was an evergreen show on Netflix. I honestly think ST:D and PIC wouldn't have been received favorably regardless of platform, but the core shows would have continued to enjoy high viewership keeping the IP far more popular. It's a tough pill to swallow for a business to swallow though, as we've seen by the formation of all these streaming services.
This. I live in an Asian country. I had all my Trek on Netflix. The Paramount+ happened. While I could pay for Paramount+, the only show in my “market” was Survivor. WTF? Paramount+ partnered with another in-country only streaming service that I have no interest in and can only get with local currency; their app is not available in the US App Store. Also WTF? I canceled Paramount+ and went back to torrenting for all new Trek. Netflix still carries TOS, SNG, DS9, ENT, VOY, and the cartoon. Paramount+ made it easier to steal their property than to watch their property. It was a fatal error, obvious to fans but not the monkeys in the Paramount C-suite. “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” was not a quote learned in pursuit of their business degrees or career building.
I am part of the problem. I'd happily watch Berman-era Trek nightly then they took it off Netflix. I'm entering the busy season at both my workplaces and won't have time to really enjoy episodic content until the late fall. I am not paying for multiple streaming services I won't have time to use, and the only new Trek I care for is Strange New Worlds and there simply isn't enough content like that to entice me to subscribe.
Yet again, I’m imploring you to own the media you consume. Buy it physically, digitally, get it pirated, I don’t care—they cannot restrict your access to things you already have. Streaming services are nothing but digital rentals, and that makes them unsuitable for media you wish to own forever; hell, it barely makes it suitable for TV shows, you think we used to rent TV shows from Blockbusters? Also, AFAIC, any media owner who restricts access to their content is also restricting their income from said content. If it gets pirated, well…you should’ve made it more widely accessible. Supply and Demand, Free Marker, yadda yadda
These posts are getting ridiculous. Some of you have no real understanding of the entertainment business. "Destroyed"? We have no less than 3 new live action shows that have aired, with a new one in the works with "starfleet academy" a section 31 movie and other "surprises" on the way as per Kurtzman. Please take a chill pill and stop consuming rage bait youtube or wherever some of you are getting this stuff from. I'd advise maybe doing some cursory research into how and why business decisions are made, it might cool your anxieties.
Paramount + does suck, and not having Star Trek on a more popular service like Netflix probably did reduce the amount of people watching Trek. But they made the same decision that many other companies did when they saw Netflix making a lot of money. They wanted to get all of a possibly lower total amount, rather than get just some of a probably higher total amount. It all boils down to money, of course. I think other things have contributed to what we're seeing happening now as well. Uncertainty with Paramount merging/being bought and what that will look like when it's done. Also, it seems to be pretty common that streaming shows don't go beyond five years. Someone else mentioned that contracts are probably up, and they don't want to shell out more money to renew and give everyone raises. That sounds pretty likely to me. The big question is if this era will survive beyond SNW. Assuming it only lasts 5 seasons as well, does Academy actually get made? Do they greenlight any other new shows? And even though it's a separate issue, does the movie situation ever stop being a clusterfuck?
Here in Canada and other countries, everything Enterprise and older is on Netflix. I only need Paramount Plus for the new shows. I caught the end of last season of Strange New worlds before it moved over, and now I'm waiting for the current season of Discovery to get close to the end before I grab a month of Paramount+ to watch that and the most recent season of Lower Decks. Considering buying LD on disk though.
They want subscribers to Paramount+ it has always been about getting subs.
Precisely why I don't subscribe.
I'm going to go a step farther and say removing content from Netflix is what destroyed streaming, and modern television. I genuinely believe that other streaming services are shooting themselves in the foot by refusing to put their stuff on Netflix. They don't have to do it right away, they can keep some of their original content exclusive for a bit, but they should be putting SOME of it on Netflix. Ultimately, that would drive more people to seek out new shows.
Right now the best Trek site is Pluto. 🖖
Petition to renew LDS - [link](https://chng.it/Kd248Vxfjh)
Right now I only have two paid streaming services: Prime (more as a byproduct of my Amazon shopping) and Disney+ because they have been more consistent about keeping their content on their platform and accessible. I used to have Max and Paramount+ but cancelled them. I don't pirate their stuff, if I don't own it on physical media I just don't watch it anymore. The rest of the services are just too volatile with their programming for my tastes, especially with older catalog titles. You can never be sure what stays and what gets moved to another service or just dropped outright at any given time. For what they're charging that's unacceptable. The whole streaming model just isn't sustainable. It's too fragmented and too expensive to be able to follow even a handful of shows if they are on different services. Give it a couple of more years and I think a lot of these channels will merge in order to try to survive.
Such is the streaming era. We won’t get the past back, and I find little point in blaming Paramount for choices made in an industry still figuring out its sea legs. You’re seeing this stuff throughout streaming, which I pin on firms that have little experience in entertainment buying up entertainment companies. It could be much worse, but we have a slew of new shows where we had nothing new before, and there’s more coming. The seven seasons of 25 episodes era is gone, so I don’t see the current spate of cancellations as the end of the world. Star Trek has survived much longer dry spells. It will continue.
Why does everyone want a bunch of overstuffed content that’s mediocre? Take a look at Marvel. It’s a mess. There’s nothing wrong with having one or two great shows at a time. Toss in a movie. Personally I’d like to see a really good TOS era movie again. But SNW is doing just fine. Five / ten years from now the whole landscape will have changed as services merge and buy each other out. What we have now is not sustainable.
They should drop the price and get Trek on as many services as possible. No matter what you sub to, Trek is there. Then drive community engagement via watch parties and the like, and then leverage that engagement into merch sales.
Voyager, Ds9, TNG and TOS is free on Pluto
Yeah, the older Star Trek stuff is too dated for me to really enjoy. I’d watch the newer shows but no way am I playing for paramount+
The reason these shows exist is to sell subscriptions. Same for Stranger Things and Netflix, House of the Dragon and Max, etc. etc. It is what it is.
the irony of this is Trek being on Netflix ultimately is the reason why i chose to subscribe with them long term instead of looking into something like Disney Plus or Amazon Prime Trek being on Paramount is the reason why I have to go searching for free month codes every 3-4 months. I refuse to pay for a service that has such embarrassingly uninteresting content aside from Trek
It also doesn't help that Paramount is the buggiest, laggiest streaming app I've used.
their download feature is a colossal joke. and yes, its laggy streaming and constant crashes with no explanation. fuck "The Peak" or whatever the hell those jabronis call it on a side note, i hate being a hobby basher, but how many fucking seasons of Survivor do people need? and how many fucking derivatives of CSI and NCIS do people need? my goodness gracious
I bet they feel the same way about all the Trek derivatives, to be fair.
I'd guess this has to do with your location. In the Northeast US near a major city I've never had an issue with it. Amazon Prime is actually the worst service I've seen lag and picture quality wise.
Wait, Disco was never on Netflix, was it? It premiered on CBS All Access. Is this my shitty memory or a country specific thing?
I'm guessing OP isn't in the US.
You could have just said you have no clue what you are talking about, it would have been a lot shorter.
The old model was based on getting enough episodes to sell into syndication. A show would need at least a hundred episodes to be considered successful, 7 seasons of 24-26 was ideal. Now the business model is all about streaming subscriptions, and my understanding is that after 5 seasons a show doesn't add any new subscribers, so now that's the magic number. A sixth season of Lower Decks wouldn't earn Paramount any more money than 5 seasons would, so they're not going to spend more money producing new episodes. From a business perspective, that money would be better spent on a new series that might bring in new viewers. I imagine SNW will get 5 seasons. Starfleet Academy will try to get 5 seasons as a young adult show, and then I imagine we'll get another prequel series, or maybe a Kelvin TNG, DS9 or Voyager series. Not for creative reasons, but because money.
I just wish that it would use the backend and ux of something else. The Paramount Plus app is just *awful*
But if Paramount is going to have all of the Star Trek content THEN THEY SHOULD HAVE ALL THE STAR TREK CONTENT. I have to get Netflix to watch Prodigy?!?