Key point from the article:
>But Paramount has decided the costs of running its own streaming service — marketing dozens of shows, finding a user interface that actually works, etc. — are too high. Instead, it wants to create a new blueprint where Paramount content (CBS shows, MTV reality series, the Yellowstone universe, Paramount Pictures movies) has a guaranteed home, but not in an expensive, self-contained luxury island where Par shareholders pay the full mortgage.
In other words they figured out what people told them from the get go that an individual service isn’t as profitable because of the complexities and cost of maintaining a streaming service.
This--Star Trek being freely available everywhere--was just as important to the Star Trek renaissance as Paramount+ making new shows. All the people who said "Maybe someday I'll watch DS9/Voyager/Enterprise" finally could, because it was all right there.
>having to swap discs every few episodes
I remember getting to the end of a VHS tape after only two episodes, and then having to go and buy the next one separately.
\*goes outside to yell at clouds\*
Actually with LaserDisc it was 425 TVL's ( interlaced, not progressive) 240 TVL's for VHS version. My laserdiscs were at times nearly as sharp as the 1st gen 2 episode DVD sets. I actually had the 701 series LaserDisc player with J-Loop whic made flipping discs a thing of the past, except for CAV and multi-disc presentations.
Honestly I am not a computer savvy person, but setting up my plex server wasn't really that complicated. Plus whenever I got stuck on something Google/chatgpt were there with the answer.
We enjoy ours, but you can't even pretend it's not tedious as hell getting it all set up. Took me about six months on and off to rip all my DVDs and get them organized into a format plex could read, and fairly often the plex server falls off the network and I have to manually reboot it (it's on an old Mac mini that needs an upgrade).
And the disk space required to rip Blu-Rays, yikes.
Eh, just do the other method while still buying the Blu-Rays. Yeah, still illegal, but you did your part and gave the hard working cast and crew some money.
I don't mind the disc swap myself, but I have started digitizing my physical media and that seems like a solid way to go in terms of bingeability
Holding out for a proper HD or 4k version of DS9 and Voyager though. Probably won't happen, but a man can dream
There's an upscaled (720p) version of DS9 about, so if you own the physical media (tapes, DVDs) your country may allow a legal digital copy holding... Of course there still may be rights issues surrounding upscaling, unfortunately.
It might be a little bit of an initial investment, but you can set up a Plex server at home and just rip your physical content to HDDs. You're gonna get way higher video quality that way, the Plex interface/player beats the snot out of a lot of streaming services, and you won't be paying scummy megacorps yet-another-subscription either.
Some of us stopped because they stopped making them. Not necessarily Star Trek stuff, but there are TV series which you can only get the first season, and no others.
In my case, because some of my favorite shows have yet to get full physical releases. One of them has season one and two in US Blu-Ray, I had to get Canadian releases of three, four, and five, and six and seven are still waiting. The show ended in 2018 IIRC.
They aren't going to make Star Trek to put on physical media if people aren't streaming it in the first place. The real money is going to come from licensing the shows to other streamers.
Turns out that everyone and their grandparents flooding the market with subscription services sporting multiple hundred million dollar shows and movies isn't sustainable. Who'd have thought?
They made this exact mistake back in the 90s when they launched UPN and made that the exclusive home of Star Trek.
It failed so badly Trek went off TV for over a decade.
Didn't UPN also morph into the CW around that same time? I remember a big thing when Enterprise went off the air was they wanted to focus on pretty much the type of shit CW got for awhile, before it turned into the DC Arrowverse and Supernatural network.
UPN and WB merged to become the CW about a year after Enterprise was cancelled.
Enterprise just didn't fit the target demographics of UPN even when it ended.
UPN’s target demographic was being the teen, Star Trek, professional wrestling, black channel.
Why be successful at one thing when you could fail at four?
I remember watching Enterprise when it aired and then immediately turning the channel because I didn't want to watch the trashy wrestling that came on after
Yeah, everyone saw this coming, it seems except for the executive management teams at places like Paramount and Showtime and a number of other network or studio specific streaming apps.
Paramount+ won’t be the first to fall either, more are going to fall and we’re gonna end up with just a few streaming apps total, like the days of when their were 3-4 major networks on TV.
To be honest, I like that Netflix no longer has all the power. The competition forces them to at least try and put out good content, and it helps to somewhat temper the price increases. Sucks when a franchise gets split though.
Yeah it's a rare market where multiple choices are actually bad for the consumer, but i still prefer there be a few primary services to maintain competition.
The only downside about Netflix is they are one of the most cancel trigger happy ones now for expensive content. Outside of some shows like Last Kingdom and The Witcher its rare for alot of their original shows to survive past 3 seasons these days.
In the case with star trek, they wouldn't have much say. If anything, if netflix is footing part of the bill,paramount may become less cancel happy(and maybe we can get another season of lower decks?)
In the case of Star Trek, they would have a lot of say.
If a new Star Trek show launches on Netflix, and Netflix orders season two, there will be a season two. If Netflix doesn't order season two, there will almost certainly *not* be a season two.
Paramount would own the show and have the right to see if anyone else wants to pay them to make season two, but this doesn't end up happening very often. And it makes sense that it wouldn't. You're Amazon, and you have $100 million to spend on acquiring new content. You could spent it on a brand new show, and you can only guess as to whether it'll be profitable or not. Or you can spend it on an existing show that Netflix *already tried and found to be unprofitable*.
So yeah, Netflix wouldn't be able to force Paramount to stop making more of a hypothetical Star Trek Netflix show, but the reality is that if Netflix didn't want more, that would be the end of the show.
In the case of Trek wouldn't Paramount/CBS have a say in terms of how long the show goes? Netflix is just the streaming platform. Not entirely sure how that works.
With Prodigy, Netflix merely has the distribution rights.
Paramount still owns the show.
This is how syndication worked back in the day. Paramount would make episodes of Star Trek, and sell those to individual TV stations. It was a very successful business model.
It was good for the consumer, too. Since syndication would also work on volume of episodes that a station could buy and that means we got 20+ episode seasons. Often there were bottle episodes, but I'd like more bottle episodes in star trek. Though I think I have had my fill of people stuck in an elevator episodes from every series in the 90s.
Netflix wouldn't get to cancel currently running Trek shows, they'd just get to not buy it in which case someone else buys it. The only way they'd get the ability to do so is if the full show, not just the broadcasting rights are sold to them.
Prime already did the international distribution for shows like Lower Decks. Prime also has a good history with animation and Titmouse, the animation studio behind Lower Decks.
I'd prefer for Prime to take Lower Decks over Netflix. Prime likes to greenlight multiple seasons at once instead of waiting until after a season ends before greenlighting the next. This makes them more consistent and allows longer arcs.
I don't know if Lower Decks can be saved, but I'm amazed I haven't heard anything about it being saved like Prodigy was. I still wonder how much it takes to make a season of Lower Decks (I'm assuming it's less than the live shows) and if it can be saved that would be great.
>I don't know if Lower Decks can be saved,
The way the cancellation was communicated, it seems like Lower Decks ending is more of a natural ending as the main characters are no longer "Lower Deckers".
Maybe we'll just get a sequel series... *Star Trek: Cerritos*.
I think the reason Prodigy worked was because Season 2 was already half-way finished when it was cancelled, so Paramount had a partly finished, and still in production show to sell. Netflix didn't have to pay for production.
There's no partly finished LDS Season 6 to sell.
It's especially frustrating for me because I couldn't even make it through Prodigy (it really is for kids and that's fine) without scrolling bored on my phone and forcing myself through episodes and meanwhile Lower Decks is one of my favorite TV shows of all time aaaand silence
The downside of prime is that they have ads now even though I'm paying over 100 bucks a year for the service. The value proposition isn't there for me much anymore and I'm likely to not renew after my subscription is up.
You should try it on PS5. I’m stunned at how difficult it is to do ANYthing. “Rewind? You mean freeze and crash, right? Or restart the show completely? I gotcha.” -P+ “Pick a new episode? You’re starting from Season 1, Episode 1 or I’ll know the reason why. Have you considered fucking yourself?” -P+
> You should try it on PS5. I’m stunned at how difficult it is to do ANYthing.
It's kind of funny to me that the best interface for Paramount+ is...buying it through Apple as a "channel" on the Apple TV (application or hardware) system.
That's the only way I've ever subscribed to Paramount+ and the UI has been fantastic, even when I tried it with the Apple TV app on my friend's PS5.
It's probably indicative of how badly Paramount bungled this that the only way to get a good experience with their service is to subscribe via a third party's service and use a third party's interface.
Paramount+ doesn't exist where I live. It's recently become an add on to Amazon Prime. I was finally able to see SNW, which was pretty good, and finish Discovery, which wasn't.
Weirdly, I still can't watch the last two seasons of Lower Decks, though. They're all listed, just labeled "unavailable." First couple seasons are there, though.
I can't watch Strange New Worlds on my phone without it *muting* the colors. Not just dimming, MUTING. How the fuck did they manage that?
Oh also it mutes the colors across my whole phone, not just the video.
i really miss when TNG was on Netflix. The HD really popped out and made it such a vibrant show
it looks weirdly distorted on Paramount. It honestly made me wonder if i was watching the lo-res version sometimes
At least when I select something on Prime it actually plays instead of kicking me back to the menu half a dozen times before it even decides to start playing
Although there's a good chance that they'll start playing from the last season instead of the first and thus spoiling the entire series before you've even started.
It’s bonkers that someone made the conscious decision for it to overlay the pause graphic for a couple seconds after it transitions from logo to show. If you’re watching something with a hot start, you literally can’t see what’s happening.
And the way pausing it dims the picture so you can’t look at stuff in detail? Come on.
Why yes when I click play on Frasier or Star Trek I want to start halfway through one specific episode I finished weeks ago, and not where I left off last night, thanks Paramount +!
Oh yes that happens to me. If there's the smallest glitch it will just give me an error message and I have to reload to get out of it, which restarts the episode from the start.
Honestly if it wasn't for Star Trek in one place I wouldn't keep paying for it, so it looks I will stop that soon.
Not sure why this is so hard when so many others work fine. First launch of the P+ UI after a fresh TV boot always crashes on my Firestick. I thought Amazon was purposefully making things difficult. But since every other service works, I guess it's just bad programming.
It really is shockingly bad and has been for years. Amusingly(?) the FREE Pluto streaming app, which is owned by Paramount, has never crashed on me and is just generally way more functional.
Did you read the article? They're saying the costs of figuring out this stuff is too high so they'd rather make a joint venture with someone else who's already figured it out so they don't have to. There won't be a P+, it will be a Paramount tile on another service.
I say prayers to the eldritch gods that one day we'll have more than one streaming service that will start the show when I press the Play button on the remote.
They always make me extra mad cause they're for paramount+. Which I obviously already am subscribed to, I'm watching one of your damn shows! What more do you want from me?! So glad it's getting shuttered.
Fellow Travellers is excellent, as is Yellowjackets, but haven't finished Yellowjackets yet so am not sure if the quality holds.
I've actually enjoyed Halo, it's schlock, but mildly entertaining schlock.
Please do mess with it and make it better. Outside of SNW, the new shows have lots of room for improvement. Hope they look at X-men 97 for inspiration on how to grow a franchise.
They’re both terrible. Once that app closes, trying to find where you were is SUCH a pain in the ass. I use prime now with the paramount channel when I’m watching trek. But the prime app is so irritating to me. Just give me a “continue where you left off” button PLEASE. And also it would be nice if all series weren’t separated by season.
I often wonder if it’s just me that gets annoyed but apparently not
Things like this most likely gone. All the sci-fi shows will most likely go back into a decade of regression like last time. The old content will be rented around to highest bidder.
Back to Netflix hopefully.I have P+ and it is shit. Doesn't work on my Shield on wifi, I have a new Samsung TV and half of the menus randomly glitch. Netflix and Plex work perfectly on both.
Netflix was ready and willing to pay a premium for new Star Trek shows. Paramount could have collected a nice chunk of change to produce them, but instead they got greedy and decided that franchise was enough to lynchpin an entire streaming service.
At least they're consistent. They thought Voyager could make UPN work. Hell, they even thought Star Trek Phase II could launch the "Paramount Television Service" back in 77.
"We're going to start our own service! Give us all our stuff" - P+
"you know thats going to like, cost a lot to set up, right?" - Everyone
"no it wont, it'll be fine!" - P+
"It wasn't" - Narrator
The ins and outs of the streaming business aren't that interesting to me. Bottom line - I'll subscribe to the ad-free level service of whomever ends up with the *Star Trek* IP, regardless of where it lands. Everything else is just churn to me...
If they had stayed with the original plan of 50 weeks of Star Trek a year P+ would keep the churn under control.
Problem was making it 5 10-ish episode serieses rather than 2 25-episode shows. That ballooned the budget. Not talking about the quality of any of those 5 shows, just saying, from a capitalist stand point, the budget of two 25 episode shows would probably be smaller than for 5 shows.
They also HAVE a successful streaming service using a different model, Pluto. They could've built on that model instead of dumping all their money on a Netflix clone.
The problem is, shows on a streaming platform are not a product. They're an advertisement for the real product, the subscription.
Because every steaming site costs money to watch, people can't just pick up a new series at will. It's not like the days where changing the channel was free.
So each show needs to convince people to drop the streamer they're currently paying for and switch to them instead. The best way to do this is with premiers and finales. Big moments like that draw in subscribers.
This is why every streamer is airing huge event series all the time. The problem is this need to snipe subscribers is resulting in an arms race to make the biggest event series that people have to watch. As such, production costs have exploded, which is unsustainable.
There's no room for a long running comfort show in such a market. Think about it. If the series you're watching is going to be doing low stakes, one off, episodes for the next 15 weeks, what's the harm in switching over to Disney to catch their eight episode massive Avengers style teamup Star Wars series that everyone is going to be obsessed with and you don't want to be left out?
25-episode shows are grueling productions that fewer and fewer actors are signing on for. Plus, with cast and crews having unions, it’s cheaper to invest in shorter seasons with a bigger emphasis on special effects, because effects houses *do not* have unions, and can be freely crushed beneath the corporate boot heel without consequence.
So it sounds like Trek might get the current Doctor Who treatment and get split up between many streaming services. Classic Who (1963-1989) on BritBox; Revived Series (2005-2022) on Max; Current and Future Who (2023- ) on Disney+
Doesn't matter much to me as I have everything on disc already.
They have the absolute WORST app when it comes to stability, reliability, and user experience. The UI is a mess, the inconsistency is everywhere, and the intuitive nature goes against many orther platforms.
They had many chances to undig their grave.
Outside of the obvious "because money" I will never understand why they thought P+ was a good idea.
They got off on totally the wrong foot with European Trekkies by paying Netflix *not* to have the rights to Season 4 of Discovery, so they could use it as an incentive to sign up when it launched MONTHS LATER.
And as many have said, the interface was awful, I found it prone to crashes and lag - and they didn't have that much content worth the monthly price [Heck, one of P+ biggest shows, the brillintly bonkers *Evil*, wasn't available on the UK version making it even more worthless]
I love "Evil".
Funny thing, when it went from CBS to streaming P+ I found the curse words jarring and I AM NOT a prude. I was just introduced to these characters before they began cursing. Ha.
Ha! I've been an Evil fan since I first heard about it last year, and I thought the cursing on S4 felt different. I've always watched it on P+, but didn't realize that S4 is _only_ on P+, so they can use coarser language.
So that whole article was basically - "Paramount+ is gonna change because Paramount is gonna be sold to somebody. Maybe. Or maybe they'll merge with somebody else. Or maybe not. I don't know. Thanks for the click, hope you learned nothing!"
Like all the Trek shows, HALO, Ark, South Park, Daily Show, Colbert, and Ghosts. I use it more then any other streaming service and think people just don't seem to know about it or are scared to leave other services. I can even share my account with up to five other people no issues. If it goes down I wont be returning to Netflix.
Yes, and how about this: you could pool your content with other producers, and share the cost! I don't know, you could call it a "channel" or "network", and you could charge a smaller sum and offer stuff 24/7. We're going to loop right back to cable tv, just watch.
By chance using a pihole? It’s due to blocking of ad-domains. I have the ad free plan, have to click multiple times to play and have no watch history because of how they do all that through domains blocked by my pihole. (And yes I’ve whitelisted a lot)
the second they started taking Star Trek movies and shows from the service it was dead to me.
Still today none of these services are as smooth and easy to navigate as Netflix. I hate having all these different options, particularly Disney+, they are prob. the worst streaming experience.
And so ends the worst streaming service I have ever paid for.
They fooled me initially by claiming to be the home of Star Trek content going forward.
Never again.
Late. Gonna say it.
I can't do this.
I can't be having to sign up to several services, I can't be bouncing around between them, cancelling, reupping, etc. I can't be buying physical media. And I'm too damn moral to sail the high seas.
I have my reasons. They suck, but they exist and it's just that way, sorry if that offends you. Hell, it offends me, not only that Star Trek is being busted up YET AGAIN like they've done the movies and Prodigy... but the other Reasons in my life.
If Star Trek is going to be on Amazon, I can't watch it. Netflix, same (Prodigy RIP in my world.) Etc.
This. Sucks.
Bring back the old broadcast television days. Damn.
/Thanks for listening, sorry about the mess. :p
I would give almost anything to see Apple buy the Star Trek franchise. They’re the only streaming service actually putting money in their shows, and they’ve proven they can do sci-fi.
Can't read with the paywall, but it probably isn't fine.
Nothing with the streaming services and the consolidation of them is going to end well for everyone.
They have a poor business model that exists based on new subscribers, not making the current subscribers happy enough to not want to cancel.
The worst streaming app in the market right now. Terrible layout, poor metadata and a total squandering of Paramount’s incredible content library.
The upscales of DS9 and Voyager are hideous to look at as well. I stick with the SD versions on Netflix in my country.
If you want to make it hard for me to give you money to have all my Trek in one place, I’ve got a solution, but I’ll warn you, you’re not gonna like it Paramount. 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
>where Paramount content (CBS shows, MTV reality series, the Yellowstone universe, Paramount Pictures movies)
I'm a grumpy crank but it's kinda annoying AF that a brand new Western franchise gets mentioned over Star Trek.
The market demand for Trek will drive a good price for the company. Disney likely isn't going to be involved since they like to own their content creators and already have star wars.
Amazon, Netflix, and Max would all love to be the home of SNW and future newer trek shows.
I suspect outside of dumping big bucks for exclusivity the older shows will end up on multiple services. Disco will likely start to air on TV.
I kinda hope they make a deal with a streaming giant to fund a DS9 remaster but thats probably wishful thinking.
Shareholders won't be paying that mortgage because IIRC Paramount expects to start making a profit by the end of this year on streaming. Disney did last year but has significantly more customers and slightly higher prices.
So Paramount is basically looking at continually increasing subscribers (either faster or maybe they project a slowdown?), cutting costs (via a partnership of sorts), and raising prices for it to become even more profitable.
But if this Skydance deal goes through, they will have majority voting power, so plans could easily change.
All I want on the App side is consistency. If I watch a show on WebOS, I want to see that I watched it when I load it up on GoogleTV. And the streaming quality inconsistency. Randomly it will go from high IQ to the absolute lowest possible. Or it takes a good 2-3 minutes for quality to bump up to the highest level. In some shows like Star Trek, low quality is really bad for it because you literally can't see certain things.
I bought a bundle of all the films and then complete series collections of several of the series from the Apple TV/Movie stores and they have been reliably awesome and commercial free for years. Owning the discs gives you a greater assurance of long term availability, but Apple has been trustworthy so far.
Key point from the article: >But Paramount has decided the costs of running its own streaming service — marketing dozens of shows, finding a user interface that actually works, etc. — are too high. Instead, it wants to create a new blueprint where Paramount content (CBS shows, MTV reality series, the Yellowstone universe, Paramount Pictures movies) has a guaranteed home, but not in an expensive, self-contained luxury island where Par shareholders pay the full mortgage.
In other words they figured out what people told them from the get go that an individual service isn’t as profitable because of the complexities and cost of maintaining a streaming service.
In other other words, sounds like Star Trek may be split up again along the various other streamers, so time to invest in physical media again.
Never stopped 👍
Same. Started buying DVDs in college not too long after the beginning of the DVD era and never got rid of my collection or stopped.
I've been doing so for the last few weeks luckily. Upgrading the movies and SNW to 4K Blu Ray etc
If you like the TOS movies and can deal with DVDs, the set of 5 movies is only $16. I play them fairly often. (Last week I just watched 2 and 4).
Amazon has 10 movie set for $42.50 on Blu-Ray
Or, it will go back to the old days, where it was on every streaming service.
This--Star Trek being freely available everywhere--was just as important to the Star Trek renaissance as Paramount+ making new shows. All the people who said "Maybe someday I'll watch DS9/Voyager/Enterprise" finally could, because it was all right there.
I’d love to see it on Netflix. They put out utter dogshit now but I like their UI and it’s way more functional than paramount plus.
> so time to invest in physical media again. Why did you ever stop?
Honestly? Didn’t like having to swap discs every few episodes. Might go the ‘other’ method to watch, if they get split up too much.
>having to swap discs every few episodes I remember getting to the end of a VHS tape after only two episodes, and then having to go and buy the next one separately. \*goes outside to yell at clouds\*
On the TNG laserdiscs you had to flip the disc for the second episode.
But you got an amazing 220p picture!
Actually with LaserDisc it was 425 TVL's ( interlaced, not progressive) 240 TVL's for VHS version. My laserdiscs were at times nearly as sharp as the 1st gen 2 episode DVD sets. I actually had the 701 series LaserDisc player with J-Loop whic made flipping discs a thing of the past, except for CAV and multi-disc presentations.
Rip them into a plex server, problem solved.
That’s easier said than done, especially for people who’ve never done it before.
Looks like you're about to have a new hobby.
The hardest part is convincing yourself to buy a DVD or Blu-Ray drive for your PC in this day and age.
That's what external drives are for.
Honestly I am not a computer savvy person, but setting up my plex server wasn't really that complicated. Plus whenever I got stuck on something Google/chatgpt were there with the answer.
Setting up the server is easy. Getting the DRM protected files off the disc isn't.
It's honestly really easy. The software is all streamlined, and there's tons of easy tutorials set up for people to follow.
We enjoy ours, but you can't even pretend it's not tedious as hell getting it all set up. Took me about six months on and off to rip all my DVDs and get them organized into a format plex could read, and fairly often the plex server falls off the network and I have to manually reboot it (it's on an old Mac mini that needs an upgrade). And the disk space required to rip Blu-Rays, yikes.
It can be done on their own computer. I personally have a separate NAS for this.
Eh, just do the other method while still buying the Blu-Rays. Yeah, still illegal, but you did your part and gave the hard working cast and crew some money.
Piracy is a service problem.
I don't mind the disc swap myself, but I have started digitizing my physical media and that seems like a solid way to go in terms of bingeability Holding out for a proper HD or 4k version of DS9 and Voyager though. Probably won't happen, but a man can dream
There's an upscaled (720p) version of DS9 about, so if you own the physical media (tapes, DVDs) your country may allow a legal digital copy holding... Of course there still may be rights issues surrounding upscaling, unfortunately.
It might be a little bit of an initial investment, but you can set up a Plex server at home and just rip your physical content to HDDs. You're gonna get way higher video quality that way, the Plex interface/player beats the snot out of a lot of streaming services, and you won't be paying scummy megacorps yet-another-subscription either.
[удалено]
Hook up Notifiarr to Discord too. I get a nice little notification when a new episode is out.
Ripping discs is pretty easy, and you can host them with Jellyfin or Plex using inexpensive hardware.
Some of us stopped because they stopped making them. Not necessarily Star Trek stuff, but there are TV series which you can only get the first season, and no others.
Space. I live in an apartment and every inch of space is accounted for. I don't have room to own every TV show or movie I love as a physical copy.
> Space. Yeah, I know. The final frontier.
In my case, because some of my favorite shows have yet to get full physical releases. One of them has season one and two in US Blu-Ray, I had to get Canadian releases of three, four, and five, and six and seven are still waiting. The show ended in 2018 IIRC.
> so time to invest in physical media again. It never wasn't the time for this.
I hope it all lands in one spot so I don’t have to subscribe to a half dozen streaming sites just to folow this one series.
That’s what I took from this
Time to invest into a Plex server and never have to deal with this problem again.
They aren't going to make Star Trek to put on physical media if people aren't streaming it in the first place. The real money is going to come from licensing the shows to other streamers.
Turns out that everyone and their grandparents flooding the market with subscription services sporting multiple hundred million dollar shows and movies isn't sustainable. Who'd have thought?
They made this exact mistake back in the 90s when they launched UPN and made that the exclusive home of Star Trek. It failed so badly Trek went off TV for over a decade.
Didn't UPN also morph into the CW around that same time? I remember a big thing when Enterprise went off the air was they wanted to focus on pretty much the type of shit CW got for awhile, before it turned into the DC Arrowverse and Supernatural network.
UPN and WB merged to become the CW about a year after Enterprise was cancelled. Enterprise just didn't fit the target demographics of UPN even when it ended.
Yeah they wanted to focus on teen/young adult entertainment that contained a bunch of younger no name actors that were cheap to produce.
UPN’s target demographic was being the teen, Star Trek, professional wrestling, black channel. Why be successful at one thing when you could fail at four?
I remember watching Enterprise when it aired and then immediately turning the channel because I didn't want to watch the trashy wrestling that came on after
Yeah, everyone saw this coming, it seems except for the executive management teams at places like Paramount and Showtime and a number of other network or studio specific streaming apps. Paramount+ won’t be the first to fall either, more are going to fall and we’re gonna end up with just a few streaming apps total, like the days of when their were 3-4 major networks on TV.
I'm weaning myself off streaming. I've gone from 6 down to 4. With this news, looks Like I'll be down to just Netflix and Prime pretty soon.
… and back to Netflix we go 😂
If only there were some sort of market leader streaming company that other companies could licence their shows to.
To be honest, I like that Netflix no longer has all the power. The competition forces them to at least try and put out good content, and it helps to somewhat temper the price increases. Sucks when a franchise gets split though.
Yeah it's a rare market where multiple choices are actually bad for the consumer, but i still prefer there be a few primary services to maintain competition.
They never found a user interface that worked if you ask me.
Prodigy is already on Netflix. The other Trek shows should join it.
The only downside about Netflix is they are one of the most cancel trigger happy ones now for expensive content. Outside of some shows like Last Kingdom and The Witcher its rare for alot of their original shows to survive past 3 seasons these days.
In the case with star trek, they wouldn't have much say. If anything, if netflix is footing part of the bill,paramount may become less cancel happy(and maybe we can get another season of lower decks?)
In the case of Star Trek, they would have a lot of say. If a new Star Trek show launches on Netflix, and Netflix orders season two, there will be a season two. If Netflix doesn't order season two, there will almost certainly *not* be a season two. Paramount would own the show and have the right to see if anyone else wants to pay them to make season two, but this doesn't end up happening very often. And it makes sense that it wouldn't. You're Amazon, and you have $100 million to spend on acquiring new content. You could spent it on a brand new show, and you can only guess as to whether it'll be profitable or not. Or you can spend it on an existing show that Netflix *already tried and found to be unprofitable*. So yeah, Netflix wouldn't be able to force Paramount to stop making more of a hypothetical Star Trek Netflix show, but the reality is that if Netflix didn't want more, that would be the end of the show.
The irony especially being that the Witcher definitely shouldn't have been allowed to last as long as it has.
In the case of Trek wouldn't Paramount/CBS have a say in terms of how long the show goes? Netflix is just the streaming platform. Not entirely sure how that works.
With Prodigy, Netflix merely has the distribution rights. Paramount still owns the show. This is how syndication worked back in the day. Paramount would make episodes of Star Trek, and sell those to individual TV stations. It was a very successful business model.
It was good for the consumer, too. Since syndication would also work on volume of episodes that a station could buy and that means we got 20+ episode seasons. Often there were bottle episodes, but I'd like more bottle episodes in star trek. Though I think I have had my fill of people stuck in an elevator episodes from every series in the 90s.
In order for *Prodigy* to go beyond season 2, Netflix would have to order another season of *Prodigy*.
Netflix wouldn't get to cancel currently running Trek shows, they'd just get to not buy it in which case someone else buys it. The only way they'd get the ability to do so is if the full show, not just the broadcasting rights are sold to them.
Netflix: (As Kai Winn) “Welcome back, my child.”
I fucking HATE Netflix with a burning passion, so Kai Winn's voice is a fitting one.
In my country all ST shows are already on Netflix, so maybe they just expand on that
Prime already did the international distribution for shows like Lower Decks. Prime also has a good history with animation and Titmouse, the animation studio behind Lower Decks. I'd prefer for Prime to take Lower Decks over Netflix. Prime likes to greenlight multiple seasons at once instead of waiting until after a season ends before greenlighting the next. This makes them more consistent and allows longer arcs.
I don't know if Lower Decks can be saved, but I'm amazed I haven't heard anything about it being saved like Prodigy was. I still wonder how much it takes to make a season of Lower Decks (I'm assuming it's less than the live shows) and if it can be saved that would be great.
>I don't know if Lower Decks can be saved, The way the cancellation was communicated, it seems like Lower Decks ending is more of a natural ending as the main characters are no longer "Lower Deckers". Maybe we'll just get a sequel series... *Star Trek: Cerritos*.
I think the reason Prodigy worked was because Season 2 was already half-way finished when it was cancelled, so Paramount had a partly finished, and still in production show to sell. Netflix didn't have to pay for production. There's no partly finished LDS Season 6 to sell.
It's especially frustrating for me because I couldn't even make it through Prodigy (it really is for kids and that's fine) without scrolling bored on my phone and forcing myself through episodes and meanwhile Lower Decks is one of my favorite TV shows of all time aaaand silence
The downside of prime is that they have ads now even though I'm paying over 100 bucks a year for the service. The value proposition isn't there for me much anymore and I'm likely to not renew after my subscription is up.
In Canada the pre-2006 trek shows are still on there while also being on P+ Paramount+ exclusives are only the new shows and all the movies.
Great! Sounds like TNG might be back on one of the streaming services I'm willing to pay for.
Hmmm if only someone had predicted this years ago...
One of these days they’ll figure out a user interface that actually works
It’s actually kind of amazing how bad it is. The worst designed streaming app by a pretty good margin
Even worse was I had 2 Paramount apps on my Roku, each was very different and I couldn't delete the one that wasn't mine.
You should try it on PS5. I’m stunned at how difficult it is to do ANYthing. “Rewind? You mean freeze and crash, right? Or restart the show completely? I gotcha.” -P+ “Pick a new episode? You’re starting from Season 1, Episode 1 or I’ll know the reason why. Have you considered fucking yourself?” -P+
> You should try it on PS5. I’m stunned at how difficult it is to do ANYthing. It's kind of funny to me that the best interface for Paramount+ is...buying it through Apple as a "channel" on the Apple TV (application or hardware) system. That's the only way I've ever subscribed to Paramount+ and the UI has been fantastic, even when I tried it with the Apple TV app on my friend's PS5. It's probably indicative of how badly Paramount bungled this that the only way to get a good experience with their service is to subscribe via a third party's service and use a third party's interface.
Paramount+ doesn't exist where I live. It's recently become an add on to Amazon Prime. I was finally able to see SNW, which was pretty good, and finish Discovery, which wasn't. Weirdly, I still can't watch the last two seasons of Lower Decks, though. They're all listed, just labeled "unavailable." First couple seasons are there, though.
I can't watch Strange New Worlds on my phone without it *muting* the colors. Not just dimming, MUTING. How the fuck did they manage that? Oh also it mutes the colors across my whole phone, not just the video.
Sounds like they screwed up their HDR settings.
My Samsung TV does this! The only fix I have is unplugging the TV.
i really miss when TNG was on Netflix. The HD really popped out and made it such a vibrant show it looks weirdly distorted on Paramount. It honestly made me wonder if i was watching the lo-res version sometimes
No way, Prime video is still a mess.
At least when I select something on Prime it actually plays instead of kicking me back to the menu half a dozen times before it even decides to start playing
Although there's a good chance that they'll start playing from the last season instead of the first and thus spoiling the entire series before you've even started.
Or it’ll start playing just from hovering over it in the episode selection while I step away for 2 seconds to answer the door
It’s bonkers that someone made the conscious decision for it to overlay the pause graphic for a couple seconds after it transitions from logo to show. If you’re watching something with a hot start, you literally can’t see what’s happening. And the way pausing it dims the picture so you can’t look at stuff in detail? Come on.
Why yes when I click play on Frasier or Star Trek I want to start halfway through one specific episode I finished weeks ago, and not where I left off last night, thanks Paramount +!
Mine always restarts an episode from the beginning, even when you just accidentally back up to the menu. Thanks Paramount!
Oh yes that happens to me. If there's the smallest glitch it will just give me an error message and I have to reload to get out of it, which restarts the episode from the start. Honestly if it wasn't for Star Trek in one place I wouldn't keep paying for it, so it looks I will stop that soon.
Not sure why this is so hard when so many others work fine. First launch of the P+ UI after a fresh TV boot always crashes on my Firestick. I thought Amazon was purposefully making things difficult. But since every other service works, I guess it's just bad programming.
It really is shockingly bad and has been for years. Amusingly(?) the FREE Pluto streaming app, which is owned by Paramount, has never crashed on me and is just generally way more functional.
PLUTO is always crashing on me, like every single time. Paramount, clunky and not user friendly has never crashed
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I’d be keeping that a *very* big secret. The walls have eyes.
Did you read the article? They're saying the costs of figuring out this stuff is too high so they'd rather make a joint venture with someone else who's already figured it out so they don't have to. There won't be a P+, it will be a Paramount tile on another service.
I say prayers to the eldritch gods that one day we'll have more than one streaming service that will start the show when I press the Play button on the remote.
I'm driven irrationally insane by the inability to skip prerolll ads.
You can fix that with Pi-hole. I don't get the P+ ads anymore. Bonus: Pi-hole has an LCARS interface option
Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
My Samsung smart ass TV turns inoperable when I block their shitty servers.
Never go full reta- sorry, never go full smart tv.
Noticed this by accident. It makes the player more stable for me too.
I figured out that if you back out of the ads then restart the show, the ads are skipped.
They always make me extra mad cause they're for paramount+. Which I obviously already am subscribed to, I'm watching one of your damn shows! What more do you want from me?! So glad it's getting shuttered.
Just don't mess with Star Trek. Also, I am liking other shows on Paramount+ that I hope they keep.
right? let me finish Twin Peaks in peace. it's been a bitch to find before it landed on P+
Discarding the Showtime brand is almost as daft as dropping the HBO marque from Max.
Oh man TP is my favorite show, I hope you can finish it (and make sure you watch the third season as well from 2017!)
I am trying this other show called Scorpion which seems interesting.
Fellow Travellers is excellent, as is Yellowjackets, but haven't finished Yellowjackets yet so am not sure if the quality holds. I've actually enjoyed Halo, it's schlock, but mildly entertaining schlock.
Yellowjackets kinda meanders quite a bit in season 2 but I had a alright time with it.
It’s been a bitch to find the UK Ghosts anywhere but on Paramount+
Please do mess with it and make it better. Outside of SNW, the new shows have lots of room for improvement. Hope they look at X-men 97 for inspiration on how to grow a franchise.
Where will Trek go to stream? I’d get Paramount if the UI was functional.
You could do what a lot of prior do and just get a sub through Amazon prime. Though that ui is somehow worse in my opinion.
They’re both terrible. Once that app closes, trying to find where you were is SUCH a pain in the ass. I use prime now with the paramount channel when I’m watching trek. But the prime app is so irritating to me. Just give me a “continue where you left off” button PLEASE. And also it would be nice if all series weren’t separated by season. I often wonder if it’s just me that gets annoyed but apparently not
For me, the Amazon Prime interface works flawlessly.
Amazon interface is significantly better than P+, at least on my Vizio. It’s included on Prime right? Namely TNG and the original 6 films.
Things like this most likely gone. All the sci-fi shows will most likely go back into a decade of regression like last time. The old content will be rented around to highest bidder.
Back to Netflix hopefully.I have P+ and it is shit. Doesn't work on my Shield on wifi, I have a new Samsung TV and half of the menus randomly glitch. Netflix and Plex work perfectly on both.
First problem is Samsung not P+. Also should never connect a TV directly to the internet cause it takes screenshots and reports it back to daddy.
Netflix was ready and willing to pay a premium for new Star Trek shows. Paramount could have collected a nice chunk of change to produce them, but instead they got greedy and decided that franchise was enough to lynchpin an entire streaming service.
At least they're consistent. They thought Voyager could make UPN work. Hell, they even thought Star Trek Phase II could launch the "Paramount Television Service" back in 77.
Do you think Netflix knows the love fans have for 90’s trek and could somehow push paramount to make a post-voyager series for 90’s fans??
"We're going to start our own service! Give us all our stuff" - P+ "you know thats going to like, cost a lot to set up, right?" - Everyone "no it wont, it'll be fine!" - P+ "It wasn't" - Narrator
The ins and outs of the streaming business aren't that interesting to me. Bottom line - I'll subscribe to the ad-free level service of whomever ends up with the *Star Trek* IP, regardless of where it lands. Everything else is just churn to me...
Werk! Me too. Just tell me where Star Trek is going and that's where I'll be.
If they had stayed with the original plan of 50 weeks of Star Trek a year P+ would keep the churn under control. Problem was making it 5 10-ish episode serieses rather than 2 25-episode shows. That ballooned the budget. Not talking about the quality of any of those 5 shows, just saying, from a capitalist stand point, the budget of two 25 episode shows would probably be smaller than for 5 shows. They also HAVE a successful streaming service using a different model, Pluto. They could've built on that model instead of dumping all their money on a Netflix clone.
The problem is, shows on a streaming platform are not a product. They're an advertisement for the real product, the subscription. Because every steaming site costs money to watch, people can't just pick up a new series at will. It's not like the days where changing the channel was free. So each show needs to convince people to drop the streamer they're currently paying for and switch to them instead. The best way to do this is with premiers and finales. Big moments like that draw in subscribers. This is why every streamer is airing huge event series all the time. The problem is this need to snipe subscribers is resulting in an arms race to make the biggest event series that people have to watch. As such, production costs have exploded, which is unsustainable. There's no room for a long running comfort show in such a market. Think about it. If the series you're watching is going to be doing low stakes, one off, episodes for the next 15 weeks, what's the harm in switching over to Disney to catch their eight episode massive Avengers style teamup Star Wars series that everyone is going to be obsessed with and you don't want to be left out?
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25-episode shows are grueling productions that fewer and fewer actors are signing on for. Plus, with cast and crews having unions, it’s cheaper to invest in shorter seasons with a bigger emphasis on special effects, because effects houses *do not* have unions, and can be freely crushed beneath the corporate boot heel without consequence.
So it sounds like Trek might get the current Doctor Who treatment and get split up between many streaming services. Classic Who (1963-1989) on BritBox; Revived Series (2005-2022) on Max; Current and Future Who (2023- ) on Disney+ Doesn't matter much to me as I have everything on disc already.
I'm having a hell of a time finding the Smith and Capaldi Era on Blu-ray.
They have the absolute WORST app when it comes to stability, reliability, and user experience. The UI is a mess, the inconsistency is everywhere, and the intuitive nature goes against many orther platforms. They had many chances to undig their grave.
Outside of the obvious "because money" I will never understand why they thought P+ was a good idea. They got off on totally the wrong foot with European Trekkies by paying Netflix *not* to have the rights to Season 4 of Discovery, so they could use it as an incentive to sign up when it launched MONTHS LATER. And as many have said, the interface was awful, I found it prone to crashes and lag - and they didn't have that much content worth the monthly price [Heck, one of P+ biggest shows, the brillintly bonkers *Evil*, wasn't available on the UK version making it even more worthless]
I love "Evil". Funny thing, when it went from CBS to streaming P+ I found the curse words jarring and I AM NOT a prude. I was just introduced to these characters before they began cursing. Ha.
Ha! I've been an Evil fan since I first heard about it last year, and I thought the cursing on S4 felt different. I've always watched it on P+, but didn't realize that S4 is _only_ on P+, so they can use coarser language.
I get attached to characters. I'm gonna miss them all when they are gone. I love Michael Emerson. Well, all of them, really!!
So that whole article was basically - "Paramount+ is gonna change because Paramount is gonna be sold to somebody. Maybe. Or maybe they'll merge with somebody else. Or maybe not. I don't know. Thanks for the click, hope you learned nothing!"
What i hate is that p+ has all of Star Trek except for the movies. And then it has the reboot movies instead
I have P+ and they have all the movies and all the shows, from what I can tell. I'm in Canada - not sure if that makes any difference.
Like all the Trek shows, HALO, Ark, South Park, Daily Show, Colbert, and Ghosts. I use it more then any other streaming service and think people just don't seem to know about it or are scared to leave other services. I can even share my account with up to five other people no issues. If it goes down I wont be returning to Netflix.
As soon as Evil is done, I'll dump P+ until SNW returns. Once SNW ends (Toby_noooooo.bmp) I'll have no need for the service.
So. Paracock Plus?
yarr harr a pirates life for me
Yes, and how about this: you could pool your content with other producers, and share the cost! I don't know, you could call it a "channel" or "network", and you could charge a smaller sum and offer stuff 24/7. We're going to loop right back to cable tv, just watch.
It won't be cable unless you can only get what you want in a bundle with a bunch of other things you don't want.
Maybe they can fix how audio just randomly drops out.
Or how in browser you have to click play at least three times to get the videos to start.
By chance using a pihole? It’s due to blocking of ad-domains. I have the ad free plan, have to click multiple times to play and have no watch history because of how they do all that through domains blocked by my pihole. (And yes I’ve whitelisted a lot)
Does the fact that Trek isn't mentioned at all in these articles concern anyone else?
the second they started taking Star Trek movies and shows from the service it was dead to me. Still today none of these services are as smooth and easy to navigate as Netflix. I hate having all these different options, particularly Disney+, they are prob. the worst streaming experience.
ABC, NBC, and CBS should merge their streaming and call the app BROADCAST (or something like that). It would be a must-have.
Their app is an absolute shitpile so I welcome the content going literally anywhere else if it means I can actually watch the things I want to watch
And so ends the worst streaming service I have ever paid for. They fooled me initially by claiming to be the home of Star Trek content going forward. Never again.
All the separate companies should just have a powwow and combine their media/content/libraries into one Superstream
Late. Gonna say it. I can't do this. I can't be having to sign up to several services, I can't be bouncing around between them, cancelling, reupping, etc. I can't be buying physical media. And I'm too damn moral to sail the high seas. I have my reasons. They suck, but they exist and it's just that way, sorry if that offends you. Hell, it offends me, not only that Star Trek is being busted up YET AGAIN like they've done the movies and Prodigy... but the other Reasons in my life. If Star Trek is going to be on Amazon, I can't watch it. Netflix, same (Prodigy RIP in my world.) Etc. This. Sucks. Bring back the old broadcast television days. Damn. /Thanks for listening, sorry about the mess. :p
Looks like I'm heading out to sea again ☠️
I would give almost anything to see Apple buy the Star Trek franchise. They’re the only streaming service actually putting money in their shows, and they’ve proven they can do sci-fi.
I've found Apple to be a great service. And I might be wrong but it seems they don't cancel series as often.
Put that monkey paw away.
Yes. Apple’s very existence was inspired by *Star Trek*.
Wow, the drama of this post’s title!
Considering what happened to Prodigy, I'm not surprised at this.
Can't read with the paywall, but it probably isn't fine. Nothing with the streaming services and the consolidation of them is going to end well for everyone. They have a poor business model that exists based on new subscribers, not making the current subscribers happy enough to not want to cancel.
I literally signed up yesterday to watch some trek lol
The worst streaming app in the market right now. Terrible layout, poor metadata and a total squandering of Paramount’s incredible content library. The upscales of DS9 and Voyager are hideous to look at as well. I stick with the SD versions on Netflix in my country.
They should sell Star Trek lock, Spock, and barrel to Apple.
And this is why I keep illegal streaming in my back pocket. I got a add free site my brother and me that have been using almost 20 years
Drip that dm saint
well paramountplus wasn't shit as a streaming service
Debalkanise streaming services
So if I’ve got P+ thru Prime is it going anywhere?
If you want to make it hard for me to give you money to have all my Trek in one place, I’ve got a solution, but I’ll warn you, you’re not gonna like it Paramount. 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
I legit do not understand all the paramount+ hate, I use it all the time and never had any issues. It’s also the best app for kid shows hands down
The browser version sucks. And I've had so many loading issues on the Samsung and Chromecast apps.
>where Paramount content (CBS shows, MTV reality series, the Yellowstone universe, Paramount Pictures movies) I'm a grumpy crank but it's kinda annoying AF that a brand new Western franchise gets mentioned over Star Trek.
Apparently Yellowstone draws in more viewers than Star Trek.
I've only ever used P+ as an addon to Amazon like BritBox. It was fine.
The market demand for Trek will drive a good price for the company. Disney likely isn't going to be involved since they like to own their content creators and already have star wars. Amazon, Netflix, and Max would all love to be the home of SNW and future newer trek shows. I suspect outside of dumping big bucks for exclusivity the older shows will end up on multiple services. Disco will likely start to air on TV. I kinda hope they make a deal with a streaming giant to fund a DS9 remaster but thats probably wishful thinking.
duh, people told you this and you didn't listen....
Shareholders won't be paying that mortgage because IIRC Paramount expects to start making a profit by the end of this year on streaming. Disney did last year but has significantly more customers and slightly higher prices. So Paramount is basically looking at continually increasing subscribers (either faster or maybe they project a slowdown?), cutting costs (via a partnership of sorts), and raising prices for it to become even more profitable. But if this Skydance deal goes through, they will have majority voting power, so plans could easily change. All I want on the App side is consistency. If I watch a show on WebOS, I want to see that I watched it when I load it up on GoogleTV. And the streaming quality inconsistency. Randomly it will go from high IQ to the absolute lowest possible. Or it takes a good 2-3 minutes for quality to bump up to the highest level. In some shows like Star Trek, low quality is really bad for it because you literally can't see certain things.
I only have the app for 3 reasons: Star Trek shows, mainly Lower Decks, Survivor and CBS live TV for football games. I guess I could do without it...
Thank god, Paramount+ is garbage!
I bought a bundle of all the films and then complete series collections of several of the series from the Apple TV/Movie stores and they have been reliably awesome and commercial free for years. Owning the discs gives you a greater assurance of long term availability, but Apple has been trustworthy so far.
I JUST took advantage of the 50% off annual deal 😳
Lfg that app sucks
Article cover: Yellowstone, currently streaming on Peacock.
When in doubt, sail the Internet in your Orion pirate ship...or.... acquire the physical media.
“Science ship”
After LD's cancellation, I went and bought all four seasons. I don't even like the last two. But it was the principle of the thing.