Star Trek changing direction

[Link8909]

I've seen the "cancel everything the old producers did!" shit, and it was from Fox, and eventually people stopped bringing new shows to Fox, and oh yeah they cancelled Family Guy in that mess (And Arrested Development, and Firefly, and quite a few other good shows) and they know they were lucky to get Family Guy back (I'm convinced half the reason Seth got the Orville is because of the 'we owe you' coupon they handed him when he returned).

Indeed, while I'm not interested in The Orville, I do hope it continues on, the list of canceled Sci-Fi shows is a heartbreaking list.

[Mabus]

*Sees claims about DIS being the most successful streaming series of all time*
"I'll take Bullshit for 800, Alex"
Parrot Analytics analyzes social media activity and they don't reveal what methodology they use to to correlate said activity with actual number of views (or complete views, as I'm pretty sure plenty of people gave up midway the episode for whatever reason), since without a proper analytical system, all you have is data that shows you people talk about the show and nothing else. Also, saw a mention somewhere about PA also using the number of torrents for their data, and again, without a proper way to analyze it, all that means is that people might prefer to watch the show via torrenting (compared that to GoT, where there's a clear idea how popular a show is based on TV viewership and torrenting).

Also, really? The 100 (allegedly) barely beat STD in number of views? Season 6 of The 100 had an average of 1.3 million views, which is half the views season 1 had. TV views that is. I'm supposed to believe that somehow that number increased, what, a hundred-fold in online views? Because season 3 of Stranger Things had 64 million views according to Netflix statement, and I highly doubt that CBS All Access with its 4 million subscribers beat the 120 million subscribers (back in 2019) competitor in views. And speaking of Netflix, NuTrek is so great, that they refused to insist for Star Trek Picard, because as everyone know, when you have a golden-egg laying goose, it's stupid to fight for a second golden-egg laying goose. Or a third. Since no one cares about Lower Decks. Clearly everyone hates money or something.

Oh, CBS is airing DIS on CBS? Wow, what a shocker. Who could have guessed.
Hey, maybe it will get picked on by the syndicate. Speaking of, wanna know a good story?
Up here in Eastern Europe, many years ago about 10 years I think, I kept seeing the season 5 of Andromeda (you know, that dumpsterfire that everyone hated) and Painkiller Jane TV Series (uugh) as well as half a dozen of shitty series that I forgot their names and lots and lots of SciFi Original films being aired on AXN I think it was, over and over and over again. They weren't good films or series, but holy shit they kept repeating the same goddamn season and the same damn film almost weekly sometimes. Very later they started airing better shows, but even so very often they would just repeat the same goddamn season each month. This eventually pissed me off, but never understood at that time why they did that. To make matters hilarious, the promo for each series or film was done like it was a trailer for The Godfather. I would often see Original SciFi films, Asylum films, Steven Seagal films, even Uwe Boll a couple of times, box office bombs as well as dozens of other shitty B films on the other TV channels being aired the same with the same larger than life promos, and a few times I even saw promos for said series or film recorded for my country (and presumably other countries) in our native language. A quick look on IMDB or RottenTomatoes showed that all these films were utter garbage, very few having anything resembling quality. Years later, as I learnt more about film distribution and how they're made, I finally understood what's happening. These films are not made for quality, they're made on low budget, in short time to maximize profit, sometimes they shove in as much product placement as possible, sometimes to avoid taxes (like Uwe Boll did for example), or allegedly in the case of Steven Seagal to launder money for the Russian Mafia. And the reason why they are so many of them airing on TV? It's because they're very cheap, therefore TV stations can afford to buy as many as they can, and since the IP is cheap, they prefer to re-air it as much as possible. So you end up with lots of shitty films, while better productions are only shown a few times a year, since they're more expensive or sometimes aired at a very late time, when The Blacklist aired here, it aired at 01:00 PM even though it wasn't more violent than CSI which would air much earlier (though it's been a while since I've seen it, I might misremember it), which I assume is done so that people would not expect only quality productions, can't show people only good stuff, who will watch shitty films then. So if STD were to get picked up by TV channels other than CBS, it doesn't necessarily mean it there was demand for it, it could simply mean that it was cheap enough to be bought by others.

Those viewership claims mean jack and shit without proper context and the actual data (which mind you, has not been released). And since it's very easy to skew social media activity or its perception, I don't think we should take them as granted.

[clearspira]

Agreed - it all comes down to cost. And a cartoon ultimately is cheaper than live-action. A large portion of the Star Trek fanbase is not watching STD and PIC and I can tell you that by the comments under some hefty hundred-thousand sub Youtube channels and that is a big problem when it comes to overheads.

Just pointing out, again, Star Trek: Discovery is one of the most successful streaming series of all time.

https://screenrant.com/star-trek-discovery-ratings-most-popular-streaming-show/

According to Parrot Analytics, a data analytics firm who measure demand for TV shows across the globe, Star Trek: Discovery season 2 was a measurable hit. Between April 6 and May 5 - the season 2 finale, "Such Sweet Sorrow", released on April 18 - Star Trek: Discovery was the most in-demand digital original series worldwide. Further, it was the #2 science-fiction series worldwide, narrowly beaten by The 100.

Star Trek: Discovery
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Cobra Kai
The Grand Tour
Doom Patrol
Narcos
Stranger Things
The Umbrella Academy
The Handmaid's Tale
The Act

To underscore, It is more popular than Stranger Things.

Are people so invested in Youtube "Disco sucks!" that they really have missed that CBS ordering a half-dozen new Trek shows is not a sign of what a huge success this is?

Do you know what I see in your post? A lack of actual numbers. If everyone else has 5 viewers and you have 10, you are still the most watched show ever even though in actual terms basically no one is watching your show. I'm not saying that I am right BTW, just that there is a gaping flaw in this evaluation.

[Zargon]

CBS is not going to stop making Star Trek shows, the idea is just they want to move away from the whole Woke SJW 'white man hate filled" shows, and move back to "hey lets just make good Sci Fi with a social message or two(and specifically the more "make up your own mind" and not the "think this way comrade" type).

Discovery makes the huge mistake of way too much focus on Mikey and makes the rest of the show just a prop for her. Just take any televised Star Trek show, you knew the names of the command staff/bridge crew in episode one. Does Discovery even come close? Nope. The "bridge crew" is just there so Mikey has someone to talk to at lunch. And the Chief Doctor is not even a main character, we only see 'doc #3' because he is with a main character.

Not to mention Discovery and Picard wastes so much money trying to be "as cool as Star Wars" and "Looking cool so the kids and folks that share that outlook" will watch like zombies. And "They" won't watch a show unless it has lots of super fancy CGI explosions and things that zoom around and go 'pew pew'.

I would also point out the Discovery numbers only show the people that watched it, as in paid for it and glanced at it. It really does not tell the story of how many looked it over and said "wow, what crap". Not like CBS cared though, as they already got thier money.

[CharlesPhipps]

Do you know what I see in your post? A lack of actual numbers. If everyone else has 5 viewers and you have 10, you are still the most watched show ever even though in actual terms basically no one is watching your show. I'm not saying that I am right BTW, just that there is a gaping flaw in this evaluation.

Here's some more then.

DISCOVERY GOT OVER TEN MILLION VIEWS:
https://ew.com/tv/2017/09/25/star-trek-discovery-ratings/

STAR TREK: DISCOVERY brings record number of internet subscribers to CBS
https://deadline.com/2019/01/star-trek-discovery-afc-championship-cbs-all-access-subscribers-1202539191/

Out of curiosity, do you have any articles pointing to DISCO not doing well? Or is this more a gut feeling kind of thing?

[CharlesPhipps]

That does actually serve against clearspira's sentiments, but doesn't Parrot Analytics just read social media reactions to determine viewership strength?

I think it's the question of what exactly people want to measure success by. Is it a critical, viewership, financial, or what success. DISCO seems to be a bit like the Kelvinverse in that everyone seems to love it except a certain hardcore subset of fans. Except it hasn't hit it's Beyond yet (which was a financial bomb but liked by the hardcore fans).

But yes, I used Ron Howard and the bags of money for a reason. People should argue the artistic merits of DISCO but not try to argue the financial as it may have well saved CBS' otherwise failed platform.

Because it's both In-Demand AND being watched--which is a big boost for finances for the channel. The data shows people sign up for CBS and pay real money directly to them purely to watch Star Trek and then either let their subscriptions expire or watch the next Star Trek show.

CBS is not going to stop making Star Trek shows, the idea is just they want to move away from the whole Woke SJW 'white man hate filled" shows, and move back to "hey lets just make good Sci Fi with a social message or two(and specifically the more "make up your own mind" and not the "think this way comrade" type).

I'd actually argue that Star Trek: DISCO is probably the least politically controversial show that Star Trek has ever done. So, I'd argue they should probably abandon the format they are going and actually get political.

And WHAT "white man hate?" The villains are a bunch of brown reptile people living in the Klingon Empire and Skynet.

The main engineer is a white dude! Or does he not count because he's gay? Are we also ignoring Spock and Pike?

[CmdrKing]

It’s practically guaranteed that, at minimum, they’ll do another season of lower decks because it’s the only show that’s already airing they can confidently green light a time table for.
Turns out shows filmed on a set are all on hold with no certain date they can resume. Something about a plague.

I’d be curious what Discovery’s merch/home video sales look like. Most franchises have seen a serious dip there but it’s Star Trek has kept on trucking on putting discs on shelves which makes me wonder how much they’re making off it.

[CharlesPhipps]

It’s practically guaranteed that, at minimum, they’ll do another season of lower decks because it’s the only show that’s already airing they can confidently green light a time table for.
Turns out shows filmed on a set are all on hold with no certain date they can resume. Something about a plague.

I’d be curious what Discovery’s mercy/home video sales look like. Most franchises have seen a serious dip there but it’s Star Trek has kept on trucking on putting discs on shelves which makes me wonder how much they’re making off it.

I really enjoy the Bluerays of them. Solid releases. I buy them for my Trek fan friends at Christmas.

Picard comes out on the 8th of October.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I’d be curious what Discovery’s merch/home video sales look like. Most franchises have seen a serious dip there but it’s Star Trek has kept on trucking on putting discs on shelves which makes me wonder how much they’re making off it.

Well I'm guessing that whoever buys whole season(s) DVDs in the first place is still collecting them all the same in the day of streaming, if that's what you meant.

[McAvoy]

It’s practically guaranteed that, at minimum, they’ll do another season of lower decks because it’s the only show that’s already airing they can confidently green light a time table for.
Turns out shows filmed on a set are all on hold with no certain date they can resume. Something about a plague.

I’d be curious what Discovery’s merch/home video sales look like. Most franchises have seen a serious dip there but it’s Star Trek has kept on trucking on putting discs on shelves which makes me wonder how much they’re making off it.

I agree. Lower Decks is cheaper too. And in this sort of pandemic climate, it's something that can be done with fewer people than a live action series.

As far as Grey's comment about TNG being aired today. It's really a different environment than it was when it was first aired. Take away the advanced in effects, the history of sci fi shows that showed up since 1987.

TNG had staying power due to confidence in Trek. It was the first original Trek since TOS and it didn't rock the boat from TOS either. It was a different time with TV as well. Back then, VCRs were still expensive as hell so not everyone had one. So you had to tune into the show every week to see it. It wasn't something where you can just 'well I will watch it later' or wait until the season ended to binge watch it. You just couldn't do that.

There was no internet either. Honestly I think we do rely on the opinions of others to color our thinking too much.

Trek is different now. We got 25 seasons post TOS plus movies and the Abrams movies.