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Discovery Renewed for Season 2

I don't doubt that they are.

For one thing, Abrams was a talent that Paramount considered central to their plans and profitability going forward for Trek and MI - they bent over backward to accommodate him and his schedule and his preferences. It's vanishingly unlikely that there is anyone associated with Discovery at this point that CBS doesn't view as a replaceable part in the machine.
 
Hopefully, this plays out better than nuTrek has for Paramount. ;)
IMO, part of that has to do with the marketing and merchandising of each. In some areas of entertainment, you're going to get back what you put into it. Paramount, in my view, doesn't do a whole lot for Trek, using the 1980's and 1990's Trek outlook that the name alone will sell it.

With DSC, I think the test will be after the first season ends, with people who are just subscribing to watch DSC and nothing else (I'm going to stay a subscriber to watch other content). But overall, from the marketing and media presence CBS established while ramping up for the premiere of the series, I would say so far it's doing better than the movies.
 
Certainly they must address the need to bring more programming online quickly this year to compensate for the long hiatus between Discovery's seasons (and in view of the show's troubled production history). They're business people and I'm sure they've got that covered in their planning.
 
If they thought their subscription level would stay just where it is they wouldn't continue investing money in such an expensive show. Companies don't spend money like this to "maintain," but to grow. They are carrying it on in the hopes that it will continue to drive more new subscriptions.

As I said upthread, CBS knows that if it doesn't develop a streaming channel, it's dead in the long run. Therefore it must develop original content to get subscribers. This means, regardless of how successful Discovery was, it had two choices - double down with more (tweaked) Discovery in hopes next season is more popular, or ditch the show (and maybe Trek) entirely and try to come up with new native content. You can see why they chose the former.
 
This means, regardless of how successful Discovery was, it had two choices - double down with more (tweaked) Discovery in hopes next season is more popular, or ditch the show (and maybe Trek) entirely and try to come up with new native content.

They are doing both.
 
They are doing both.

I know. I wasn't claiming they weren't making additional native content. Only that since CBS needs to build up a backlog of native content, it makes some sense to keep renewing Discovery for awhile even if the show isn't "profitable" in the classic sense.
 
I know. I wasn't claiming they weren't making additional native content. Only that since CBS needs to build up a backlog of native content, it makes some sense to keep renewing Discovery for awhile even if the show isn't "profitable" in the classic sense.
So it would be content that shows natives, like a documentary or something? What if the natives aren't logging or anything to do with forestry to create said backlog?
 
Well, the show probably is profitable - but you're right, CBS isn't going to kill original content right now unless it's a disaster for them because they don't yet have a robust programming pipeline. And Discovery certainly is not a business disaster.

Does anyone know of a streaming original on any of the services that's been pulled after a single season? Even Netflix's undistinguished Marco Polo went for two. Sadly, MST3K may be one...
 
I'm curious how many subscribers they have. They had about 1 million a year ago, and just under 1.5 million in February(as per a statement quoted in the Wikipedia article on CBSAA).

I'd also be curious to know how many people are watching Discovery by less-than-honest means. I was watching a Youtube review of the show a few weeks ago, and he straight up admitted it.

And I wonder if people pirating the show is still beneficial to CBS.
 
Well, the show probably is profitable - but you're right, CBS isn't going to kill original content right now unless it's a disaster for them because they don't yet have a robust programming pipeline. And Discovery certainly is not a business disaster.

Does anyone know of a streaming original on any of the services that's been pulled after a single season? Even Netflix's undistinguished Marco Polo went for two. Sadly, MST3K may be one...
I don't know. I wouldn't really count MST3K, since it had a run already on TV before going to Netflix. A good run of several years before Netflix, in fact. And by the time it hit there, its best years were already behind it, IMO.
 
Listen to these guys, folks. Nobody really likes or enjoys Discovery. It's all just a conspiracy by CBS and Netflix to make it seem like it's popular when it's really not. I should know, I listen to Midnight's Edge.
What I find most amusing is that we've actually witnessed quite a ground-shaking event here at TrekBBS. Pubert and Dennis agree with each other on something. They both share a superlative hatred for DISCO. I think I'll go hide in my bunker now. The End is clearly nigh.
 
I wouldn't mind taking bets now as to how many seasons Discovery will get.
I'm going to guess it will end up being at least 3. Anything beyond that will probably depend on performance of the second and third. I doubt it will go for 7.

I think my money would probably be on 4 spread over 6 or 7 years. I'd like to hope we'll get more, but I'm a pessimist.
 
Well, they're not churning it out trying to hit a certain target number of episodes. The commercial afterlife of these shows is not the same as it was in the 1990s, is it? I mean, their continued economic value presumably has to do primarily with their eternal availability on some streaming service or another, rather than the sale of packages to some cable or broadcast channel or season-long boxed sets of discs,
 
Well, the show probably is profitable - but you're right, CBS isn't going to kill original content right now unless it's a disaster for them because they don't yet have a robust programming pipeline. And Discovery certainly is not a business disaster.

Does anyone know of a streaming original on any of the services that's been pulled after a single season? Even Netflix's undistinguished Marco Polo went for two. Sadly, MST3K may be one...

The Get Down was canceled by Netflix after one season...probably because it ended up costing $16 million per episode.
 
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