News Discovery Would Have Been Different On Regular Television

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A new news article has been published at TrekToday:

Had Star Trek: Discovery aired on CBS instead of CBS All Access and the other streaming services that are airing the show,...

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[lawman]

What blather. If DSC were on regular TV it wouldn't have serialized stories? Moonves comes across as someone who hasn't watched broadcast TV in 20 years.

Oh, wait, he runs CBS... its bread-and-butter is episodic procedural shows for people whose TV tastes are stuck decades in the past. Never mind.

Regular broadcast TV shows as diverse as Buffy and West Wing have (obviously) done very serialized storytelling very successfully. For that matter, if CBS had done DSC through Showtime or Netflix (as he posits), it likely wouldn't have been any different than it is.

So really Moonves isn't saying anything coherent about storytelling; he's just saying that they wanted to leverage some familiar IP to try to get their own streaming service off the ground. Of course, if he thinks the Nth warmed-over retread of Twilight Zone is the kind of "original content" that'll keep its momentum going, he's setting himself up for some disappointment...

 

[PureCrimson]

Makes me wonder if this was even the story they wanted to tell, or just a byproduct of television circumstances.

 

[Tim Thomason]

What blather. If DSC were on regular TV it wouldn't have serialized stories? Moonves comes across as someone who hasn't watched broadcast TV in 20 years.

Oh, wait, he runs CBS... its bread-and-butter is episodic procedural shows for people whose TV tastes are stuck decades in the past. Never mind.

Regular broadcast TV shows as diverse as Buffy and West Wing have (obviously) done very serialized storytelling very successfully. For that matter, if CBS had done DSC through Showtime or Netflix (as he posits), it likely wouldn't have been any different than it is.

So really Moonves isn't saying anything coherent about storytelling; he's just saying that they wanted to leverage some familiar IP to try to get their own streaming service off the ground. Of course, if he thinks the Nth warmed-over retread of Twilight Zone is the kind of "original content" that'll keep its momentum going, he's setting himself up for some disappointment...

Wait... Twilight Zone is the very definition of original content. It's simply an anthology series of new stories in a mostly sci-fi horror vibe. It's being written and run by an Oscar winner.

 

[fireproof78]

Oh, wait, he runs CBS... its bread-and-butter is episodic procedural shows for people whose TV tastes are stuck decades in the past. Never mind.

Largely because that's their bread and butter audience. Oh, goodness, the horror...

 

[Mirror Mirror]

Eh, many things re not done the same for one type of broadcast over the other. Honestly I think DSC would have went smoother if they went full streaming style and not hd some hang ups over it not being shot like a syndicated TV show.

 

[eschaton]

Eh, many things re not done the same for one type of broadcast over the other. Honestly I think DSC would have went smoother if they went full streaming style and not hd some hang ups over it not being shot like a syndicated TV show.

If CBS just dumped it all online at once, we all would have paid for only one month of CBS All Access, which would have made the network far, far less money.

 

[Mirror Mirror]

If CBS just dumped it all online at once, we all would have paid for only one month of CBS All Access, which would have made the network far, far less money.

I meant more the length, they stuck to the syndication length and tried to make it a little more (pick up any point). They should have all been 50m + and with a tighter story. Now dumping them all at once only works if you have more than 1 or two shows. It works great if you got new content coming all the time.

 

[Donker]

What blather. If DSC were on regular TV it wouldn't have serialized stories? Moonves comes across as someone who hasn't watched broadcast TV in 20 years.

I also don't buy it as well. If this was the case, why was Discovery released in a week to week basis and why does it have built in commercial breaks?

The show was clearly designed to go on Network TV incase CBS All Access was a massive colossal failure. If it was really supposed to be completely designed for online viewing, they wouldn't have released it episodically as well. The show honestly feels like it was written as a (bad) compromise between Network episodic syndication and Online binging, it's why the episodes despite being serialized also feel weirdly disjointed.

Frankly I don't believe a single word CBS or the producers or writers say about Discovery, they've non-stop lied out of their asses about the show since it's announcement.

 

[lawman]

Wait... Twilight Zone is the very definition of original content. It's simply an anthology series of new stories in a mostly sci-fi horror vibe. It's being written and run by an Oscar winner.

Well, he's an Oscar winner now. You couldn't have said that two days ago.

Seriously, I haven't seen Get Out, and I have no personal opinion of Peele's talent. I'm just saying that no version of Twilight Zone without Rod Serling involved has ever captured the magic (or the viewership) of the original. Moreover, in 1959 Hollywood was chock-full of talented writers who knew how to write one-off anthology stories; that's a distinctive kind of talent, and today it's a lot thinner on the ground. And to the extent that there is a talent pool to produce that kind of show and an audience to watch it... what exactly is special about a new TZ that, say, Black Mirror isn't already offering?

 

[Mudd]

What STD would have been on broadcast TV is cancelled.

 

[Mad Jack Wolfe]

It would have been NCIS: Starfleet. And as Serveaux so rightly put it, cancelled.

 

[fireproof78]

It would have been NCIS: Starfleet. And as Serveaux so rightly put it, cancelled.

If I got NCIS Starfleet for one season, it would be totally worth it.

 

[seigezunt]

It would have been different because it would not have been renewed

 

[the Sisko]

Or it could have been a mixture of Big Bang theory and Scorpion, two shows that have super talented science whizes solve problems and go through regular life together with a low level of serialization.

It would have been NCIS: Starfleet. And as Serveaux so rightly put it, cancelled.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I also don't buy it as well. If this was the case, why was Discovery released in a week to week basis and why does it have built in commercial breaks?

Because in certain markets, like Canada for example, it is actually broadcast. Due to the way the rights go, and the way they negotiated them, they've had to make a few concessions. If for example Netflix had been able to attain the rights to stream it everywhere, then we wouldn't likely be in this mess. The result though is a show that isn't entirely able to commit to it being a streaming show.

 

[Ovation]

Because in certain markets, like Canada for example, it is actually broadcast. Due to the way the rights go, and the way they negotiated them, they've had to make a few concessions. If for example Netflix had been able to attain the rights to stream it everywhere, then we wouldn't likely be in this mess. The result though is a show that isn't entirely able to commit to it being a streaming show.

This situation suggests the Canadian market has outsized influence, though, as it is the ONLY market in the world where it was broadcast (and it was on a specialty cable channel, which also carries Doctor Who and accommodates the, at times, anomalous run-times with little difficulty). While the Canada situation might have played a role, I suspect there is a considerable degree of bureaucratic inertia at work at the CBS end--it's all well and good to decide to create a streaming service. It's another to abandon a production culture that's been around for over half a century without some adjustments and hiccoughs.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Right, and that's a good point. In the end, CBS-All-Access is still a streaming service with the mentality of a broadcast network. From that standpoint, I doubt it's ever going to be as people are fully expecting it to be. Because they also need commercial time within their own service.

As for the Canadian situation, I fully expect it's because the network it's being broadcast on (and owned by Bell Canada which does have a sizeable influence) bid the highest to have the rights to broadcast it and put it on their own streaming service. That's the only reason why it isn't also on Netflix for us like the rest of the International markets. The situation would very much be different otherwise.

 

[Mudd]

The result though is a show that isn't entirely able to commit...

And that opening can be applied to most aspects of the show...

 

[EnderAKH]

I also don't buy it as well. If this was the case, why was Discovery released in a week to week basis and why does it have built in commercial breaks?

Because CBS All Access has commercials. Unless you pay for the commercial free tier.