It could be worse the supposed 'statistical outliers' (do you have those stastics?) and the er.. "*extremely* vocal minority" could be disinterested and apathetic. There is one thing worse for a product than a disappointed customer and that is not having customers.
Discovery Nominated for Peabody Award
- Thread starter MvRojo
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Except most polls have actually shown exactly the opposite trend, the majority have been fairly positive.
Do polls include the apathetic?
No, but the viewing figures do. They don't support the idea the fanbase is collectively anti Discovery, quite the contrary in fact.
What viewing figures? I need to weigh this up. I never thought a Discovery 'fan' base would or should be 'anti' but surely someone invested to watch who may not embrace the product is of some worth compared to someone who doesn't give a shit.
What you call the apathetic could equally be referred to as casual viewers, exactly the sort of people I was referring to who simply watch the show then go on about their lives, not posting in here, not blogging or running youtube channels, not going to conventions.
They make up the majority of the viewer base and express their opinions in a much less vocal way, they either keep watching or they stop. Thus far they've kept tuning in in sufficient numbers to justify a second season, which is exactly the pattern we saw with TNG, with DS9, lots of vocal complaints which at face value would indicate a hostile fanbase but aren't reflected in their viewing figures.
What's the basis for this conclusion? I'm not sure we have near enough data to say even how many are watching it, let alone who is watching it.
Someone who is apathetic may not even be a viewer... All one can ever interpret from polls and statistics are viewer preferences. The fact some of those preferences are not positive shouldn't take away the fact that these viewers are the audience. They will always be more valuable than those who don't watch.
I'm not privy to the business reasons for the second season being made. I'm not convinced one can compare paid TV with free to air and its ratings base. That being said whatever the criteria to make season two was in the bag quite a while ago and may or may not be indicative of fan statistics. I still would like to see your statistical information though.
I only have the same data (or lack thereof) that you do, but can you speculate as to any other reasons for renewing the series other than drawing in an audience?
Well, not as the result of the UP owners chasing it in the conservative, uncreative ways that they do.
The Sherlock folks managed to knock a lot of dust off of Good Grey Holmes, but then BBC gave 'em their head - with a property no one owned or had a vested interest in.
Universal let Ron Moore alone to recreate BSG. It may not have made it mainstream, but at least Moore had the chance to make it good.
STD is mediocre niche streaming content, with a dedicated following. Yardgoods.
Whereas our mod tools are smart bombs that hit people's accounts with surgical precision.
We can put a pretty firm cap on its domestic audience: since CBS AA has only 2.5 million total subscribers, and its TV-MA rating rules out most family viewing, it is nearly impossible that Discovery could even theoretically have more than 2.5 million domestic viewers. (And, streaming services being what they are, it is unlikely in the extreme that Discovery's viewership is actually anywhere close to that.)
Enterprise was cancelled in its fourth season for catastrophically low viewership on a network with such poor ratings it collapsed entirely the following year. After serious cuts to keep it commercially viable enough to limp into syndication, Enterprise's per-season budget was by that point about $20 million (Discovery's is $90-120 million). By year's end, Star Trek had been condemned as a cultural irrelevance that only the hardest core fans still cared about, with Enterprise taking much of the blame for sending Star Trek into that good night.
Enterprise's average viewership that season was 2.9 million.
One can -- and should! -- point out that the economics of Discovery are very different from the economics of Enterprise. Disco's life on a streaming service both guarantees that it will have lower audiences on average than it would on a network and makes it possible for the show to survive and thrive despite a much smaller audience. And, of course, this thread shows that Discovery can still develop a cultural cache via awards and things (congrats to the Disco team on their nomination) even without anyone actually watching it.
But I think @Serveaux's claim that "Outside of fandom not much of anyone watches it" is demonstrably true. In fact, I'd go further: not much of anyone watches it, full stop.
This is not a criticism of Discovery's quality. I was a huge Enterprise fan; I know that ratings and quality have little to do with one another.
Besides, everyone knows that THE FINAL FRONTIER is the worst Trek movie ever.
I know, sarcasm, but I have actually rewatched TFF more than once (though not in the last decade). Can't say I rewatched Nemesis since it came out, and only reason I rewatched TMP recently is because I saw a EWW video about it and it picked my interest. And yes, TMP is so long its still going and going....
Key word being domestic