Disney+, Amazon, Netflix and future of Star Trek?

[ITDUDE]

Nice little article here about how Disney is going to be unloading A LOT of epic movies on all of us in 2019: https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottm...en-lion-king-aladdin-toy-story-captain-marvel

TL;DR version, they are front-loading all these movies in 2019 so that their new streaming service Disney+ has lots of epic content in 2020. It's pretty much a given (by the article anyway) that people will flock to Disney+ and streaming services will be be dominated by DAN (AND, NAD?, you decide) of Disney, Amazon, and Netflix Big 3 (kinda reminds you of the Big 3 TV networks back in the day, doesn't it )
CBS-AA is briefly mentioned as fighting for scraps.
Seeing as how the recent Star Trek TV renaissance is in huge part driven by desire for CBS to put original content on CBS-AA, but also we're now seeing that CBS-AA is being already delegated into lower streaming service tier (at least by some publications like Forbes), I do wonder what it means for Star Trek.

Star Trek as a license is HUGE, if CBS-AA is a long term failure, where will Star Trek live? What will happen to about half a dozen shows that have been announced? Of course if CBS-AA fails, it won't be for a few more years from now, so by then all these shows may already be out and done. I guess we shall see...

 

[Kor]

With all these streaming services and their exclusive content, I'm going to end up paying just as much as I used to pay for cable.

Kor

 

[David Mack]

With all these streaming services and their exclusive content, I'm going to end up paying just as much as I used to pay for cable.

Congratulations, you've figured out their evil plan.

 

[BillJ]

With all these streaming services and their exclusive content, I'm going to end up paying just as much as I used to pay for cable.

Kor

Shit, I already do.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I kind of wish that these would be bundled along with cable service or for those who are already paying for cable, as it feels a little like double-dipping. I'm just not sure how sustainable it is in the long run to fragment audiences so much.

In Canada, we had two competing streaming services until one of them shuttered as the market couldn't sustain them both. The other one that was left, Crave, had been pretty much ordered to open up access to all Canadians rather than being restricted in use to its Cable company parent and has recently ironically enough been consolidated into a mainline on-demand/streaming service. Basically, there's going to be competition but only so far as the market will allow for and some of these services will learn that the hard way and sink pretty fast.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The reason CBS-AA are going Trek 365 is to compete as best they can with Netflix and Disney. If they succeed, good for them. If they fail, it'll probably all end up on Netflix (Where it is outside of the US and Canada, anyway)

 

[ITDUDE]

The reason CBS-AA are going Trek 365 is to compete as best they can with Netflix and Disney. If they succeed, good for them. If they fail, it'll probably all end up on Netflix (Where it is outside of the US and Canada, anyway)

Or on Disney+ if Disney wants to buy CBS for their TV catalog, or on Amazon if Amazon wants to prevent Disney+ from overtaking them. Netflix doesn’t need CBS as much as others would. I imagine one of them definitely is looking at CBS right now and seeing a juicy steak they’d like to gobble up.

 

[SpocksOddSocks]

Or on Disney+ if Disney wants to buy CBS for their TV catalog, or on Amazon if Amazon wants to prevent Disney+ from overtaking them. Netflix doesn’t need CBS as much as others would. I imagine one of them definitely is looking at CBS right now and seeing a juicy steak they’d like to gobble up.

I agree. I'd prefer it to go to Netflix, but if CBSaa was no longer tenable, Amazon and Disney will want to "haz their stuffs". Bezos' love of sci-fi means than given the chance, he'd love to purchase all things Trek. And both of them would probably like to bury Netflix, which doesn't really have the capital that the big league companies do. They've relied on heavy borrowing for a very long time, and despite good share prices, their long term profitability in competing with the others might be a pipedream.

 

[rahullak]

With all these streaming services and their exclusive content, I'm going to end up paying just as much as I used to pay for cable.

Kor

Maybe a streaming service aggregator arrives on the scene. Maybe these services become metered, rather than fixed monthly/annual rate.

 

[Blooded]

Didn’t CBSAA just hit it’s initial subscriber target much quicker than expected, and now is expecting 20m+ subscribers by an early year in the 2020’s?

They’ve made these projections based on knowing who their competition is, and who it will be in the future, so I can’t see them going anywhere...

 

[Alan Roi]

With all these streaming services and their exclusive content, I'm going to end up paying just as much as I used to pay for cable.

Kor

Despite the amount I watch, which I admit is a lot, there isn't any streaming service producing enough content to sustain my watching for more than a month or two a year each per year. I see no practical reason to pay for a years worth of service for any of them any more than paying for hundreds of cable channels I'm never going to watch. The savings I see is to not really need to buy more than one streaming service at a time, if you are OK being a little patient.

 

[Alan Roi]

Didn’t CBSAA just hit it’s initial subscriber target much quicker than expected, and now is expecting 20m+ subscribers by an early year in the 2020’s?

They’ve made these projections based on knowing who their competition is, and who it will be in the future, so I can’t see them going anywhere...

They did state as of Disco's 2nd season start that they were 2 years ahead of projections. And now with CBS trying out Twilight Zone, they might also add a new Outer Limits series to make anthology scifi another area of interest among whatever other shows they drop in to CBSAA

 

[The Overlord]

Well, I think the best thing is either having CBS and Viacom merge and put all their stuff on one streaming service or give up the ghost and put this stuff on Netflix. Viacom is already working with Netflix on some projects.

 

[Reyman]

Lets not forget about Hulu which Disney own 60% of. A lot of their content will end up on there.

Also AT&T/Warner are launching a streaming service soon with a huge back catalogue of content. They own HBO now too (GOT, Westworld, The Wire, Sopranos etc) and they will be getting a huge funding boost to produce more content. I'd love to have access to HBOs back catalogue. That alone would keep me going for a couple of years. .

Like Alan Roi I don't intend on having multiple subscriptions running simultaneously. In fact I'm cancelling Netflix once season 2 of Discovery is done.

 

[Doc Mugatu]

Well, I think the best thing is either having CBS and Viacom merge and put all their stuff on one streaming service or give up the ghost and put this stuff on Netflix. Viacom is already working with Netflix on some projects.

Sooner or later the CBS-Viacom thing will get cleared up. My worry is that who will be given control over the Star Trek franchise, CBS or Paramount? CBS has been great under the command of CBS and lousy under Paramount's, but in corporate shuffle who knows what would happen?

 

[Alan Roi]

Lets not forget about Hulu which Disney own 60% of. A lot of their content will end up on there.

Hulu is a ridiculous money pit that loses a billion+ every year. I'm not sure how much longer Disney will want to keep that going.

 

[Spot261]

They did state as of Disco's 2nd season start that they were 2 years ahead of projections. And now with CBS trying out Twilight Zone, they might also add a new Outer Limits series to make anthology scifi another area of interest among whatever other shows they drop in to CBSAA

Plus don't forget that Black Mirror's essentially proof of concept for the modern anthology format.

 

[Alan Roi]

Plus don't forget that Black Mirror's essentially proof of concept for the modern anthology format.

They were, until they started blowing entire seasons on individual choose your own adventure eps.

 

[Spot261]

They were, until they started blowing entire seasons on individual choose your own adventure eps.

To be honest I'm not sure it was "blown", it may have been massively resource intensive but the end result did a fantastic job at encapsulating the spirit of the show and its' 20th century forerunners.

It wasn't a new idea per se but it did go further than anything prior with regard to the possibilities and limits of the concept. I personally was very taken with the way it used the very process of interaction and decision making to explore the nature of the relationship between media and audience, the "fourth wall" and the breakdown of conceptual boundaries between passive and active entertainment, game and TV, reality, fantasy and outright delusion.

YMMV

 

[The Habs Fan]

CBSAA at the moment is building a Trek streaming channel with some other original new series tossed in, but its backbone is going to be Trek. I think its success depends on its hopes for the streaming channel. It won't reach the heights of Disney, Netflix, and Amazon, but it doesn't need to to survive. It would greatly help though if CBS and Paramount merge together again so that CBSAA can get all of the Paramount properties on their streaming service. With that said, maybe Disney will buy Paramount (and CBS) too.