Star Trek is kind of big, but it’s not Star Wars big. Star Wars is huge.
B5 and BSG are not major franchises. They are cult shows that the majority of the world population has never heard of.
Paramount loses more than a quarter of its value, analyst believes they should "just quit streaming"
- Thread starter Citiprime
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Star Trek is kind of big, but it’s not Star Wars big. Star Wars is huge.
B5 and BSG are not major franchises. They are cult shows that the majority of the world population has never heard of.
I see it more like a mix of the YouTube and IPTV model.
Each Major Franchise gets their own landing page, you pay per month on how many credits you want to dump onto your account, then the credits get spent for each show you want to watch.
You'd want a channel devoted to something to have at least a couple weeks worth of content with no breaks.
STARGATE shows, for example... there are 354 episodes. That's two full weeks of episodes without interruption. (There are 168 hours in a week.)
STAR TREK has around 5 and a half weeks worth of episodes... DOCTOR WHO has even more between both series, TORCHWOOD, and THE SARAH JANE ADVENTURES.
This is why I was saying splitting some like military scifi could be a potential scenario for drawing in people.
But a lot of time you're dealing with individual rights holders.
Paramount wouldn't want Star Trek facing off with anybody else that isn't in the same family.
Same with Disney, they wouldn't Star Wars to sit under the same Landing Page as Star Trek.
Every major IP rights holder would want their own landing page for their family of franchises.
Doctor Who and it's spin-offs would probably get their own related landing pages as well.
Something like PlutoTV? On there, there are channels devoted to a single thing. There are commercials like it was broadcast, but they do have some of the content On Demand.
(They have a STARGATE channel and two STAR TREK channels.)
That's a fair point, but IPs do change owners from time to time.
What I find funny about this comment is about 10-15 years ago, people were calling TNG the "Anti-Trek". I guess in 10 years time people will call Voyager the Anti-Trek. It comes down to what trek means to each individual.
I got a free 30 days trial of P+ last winter with a packet of Cheesy Wotsits, and binged SNW season 1. That’s the nearest I’ve come to spending money on the service.
(I think it more likely than not that Prodigy probably won’t be the only Trek series that gets “disappeared”, FWIW.)
I don't think DS9 is "the Anti-Trek" at all, since I think it basically affirms the underlying ethos of Star Trek. The idealism of the Federation and Starfleet bends and breaks at times, but Sisko and everyone still believes in those values at the end of the day, and even someone like Quark comes to begrudgingly believe in them too and hopes the Federation is able to "save them."
I think the reason DS9 works is that it holds Roddenberry's ideas to the fire in ways the other shows didn't, but because it's willing to go there it adds depth and realism to what Roddenberry was trying to say while also allowing for flaws in those ideas.
I think the reason DS9 works is that it holds Roddenberry's ideas to the fire in ways the other shows didn't, but because it's willing to go there it adds depth and realism to what Roddenberry was trying to say while also allowing for flaws in those ideas.
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Ideals are great but they need to acknowledge both human frailty and human choice. So, whenever ideals are held to the fire I find TREK all the better for it.
"It's easy to be a saint in paradise."
Showtime hit yesterday and I couldn’t really find anything appealing.
The problem now is too many services, so there is a constant churn.
It wouldn't matter if it happens to any other Trek series. Assuming that they release SNW S2 when it's finished, every other Trek series is fully on physical media. If they removed Discovery or Lower Decks or something, you'd just be able to watch them on DVD/Blu-ray. Prodigy was literally the worst possible Trek series for this to happen too, though as I said in another thread they have begun making S1 Volume 2 DVDs/Blu-rays. There is still a sliver of hope that they'll see the light of day.
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But that's rare for that to happen and usually a big deal if it happens.
Just look at what happened when George Lucas sold off Star Wars to Disney.
You are aware Stargate had its own streaming service a few years back, right? It included all episodes of SG-1, Atlantis, SGU, the original movie and the SG-1 DVD movies, plus a new webisode series developed exclusively for it. The only thing it was missing was the animated Stargate Infinity series.
That streaming service only lasted a year or so before shutting down due to being a financial failure. With that in mind, there's no way a service or "IPTV channels" devoted to BSG, B5, Firefly/Serenity or The Expanse would have any hope in lasting, and I have doubts Star Trek or Doctor Who would be able to justify the efforts. The only thing which might is Star Wars, and even they would be foolish to abandon Disney+ at this stage.
Yeah, Firefly is 14 episodes and a film. No way would that be able to sustain its own channel all to itself, even if it weren't incredibly obscure.
So what do you recommend, continue the giant conglomorate "All You can Eat" Subscription model?
That's not working as it is.
It's only not working because each company is setting up their own streaming service, decreasing the size of the library each one has access to. If there were only a few big streaming services, it would be much more efficient.
Also, there's a middle ground between paying to get access to multiple TV series and films and giving each TV series its own channel, no matter how small.
Also, there's a middle ground between paying to get access to multiple TV series and films and giving each TV series its own channel, no matter how small.
It's always funny when people think that falsely quoting you is a gotcha. I never said that.
I did talk about ST's long thematic preoccupation with institutionalism, hierarchy, legalism, and emotionally shallow writing. These are all traits that recur throughout TNG, VOY, and ENT, and they're all the result of the Roddenberry formula. TNG manages to escape some of this (more by virtue of the efforts of its cast than by virtue of most of its writing). But DS9 was known then, and remains known now, as the only Berman-era ST series to actively interrogate Berman-era ST's formula. DS9 actively interrogated and often rejected Berman-era ST's preoccupations with hierarchy and institutionalism, and actively tried to go for far deeper writing than TNG usually did. No less an authority than Ronald D. Moore himself compared the difference in the emotional depth of writing on TNG and DS9 to the difference between college and grad school.
DS9 is, and has always been, above reproach in terms of emotional depth. Its very first episode features one of the most emotionally resonant scenes in the entire franchise in Sisko trying to explain the nature of grief to the Wormhole Aliens.
Those episodes are very much the outliers though. A typical TNG episode is something more akin to "The Mind's Eye," or "Disaster" or "Birthright, Parts I & II" -- perfectly serviceable mid-tier episodes where characters undergo what should be life-altering crises yet they're barely ever brought up again if ever. This is not emotional depth.
And of course, genuinely affecting outliers like "Family" became even fewer in number during the period from about 1999 to 2004, VOY S6-7 and ENT S1-3. Berman-era ST only just started to develop emotional depth again during ENT S4 when it was cancelled. On balance, "emotionally shallow" is an accurate way to characterize the preponderance of episodes during Berman's tenure. DS9 is the main outlier.
You do if the actors were way better at their jobs than the writers were.
No. VOY S6 through ENT S3 was a definite low point.
And it'll find one. Again, ST is a perennial mid-tier money-maker. It's never really been a huge hit, but it's almost always been a reliable performer. The trick is finding a streaming service with a financially viable business model.
Refusal, or inability to afford the fee Sony charges to have a PlayStation app?
Exactly. And that's what makes DS9 so different from, and so much better than, the rest of the Berman-era shows.
Exactly. Single-corporation streamers just never made any sense. The value of a streaming service comes from the diversity of its library; customers just aren't that loyal to corporate brand names. The corporation with the strongest corporate identity in the public consciousness is probably the Walt Disney Company, and even Disney+ has yet to turn a profit.
Ultimately, the older model of studios licensing content to streamers that carry multiple companies' content is probably far more viable than the single-studio model.
I would not be surprised if, in five years, Paramount Global is licensing out Star Trek shows to stream on Netflix or Hulu.
I'll point out it was largely Star Trek that driven Paramount+ and Plato's subscriber growth, I mean there is a reason why Paramount internalized Star Trek, which was VERY costly.
Its Star Trek, the Duttonverse, and if things go right later D&D. Most of Paramount+'s other streaming only shows didn't pay off, especially anything even half way close at a Star Trek price tag. Oh and super rescently the CSI P+ spinoff (the NCIS spin off should do well too).
Heck maybe a Star Trek: Duttons could be an interesting idea, like serious Star Trek: Maquis were the Dutton family settles of a Maquis world and ends up fighting Cardassian settlers and the planets wild life and weird stuff. Lower budget the aton of Star Ship battles and stuff because most of it is planetside. Interesting crossover potential.
The my point is I wouldn't underestimate Star Trek in the right hands
