News Moonves: CBS All Access And Star Trek: Discovery Doing Very Well

It's a completely different business model. Weekly viewership is not the measure, nor is it relevant. It's also not even close to apples to apples. Subscriptions, and what they feel drives growths of subscriptions, is all that's relevant in this model. And they feel DSC is doing that.

They don't give a shit about how many DSC viewers vs. previous Star Trek shows, and neither do I for that matter. It's a first year streaming show on a brand new pay platform. There was never any way it was going to have as many viewers as something you could just turn the channel to back in the day.

Take a deep breath and try to relax. The brass who are responsible for either continuing or ending the show are happy with what it is delivering in their business model at the current time.

And that's all that matters. Spin any other story any other way you like. Put sugar and cherries on top if it makes you feel warm and comfy inside. But that's the bottom line.

 

Space is a cable network like Syfy in the US. I believe it is rated by the Canadian equivalent to Nielsen and, IIRC, DSC is among its top shows.

Crave TV is a kind of Netflix-lite. It doesn’t stream movies, only TV series. Both it and Space are owned by Canada’s largest private TV conglomerate—CTV (which is turn owned by Bell Media, the media arm of Bell Canada). It is NOT subject to ratings measurements.

 

I wonder how they determine this, across 150+ countries.

 

I think you mean "total American viewership", since DSC is on Netflix everywhere but the US and Canada and thus has an insanely huge potential audience.

 

As I said earlier, this is the bind CBS is in:

1. They know traditional broadcast is dying off, and streaming is the future.
2. They understand that if they give control of their shows to a third-party site like Netflix or Hulu they are signing their own death warrant in the longer run.
3. Therefore, they must develop their own streaming platform, which means having native content.

At this point, any native content is a plus for CBS, even if it loses money. This is why a second season of Discovery was always in the cards. If they get rid of Discovery, they are basically back to square one, and have to develop an entirely new set of content (Trek or otherwise). In contrast, once you amass a ton of semi-exclusive content - even if much of it is low quality and schlocky - you'll have a built in subscription base.

 

Netflix isn't that big outside the US and Canada. In most countries it's almost non-existent, people over here in Europe just don't like paying for shielded content - and every import has to be on free-tv anyway, so people just wait a little longer until they can watch GoT on television without paying extra. Meaning even DIS will inevitably run on free-tv. So only the most adamant fans are watching it now on Netflix, while everyone else waits. Which has the disadvantage that when it will be on free-tv, the hardcore fans have all already seen it, and aren't going to tell their friends to watch it, since the buzz has already fizzled out.

Every Trek series before OTOH premiered for all people visible on free-tv at the same time. Trek got pretty big on tv in certain European countries, and both Trekkies and regular audiences watched it. That's why it has amassed such an extremely large following, even most people that are not into sci-fi know the basics of most Star Trek series.
The show might still be more profitable around here, simply by virtue of it's distribution model. But it's almost definitely having a much smaller audience than previous Trek shows had over here as well.

Which is really a shame. Because if Star Trek as a brand shall survive, and be lonterm profitable, it needs to attract new viewers, not just squeeze more and more money out of an ever decreasing pool of hardcore fans.

 

So, some good points here.

My question, though, is what is truth?

Because when the 2009 "reboot" movie era hit...everyone was arguing that trying to make Trek for a broader audience was wrong, and would end up pleasing nobody (which didn't turn out to be entirely true, BTW...although the mismanagement of that element of the franchise is worth 100 pages in itself), and that Trek would never have the broad appeal of other genre offerings. The argument was to design and market it with a good awareness of "its place" in the world. Make it for the fans...smaller audiences, smaller scope, smaller budget...because it would never really be anything other than a niche franchise.

I'm not sure I agree or disagree...but I'm curious to know if we'll ever know the "truth" about how this franchise works and what its sweet spot is.

So, enter Star Trek Discovery, which is a totally different approach to the continuation of the franchise. It's neither broadcast television nor a movie...and (for better or worse depending on your tastes) it takes a very different approach to story, theme, and characters. It's basically an experiment. And, it's a very interesting one indeed.

What I see now, though, is a lot of arguing about "what's best for the survival of the franchise" when what people really mean/want is "what's best for ME that I can couch up as being best for the franchise." There's a distinction there that's pretty easy to register at times.

That's where I start to roll my eyes back into my skull...

So what do we think the answer is? I guess our collective guess is as good as any.

But, I WILL argue that right now, Star Trek is actually in the most positive position for long-term sustainment (I didn't say "success" because you can define that a lot of different ways, as threads like this attest to) on this new platform. CBS is depending on Star Trek to help them launch their new service and ensure their transition and survivability into the future. Let's be honest, "The Good Fight" and "The Twilight Zone" ain't gonna get that done by themselves. CBS wants and needs Star Trek to be successful in this model. And then they need to grow from there.

That in itself is a great position for the franchise to be in. The studio is invested in the show from their long-term business plan standpoint...not just as a "money maker." It's perhaps the first time in a VERY long time that Trek hasn't been viewed as simply a cash cow. It is core to the strategic direction of the studio. It also means that they are likely to be patient and to devote the time and resources to get it right and continue to improve its quality (which will be needed). It means that they won't be quick to pull the plug just because some asinine Nielson Ratings decline. It means it's not dependent upon box office receipts and critic's ramblings.

I actually think this is an argument in favor of continuing to keep it where it is.

 

For those worrying about if cbs is making money or not on Star Trek remember this fact. Netflix right now even with all this original programming is cash flow negative by almost a billion dollars a year. Netflix is paying for its original content (and dsc is probably in that) through issuing a lot of junk bonds.

However somebody it matters if cbs is completely cash flow positive on this one show.

And all these money calculations people are trying to make don;'t include people who already had CBSAA and watched discusveryt. I had it for good fight and kept it for dsc and am keeping it now for celebrity big brother. Yet somebody my $50 are not worth counting in all the numbers above.

 

A different take. Lots of hearsay, but some interesting citations:

 

Midnight’s Edge is never interesting. It’s eye rolling genre entertainment tabloid YouTube “journalism” at its worst. They latch on to things they hate and try to bring them down with rumor and innuendo. And their citations? 1000 quatloos they come from either a guy named Doug Fitz or another guy who calls himself “Fred Archer.”

 

Midnight edge hated discovery bfore it started. This whole video is wild ass guesses of what they want to happen so they can hate the show more.

 

Where did they get the idea that Netflix is significantly reducing their budget? I haven't been able to find any sources for that.
Is it SOP to pay returning series less?

 

I'm going to counter this with the same thing I saw with all the "CBS is losing money on discovery so they should sell it to netflix".

Netflix is cash flow negative by over a billion a year. They are not making money on their original content. They finance their original content by bonds. They just did $1.6B in bonds a few months back. I bet somwhere in that $1.6B in debt for netflix is discovery as well.

The idea that CBS is losing money on trek but Netflix would make tons isn't held up by the facts that Netflix is making its original content through debt right now in the hopes of money down the road.

 

Actually yes. Season 1 is the most expensive for shows since you have to ramp up, build sets, and all that stuff. Season 2 is actually cheaper in most cases (minus actor salories) since a lot of that sets and props and so forth are already there and don't have to be re-done from scratch.

 

I understand that.

- Variety
I imagine that the Discovery set would cost significantly more. The Shenzhou will probably be redressed/redesigned for the Enterprise?

The Midnight Edge video claims that Netflix is going to be paying significantly less money to CBS, and that essentially the show is doomed because CBS is now going to be footing the bill and bear the risks. I'm just wondering if it's stated anywhere that the Netflix deal was something like (Huge lump sum for exclusive worldwide streaming rights + smaller fee per episode). I imagine there would be potential leeway for Netflix to exit the deal if it proved unprofitable, but there's no evidence for what that youtube video is saying.

 

Even if true, Netflix is financing their original series by a lot of debt right now. Even if DSC wasn't making money today is it a big reach that CBSAA would take a short term loss to build the brand longer term?

The overseas netflix deal being so big is becasue over half of netflix's subscribrers are in the US. They want to grow overseas and are using discovery to do so.

The US people who want discovery on netflix is because they are already subscribers and don't want to pay more. If they already subscribe and are in no danger of leaving what money does netflix make from them by having discovery on netflix?

 

No one should be listening to anything Midnight's Edge says regarding Discovery. They made a LOT of claims under the shade of being rumors, etc that didn't come to pass. Sadly some of those rumors are still brought up by people to this day as people stumble across their videos after the fact. They also outright lie as well. They have no one way at all of knowing what Netflix is doing with their money.

 

Why would it ever come to free TV? Do Netfix, Amazon, and Hulu originals?

 

^^^
You realize that DEBT is how TV (and hell film) production works, right? You spend money to make the show hoping (long term) that you'll profit in the end - via advertising sponsorship, merchandising and licensing what you can, etc. Hell in TVs heyday most popular TV series operated at a deficit until they're out of production and the studio was then selling syndication rights to 100's of local stations around the country.

And yes, the show cost Netflix a pretty penny; but because of that (as well as its broadcast rights sales to Canada) CBS MADE A PROFIT from the show before it aired (which is what made Moonves so happy.) That said, if the show had under performed, CBS wouldn't have thrown more money to produce a second season. They would have marketed the hell out of what they had for a time and moved on.

But the idea the ST: D was a financial failure for CBS and they're now just propping it up is ridiculous. If they didn't think it would continue to bring in subscription revenue and continue to help grow the CBSAA brand as a top tier streaming service - it wouldn't have been greenlight for Season 2.

 

You realise that tv isn't free. Advertisers pay for tv because they get more than their money back from the viewers, therefore their viewers pay the entire cost of the production, and then some.