News Complete 1st Season to Air on CBS terrestrial in Sept

[ChristopherPike]

God job they're not a network show, or they'd have to break out the decon gel...

Maybe the numbers will perk up for that Mirror Universe episode where Saru gave Burnham a bath.

 

[Lord Garth]

People are watching reruns of shows they already watch to begin with.

Guaranteed, DSC probably wasn't that well advertised as being on regular CBS. If at all. Literally it's just there to fill up airspace. And maybe get lucky roping in a few more potential CBSAA subscribers. Maybe it'll catch on over the next few months, maybe it won't.

They chose something from three years ago to put on regular TV because they knew it wouldn't cut into CBSAA's subscriber base. If they put Picard Season 1 on regular TV, not only would it get more viewers, but those viewers would also think, "If I only have to wait six months to a year to watch Picard for free, why should I get CBS All Access?" It would be counter-productive for CBS All Access' numbers and wouldn't last long on regular CBS anyway.

 

[Campe]

My level of surprise at the ratings is really nonexistent. I was not expecting a three year old episode to do well. No, the low ratings means that the show isn't getting Star Trek in front of new eyes but as someone else stated: In the midst of a pandemic where the fall season has been delayed, this isn't costing CBS anything. What matters more is how the show is doing on CBSAA. And that the show is about to premiere its third season with rumors of the fourth season having already started production, I'm not worried. And if those rumors aren't true and the show ends at three seasons? Oh well. I've enjoyed what we've got and look forward to season three!

 

[BillJ]

These ratings are much ado about nothing, honestly. The show seems to be successful (for reasons beyond my comprehension) in the space it was designed for.

 

[Cyrus]

Some dudes will certainly look at ratings (which will obviously not be very high) and use it as evidence of failure, even though the ratings on CBS have no bearing on the future of the show on the CBS/Viacom streaming platform.

I predicted the low rating reactions in the first page of this thread.

 

[Vger23]

I agree with a lot of what’s been said here. Honestly, the show’s ratings or popularity mean nothing to me.

If me, Jim up the street, and some guy in Detroit are the only people watching in the entire country, yet CBS feels further seasons are worth the investment....it doesn’t matter one damn.

Right now, they are airing the show and selling advertising by running it. It’s all icing on the cake.

 

[Vger23]

Some of you guys...you’re a riot.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

I saw a little while back that they were cheering on Emma Watts because she didn't praise or mention Alex Kurtzman for his television work in that Deadline article; never mind that there was no quotes from anyone saying anything, just sources (and I don't think she's made any comments period regarding Star Trek).

Anyway, I think it'll be so funny if she greenlights the most "Woke-ish", "SJW-ish" Star Trek that the world has ever known because they will flip on her so fast.

I do want to see what Emma Watts does, though.

Oh without a doubt. And since she's a woman, she'd get all the scrutiny that Kathleen Kennedy gets.

I wish CBS All Access would release their viewership numbers for each series. That's the main source of the audience. Without it, we don't have a very major part of the picture and we're limited to just bias versus bias.

I kind of like that. Nobody can use numbers to support arguments. Everyone is totally in the dark.

Broadcast TV in general isn't aging well at this point. While I don't think it will go away; streaming is starting to make a dent in the entertainment industry, and is allowing niche programming to thrive in a variety of ways.

But it's funny to me just because a 3 year-old episode - which was broadcast on CBS originally back in 2017, was available online for free; and is part of a popular series streaming on CBS all access - only got 1.7 million viewers at a 10:00 p.m. time slot on a Thursday - that somehow equates to:

"No one wants to watch Star Trek on TV anymore..."

(Oh and by the way there's a cable network in Canada that also disputes this claim, and Star Trek Discovery has been sold in syndication in England; but hey what are facts right?)

The fact is people like Star Trek and want to watch it. How they watch it really doesn't matter. The fact that there are currently three Star Trek related series in production; and Emmy award-winning series of Star Trek shorts made in between seasons of these three series; and two more live-action Star Trek related TV series and pre-production...

Yeah no one wants to watch Star Trek anymore. Riiight.

There's a show called YOU that used to air on Lifetime network for its first season. Its ratings were very low and it ended up getting picked up by Netflix rather than continue on Lifetime. Once the first season was added to the library, it gained a much larger audience and is now greenlit for a third season after the second one was dropped earlier this year.

The future really is in streaming. Over the air shows are no longer the talk of the town like they were in the 20th century. The Emmys mainly nominate shows from either premium cable like HBO or Showtime, or streaming services like Netflix and Hulu.

Imagine years from now, you tell kids that the only way to watch your favorite shows back in the 60s was setting the TV on a "channel" at a very specific time. You can't pick when you want to watch it, it airs when the channel wants it to. There was no way to pause or rewind. You also had to sit through several minutes of commercials before finishing the episode. Then tell them about TNG and how when you were able to watch it was only determined by the affiliates. The kids will think that's wack.

 

[arch101]

Wonder if they’ll have bad dubbs for the profanity like when older films are on cable...

 

[MakeshiftPython]

The standard method these days is to just mute the profanity. Older methods like dubbing now just comes off cheesy and distracting, and bleeping is now more associated with reality trash TV.

Besides, there wasn't even that much profanity in DISCO. I can't even remember an f-bomb beyond that one instance with Tilly.

 

[Cyrus]

My favorite profanity was Tilly's "Lets not keep these a-holes waiting", referring to mirror universe dudes.

 

[tomalak301]

My favorite profanity was Tilly's "Lets not keep these a-holes waiting", referring to mirror universe dudes.

Her whole act as "Captain Killy" was great.

 

[The Wormhole]

Besides, there wasn't even that much profanity in DISCO. I can't even remember an f-bomb beyond that one instance with Tilly.

Disco for some reason decided to refrain from profanity in the second season in response to the fact CTV Sci-Fi in Canada aired the episode with profanity uncensored in the 8 PM ET slot, where profanity is not allowed, and for some reason insisted on keeping the show in that slot for the second season. There was even a meta joke about this in the second season with Tilly commenting to Saru "you told me not to use profanity while on duty" in response to his reaction to her saying "frigging amazing."

CTV Sci-Fi airs Picard and Lower Decks in the 9 PM ET slot, where profanity is allowed in Canada, so they don't need to worry about getting in trouble for uncensored profanity. Which doesn't mean anything for Lower Decks, but for Picard means we get to hear all about sheer fucking hubris.

 

[Vger23]

, but for Picard means we get to hear all about sheer fucking hubris.

One of my favorite moments in all of Star Trek.

 

[fireproof78]

Besides, there wasn't even that much profanity in DISCO. I can't even remember an f-bomb beyond that one instance with Tilly.

Because there wasn't.

 

[RAMA]

I've explained why, you just don't listen.

These ratings are much ado about nothing, honestly. The show seems to be successful (for reasons beyond my comprehension) in the space it was designed for.

 

[RAMA]

Ratings takeaways:

1) I expected about 2 million viewers in the overnights, we had 1.7 million. Shows in that time slot (Thurs 10pm) have been roughly in the 1.5-1.9 million range with most performing lower. So it performed on par.

2) Shows Ep 1 were compared to in media outlets were new episodes, compared to a 3 year old rerun.. Albeit a very expensive one.

3) This premiere episode scored 10 million overnight viewers and 15 million in the +7 ratings in first run, 2017.

4) This episode can already, and has already been streamed by millions of paying customers in 190 countries for 3 years and is still available as I write this.

5) If only a fraction of these viewers turn out to subscribe for Season 2 and 3 CBSViacom will be happy.

RAMA

 

[JamesRye]

"Discovery debuted in Canada with a viewership of 2.274 million, but by the end of its first fifteen-episode season, the series only pulled 927,000, for a sixty-percent season total loss.

This lack of interest in the series would bleed over into its second season, as its premiere episode failed to appear in the Top 30 rankings during its debut week, with less than 978,000 viewers.

Viewership numbers would only continue to plummet, as the season two finale couldn’t even manage to draw 816,000 total viewers, the total viewership numbers for The Blacklist, the 30th ranked show in Canada for the week of April 15th to April 21st 2019.

Maybe more interesting is that The Orville beat out Star Trek: Discovery in Canada for the week of April 8th to April 14th 2019. The Orville’s Season 2 Episode 12 “Sanctuary” ranked 29th with total viewership of 841,000. Star Trek: Discovery failed to list in the Top 30."

- Bounding Into Comics

So, we have disappointing ratings, which show that Star Trek isn't the draw it once was. I mean, you can see that from the box office performance of Beyond. Hell, even a Star Trek parody is beating the real thing in re-runs!

Picard costs an average of $8-9 million per episode while Discovery costs an average of $8 million. Between the two series, the network essentially already has a yearly budget of close to $180 million.

What I would do if I were in charge (chuckle) is release four TV movies per year. Draw in fans with old faces, get some big stars and these would be events, like the Voyager two parters that drew in great ratings back in the day. You'd easily get 8-10 million per TV movie.

 

[BillJ]

So, we have disappointing ratings, which show that Star Trek isn't the draw it once was.

Does that include their streaming totals? That is still a missing piece of information. Plus, there is nothing on the Picard totals.

 

[JamesRye]

Does that include their streaming totals? That is still a missing piece of information. Plus, there is nothing on the Picard totals.

There's no access to streaming figures unfortunately. We only have the Canadian ratings, the recent US ones and the dire E4 ratings (DSC) from here in the UK. It must be doing well on Amazon, Netflix and CBSAA, otherwise they wouldn't be pressing ahead with new content. We know Picard broke streaming records for CBSAA, but no idea of how many stayed to the end of the season - nor what those numbers might be. We do know that CBSAA has somewhere in the region of 4 million subscribers though. That's a tiny number and one would have hoped that DSC would have attracted more viewers than it did on terrestrial TV. I'm sure CBS were hoping to drive up subscriptions to the service. It seems that Trek has become a lot more niche than it was in the heady days of the 90's. Viewership went into a steady decline once TNG finished its run, with the odd spike here and there for premiers and two parters. As TNG was so huge, its little wonder that Picard did well on its debut, but at least the Canadian ratings suggest that it hasn't been able to hold viewers interest, sadly.