News WB/Paramount merger talks
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
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The more I think about this the more I'm coming to believe that the whole pro/anti nostalgia argument (which is totally exhausting) boils down to Trek audiences/fans expressing some feelings about the wider state of 2 things: the direction that franchise-based entertainment has taken both from a creative and business perspective and perceptions about the state of the world.
For the first: This is a bit of a sweeping generalization...for a while now, especially post 9/11, the creative trend in media has been a mix of grimdark, and an impulse toward "deconstruction," combined with attempts to make everything reflect a higher degree of "realism," which relates to the second: despite data showing that in many ways life is better/safer than ever, the general vibes are currently terrible. There are good reasons for this in lots of cases!
Taken together, ST fans, especially older ones, are nostalgic for "brighter" entertainment and better vibes. PIC S3 supplied this by the end. SNW supplies this. LD supplies this. So here we are.
In terms of the topic of this thread, the current landscape and state of the industry does not fill me with optimism for however the franchise will look when it is put through the wringer of modern finance. But, the franchise has shown some resiliency, so who knows. The one thing I'm pretty sure of is Zaslav is bad news for us as fans.
For the first: This is a bit of a sweeping generalization...for a while now, especially post 9/11, the creative trend in media has been a mix of grimdark, and an impulse toward "deconstruction," combined with attempts to make everything reflect a higher degree of "realism," which relates to the second: despite data showing that in many ways life is better/safer than ever, the general vibes are currently terrible. There are good reasons for this in lots of cases!
Taken together, ST fans, especially older ones, are nostalgic for "brighter" entertainment and better vibes. PIC S3 supplied this by the end. SNW supplies this. LD supplies this. So here we are.
In terms of the topic of this thread, the current landscape and state of the industry does not fill me with optimism for however the franchise will look when it is put through the wringer of modern finance. But, the franchise has shown some resiliency, so who knows. The one thing I'm pretty sure of is Zaslav is bad news for us as fans.
I always find this an odd idea. Why is it deconstruction to explore the why of things inside a world? Star Trek is optimistic but if I am optimistic about humanity (and I am because I believe we are capable of great things) hen why not show how this new humanity handles adversity? It's not grimdark to go that way, is it?
I don't know. Maybe my tolerance is higher, but nothing in Trek has struck me as "grimdark" unlike some other scifi works I've watched, like even something like Dune.
The jokes are lame even if you do love old Trek. But It’s not even so much about ‘loving’ old Trek. If a casual viewer who has never even seen any Star Trek before watches LDS, it’s highly doubtful that they would also tune in past a few episodes. Because there’s nothing about the LDS callbacks that would make a casual viewer even interested in finding out what they’re talking about.
LDS is 100% Trekkie fanwank. That’s not a bad thing, per se, but that’s not how you get new viewers.
Thus far, I strongly suspect Trek doesn't want new viewers.
They say that.
But it's hard to believe.
They say that.
But it's hard to believe.
I think Trek wants new viewers. I just don’t think they know how to get them unless it’s the action flick route like the first two JJ films. And even that kinda fizzled out.
I think part of the problem is everything nu-Trek belongs to P+. It’s not accessible enough to a wider audience.
In short, I think SNW should have been a CBS show. Let it be the “gateway drug” to get people interested in Disco, Lower Decks, Prodigy and even Picard.
I think part of the problem is everything nu-Trek belongs to P+. It’s not accessible enough to a wider audience.
In short, I think SNW should have been a CBS show. Let it be the “gateway drug” to get people interested in Disco, Lower Decks, Prodigy and even Picard.
I think that's one part.
I think the other part is the negative push back by vocal fans for changing anything and trying to please them.
It's a delicate balance. And it's more like a unfocused teeter totter hooked up to a V8.
That sounds good in theory, but I think it wouldn't work in practice for two reasons:
1. These gateway fans are just as likely to say, "I already have Strange New Worlds. That's good enough for me. Why should I subscribe to Paramount Plus?" Think about the '90s, when people who liked TNG didn't bother to watch DS9 or VOY.
2. Put SNW on CBS and the standards for ratings become much higher. Which means SNW would realistically end up with a far shorter run. The Orville only lasted for two seasons on FOX. CBS is higher profile than FOX and SNW has a larger budget. CBS would be less forgiving than even that. So, it might've even been only one season.
I do agree. Which is why I think New Trek should've been on Netflix. Still a streaming service that would be more forgiving but one with a much wider audience. A built-in audience where they already had all the Old Trek series.
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Indeed but even trying to please just the fanbase is daunting because of the fractures there.
that’s fair but it’s a risk you’d have to take. At that point it becomes a sales and marketing job on the CBS side.
I don’t think a smaller budget and a higher standard would necessarily be a bad thing. Sometimes I think all of live action nu-Trek relies a bit too much on the big fancy budgets and less on its writers.
It would also depend how much the network sets it up to succeed. Do they give it a good lead in or is it the lead in to something else, what day does it air, what is it up against on other networks, etc…
There is a big difference airing on a Friday night vs a Tuesday night. Or if it premiers in the fall up against Sunday Night/Monday Night/Thursday Night Football. Or the winter/spring with other mid-season replacements.
The Orville is a good comparison. Its what a network SNW might have looked like.
that would have been a great option too. Hulu would have worked as well. But just like UPN and Voyager they were dead set on their own thing.
Of course not but there is that ridiculous desire to please any way.
The average viewer of CBS broadcast is 63 - the oldest of all broadcast networks (though even FOX, the youngest, is 52.
Sure, it might expose some new viewers to Trek, but broadcast TV is for boomers. It's not going to bring in any younger fans at all.
true, Why there on Youtube, I belive they have put the First episode up on You Tube for Lower Decks, Prodigy and even SNW I think, to get people in.
However I do think they should put it on broadcast because there are older fans, I know my parents do have some streamers but there in the Rural areas and have to use satellite so they do watch regular tv/ cable (dish) so it wouldn't hurt them to put it on broadcast, maybe with after its done streaming.
But the movies should be like the JJ ones where there more action oriented big pomp and circumstance to get people in as a "Gateway" to new fans.
Thing is, being a space show, it would by necessity need a higher budget than normal simply because they have to make everything from scratch. Sets, costumes, props, all of it has to be new or unique to that show. Maybe they can get a bit lucky and acquire some of this from some other sci-fi show or movie that has stuff in storage. But then you factor in the added costs from makeup and prosthetics for alien characters. And I suspect on a network budget, the best the show could hope for as far as planets of the week go is the Stargate route where it's almost always a group of humans living in the same Vancouver forest each week.
There's a reason network dramas are almost exclusively cop and hospital shows these days, they're pretty cheap to do. They still have to build their own sets, but every day appliances and devices can be used as their props, or there's a surplus of available props sitting around to be used. IE, Hollywood has a ton of fake guns and handcuffs just sitting around for cop shows to use. Hospital shows can buy hospital scrubs en masse for their cast to wear, while cop shows can have deals in place with actual police forces to acquire genuine uniforms and even equipment and personnel. When it comes to characters wearing their civvies, sponsorship deals can be put in place to have the characters wear a particular brand of clothing. A Star Trek or just sci-fi series has none of these advantages, which is why the genre has more or less disappeared from network television in modern times.
The Orville ultimately was not sustainable on a network and it can be debated it if would have even have been picked up had it been from someone who did not already have a working relationship with that particular network.
What's crazy is a "DISCOVERY starting in the 25th century" seems to be the consensus that would result if all the disparate people on this BBS were polled together into some focus group.
Star Trek on Paramount+ is a relative loss leader. Shows on CBS need to hit their numbers weekly or be sent to the cancelation heap.
HOUSE OF CARDS on Netflix started in 2013. There just might have been a short window for this to have happened sad to say in 2013/2014, before CBSAA took a page from UPN.
My wife isn't a trekkie, though she did watch all of DS9 with me after we started dating. Anyway, Lower Decks is her favorite Trek. She often will watch the new episodes at Lunch, when I'm still at work. (Of course I'm also watching the new episodes during the lunch hour).
I thought they did put some SNW on CBS and it got even lower network ratings than DSC a few years ago?
It seems that outside of us nerds, the wider public is not that interested in Star Trek at all.
When us Boomers go, we're taking Star Trek with us.
I know, I know that some of y'all don't like that. But if you're honest with yourselves you know that it's true.
If you know young people who really, really like Star Trek, you 're very aware of them. Because you also know that it's extremely unusual and even weird.
Generally, if someone under thirty watches an episode of Star Trek it's because they've got time to kill or have happened across it and it gives them a warm feeling, like eating macaroni and cheese.
I don't think that many Trek fans were watching SNW on CBS, as most had already seen it on Paramount+ and elsewhere. If anything, CBS showed DIS and SNW just to fill some airtime that they would have otherwise shown repeats of other shows instead, IMO.
It's hard to get good data here to know for certain. Online polls have suggested that a large proportion of fandom is in their 20s and 30s, but the problem with these sorts of self-selecting polls is they both exclude older folks who don't use sites like reddit and younger folks who aren't Trekkies. So we don't have a true control group here. It also doesn't help that basically no metrics are available for modern shows to let us know who watches them. Back in 2017, Netflix's top streamed Trek episodes were heavily Voyager (with some TNG thrown in for good measure), but this likely just partially reflects VOY being the show that a 30-ish millennial may have fond memories of from childhood.
Regardless, boomers have pretty clearly been eclipsed in pop culture when it comes to nostalgia catering to Gen X, despite my generation being smaller. All of Picard Season 3 was basically nostalgia porn for fortysomething Trekkies, written by a fortysomething Trekkie. And there's like another 30 years or so until my generation shuffles off this mortal coil yet.
I would say that it's pretty clear the future of geek niche content will involve paying more $$$ for products targeted at a narrower and narrower audience. Things like kickstarter and patreon show the direction things will go, particularly as the ad revenue apocalypse continues to engulf all of media.
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