I09 sees the wheels coming off the Paramount+ strategic model with the cancelation of Prodigy.
Interesting piece with some new angles…
This time last year, the series was the bold vanguard of an attempt to bring the venerable sci-fi franchise to new audiences in a way Star Trek hadn’t attempted in years, and the latest in what was now a whole fleet of Star Trek shows on the platform. In a swift, single move—not just the takeback of a second season renewal, but the complete erasure of the series from its platform—the studio’s stratospheric ascent seems to have come crashing down all around it.
Which brings to mind a major point all these news articles are missing. They talk about different territories having to “wait to see the show” because Plus wasn’t out yet there, and we all know perfectly well that’s not what happens in fandom; everyone who wanted to see it just sailed the seas and downloaded it instead, and now they have those files on their computer or NAS or even burned to old-school disc for as long as they want. Paramount, through its own choices, lost their chance at getting those populations the show legitimately with ad sales or subscription sales, and most of those fans will be happy to just keep the MKV files rather than buy the blu-ray or subscribe to the latecomer streaming service or whatever.
This is only true for the die-hards though yeah? The casual fans (which lets be real, are the majority of most shows’ viewership) just won’t bother. There is more than enough content out there to compete with, if you make it hard, people will just take the attention elsewhere.
And that’s probably not helping viewership either. Because they have some weird scheduling that makes it so that some areas get the show later than others, with some regions only getting a series some months after it has aired, people aren’t going to watch it, and will just watch something else that is available.