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.
I feel like they would have done so much better if they just played Netflix and Amazon off each other to pay for the content, and never spent a cent on the albatross Plus has become.
I bought a NAS and started saving my videos and video game install files on it because this exactly is the risk we face: Streaming platforms or even download platforms with DRM can decide that you don’t deserve the thing you want anymore. Then you won’t have it anymore.
For real man. If there’s a show I REALLY like, I make sure to track down the BDs and just use Plex.
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.
Especially in the wake of something like WB’s recent infamous cancellations, where there can be a bunch of shows that you might have otherwise enjoyed watching, that can be suddenly wiped off of the face of the Earth without any warning.
I’m just flabbergasted by the situation. I can’t think of a worst way for Paramount+ to have handled things. Prodigy gets good word of mouth. Prodigy’s physical media release is done using the cursed method of splitting the season into volume 1 (episodes 1 to 10) with volume 2 to be released in the future. Hasn’t happened yet. Prodigy is greenlit for a season 2. Prodigy is cancelled. Prodigy season 1 is removed from Paramount+ a few days after the announcement. Season 2 is waves hand around, getting finishing touches, and it’s availability for viewing to be determined, maybe never. I’m getting mental whiplash.
At some point, customer satisfaction and loyalty (to Star Trek; peripherally to Paramount+) should be greater than how many nickels a company can squeeze from a penny.
There’s a dimension of ‘killing the goose that laid the golden egg’ and eating it.
I can’t see how this is anything but a very tiny and super short term benefit to Paramount Global’s net earnings numbers for Q2 2023.
Metrics from 2022 show that Star Trek is one of the two franchises driving subscription demand, and that Prodigy helped sustain and grow the base through the fall/winter before the run up to Picard. Without Prodigy to help fill in the schedule in winter 2023-2024, Paramount+ can only expect season subscription drops by their Star Trek base.
It seems like this action might make things look slightly better at the Q2 earnings call meeting, but smart investors should see it as a an indication that Paramount will lose revenue next year, if not sooner due to backlash from the fanbase.
Yet they put all of SNW S1 and S2E01 up on YouTube for free. Weird.
I think it’s a smart business move. They’re using their strongest show to hook people. Giving them a taste.
I never watched Prodigy, but seeing Paramount fall into the same pattern as HBO Max by summarily removing content will guarantee that I cancel my current subscription and take to the high seas.
With physical media dying off or at least not prioritized, this compounds the situation because for a lot of these shows there’s no hard copy of the media that you can fall back on or keep as a personal archive; it’s all up to the whims of whoever’s in charge at the moment.
It makes the alternative far more practical.
So much this, we cancelled our HBO sub as soon as all the crap/shit TLC/Discovery stuff was put on the platform. That kind of crap is exactly WHY we ditched cable in the first place, and exactly WHY i was willing to pay more for the quality content HBO was producing and had in its library.
Paramount was always destined to fail, as is Disney+ (though that will take longer). The reality is that what people want is to buy their preferred streaming provider and have access to everyone content on that platform. They are not interested in having to subscribe to EVERY platform just for one or two shows.
I think Disney is one of the few platforms that can survive the streaming bubble. The mouse has acquired an obscene number of huge IPs over the last couple of decades - Marvel, Star Wars, The Simpsons… not to mention Disney/Pixar’s own output. It also helps that even without streaming they make more money than some countries.
https://www.techradar.com/news/disney-plus-loses-its-magic-touch-as-millions-cancel-their-subscriptions https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/us-celebrity-news/disney-subscribers-boycott-streamer-axed-30047706.amp
I doubt that to be honest, I can dig up more news, but my understanding is that Disney is already struggling to be profitable, they are finding that customers are not willing to pay for their walled content and are cross licensing with other platforms things that they would have tried to keep in house previously.
Oof, I hadn’t heard about any of that. I’m genuinely surprised that even Disney can’t make a sustainable streaming service.
This is probably signalling bad things ahead for Paramount/Viacom.
The last 15 years have been achieved on borrowed time, and, more importantly, borrowed money. The economic landscape post-Great-Recession has been one of near-0-interest loans, and because of that people have been able to paper over just how damaged our economic reality really is.
Suddenly, though, money costs money again. Risks are viewed through a much more critical lens. The baseline ROI necessary to get financing is significantly higher.
And people who have kept a large number of businesses with brand recognition afloat by using them as stores of value are ready to cash out.
This isn’t Paramount making weird, random decisions. This is Paramount indicating that they’re getting out of hosting their own content. And maybe more.
Expect a fire sale.
ill sub to whomever picks up star trek.
or theres other options for the trek i want to watch.
