re: #52 freetoken

Speaking of ST:D (um, the producers really should have thought about that abbreviation…), has any show been so preemptively analyzed?

Like many old timers, I am not particularly fond of the reboot, alternate timeline movies. The first one was ok, but the last one was just too much of just about anything that was glitzy.

It’s been several years now since a real ST series has been made. Many scorn ST Enterprise, but I for one do not think it was anywhere near as bad as the criticism heaped upon it by some.

So of course there is a lot of anticipation among Trekdom, and SciFi lovers everywhere.

I don’t know if CBS is helping itself by the over-abundance of publicity over these last few weeks. The official Youtube channel gets new videos sometimes more than once a day. Yet the number of views are not very high (but I wonder if young people might be seeing these videos through other websites than Youtube?)

If ST:D (… that acronym…) fails it will be because CBS wants to make people pay to watch it. The show is supposed to be a cornerstone of the new pay service. But I wonder how many will join the new CBS over-the-top system? Since Netflix will make the series available worldwide outside of the US, I also wonder if the majority of the audience might come from outside the US (another thing the whining wingnuts seem to miss.)

If ST:D only has a single season, you can bet the whining wingnuts will crow about how SJW killed Star Trek. Which will be nonsense, as the success or failure of the show is probably only reliant on how well CBS can make their pay service a venture that was worthwhile.

And a single show cannot make an entire network or on-demand system (unlike the 1950’s when I Love Lucy really did determine the success of the young Columbia Broadcast System television enterprise.)

Among my suspicions is that ST:D will have one of the higher ratios of torrented distribution to pay viewers.

I understand why CBS wouldn’t put this show on Hulu, being that is owned by its competitors. But CBS does put some of its shows on Amazon, including the Star Trek back catalog. Maybe CBS didn’t want to get too in bed with Amazon, but Amazon Prime has a much larger reach (in the US) than I suspect CBS pay system will ever get.

Thing is, only us here in the US will have go to CBS All Access to watch ST: Discovery after the pilot/first episode, which will be shown on CBS over-the-air. Netflix holds the streaming rights for the rest of the world (they put up all of the costs for the entire series in exchange) except for Canada, where Bell Media holds the rights.