I just don't understand why CBS doesn't have someone on board who at least 'gets' what ST is about. I'm not talking about ST fans, just someone who understands it's concept and can steer the ship in the right direction (not sinking with all hands before launch). Not everybody is going to be happy with the streaming service and that's going to cut down the viewing audience significantly. A lot of people will say "Why should I pay for one TV show, when I can watch TV for free (and move on to another show)? If CBS had any confidence in it., it would be on the network. Darryl
It has a much better chance of long-term success on a streaming service. Streaming is the future. Broadcast television is the past. Regarding what Trek is about, I don't know that there's a clear cut answer to that, and I don't think there should be a clear cut answer to that. It shouldn't be that stringent. It shouldn't adhere to some artificial standard of what it should be, especially when there is some disagreement as to what that standard should be. Some think it should be like TOS, and F-U to everything else. A small group of self-entitled fans don't get to decide what it's about. My personal opinion is that it should be different, like nothing that's come before. It should break new ground, bring something new to the table.
I don't think ST is about any one thing. There are multiple things that make ST what it is. It also should not be about one particular series (but all series). For me ST can be about hope & acceptance. I have seen all the series and movies. Sure I like certain ST series & movies more than others., but I have come to accept the diversity that is ST. Darryl
They had that with Bryan Fuller, but if the scuttlebutt is true, the head of CBS started meddling, trying to 'sex' it up and change Fuller's original vision. They disagreed and Fuller was shown the airlock! The problem isn't that such people of vision don't exist, it's that they often get overridden by bean-counters and what they think the show should be like (even when they know nothing about the property). As for streaming, yeah, that's the future. There are already more households that subscribe to Netflix than own DVRs.
But this isn't on Netflix in the US. It's on CBS All Access, a struggling "Me Too" effort be CBS to get into the lucrative streaming game. STAR TREK was to be the carrot to dangle in front of the fans to get them to sign onto that service. My problem isn't so much the $6 or $9 monthly fee as it is the fact that the service isn't readily available on my equipment. I own a smart TV, a smart Blu-ray, another smart Blu-ray - ALL of them have ready access to Netflix if I so desired with dedicated buttons on the remote, but none of them will get me to CBS All Access. So if I pay the fee, I STILL have to connect a computer to my main TV in order to watch, or go buy yet another device or dongle to make my smart TV a little smarter. I'm somewhat tech-savvy, but I know of many who simply won't bother to seek out some alternate methods of TV. If it ain't on their cable (satellite/antenna/DVD/Blu player), they ain't watchin' it. If the show turns out to be worthwhile, eventually it will spill out as a DVD set or Blu-ray set.
Nevertheless, it's a streaming platform that's future looking, or rather wanting to catching up to the trailblazers. They're quite serious about wanting it to become mainstream. Yes, that was the plan until the network completely screwed up the production of that show! But they have other shows too, such as the The Good Fight, and are in the process of ramping things up. Yes, there are accessibility issues ATM, but that will become less of a problem over time. The fans will watch it. The rest of the world will watch it on Netflix. The show's already profitable, so I don't think CBS will worry too much about short-term accessibility issues in the US.
I know that this is way off topic, but I do not see Season 5 of The Brady Bunch on CBS. I only see the first 4 seasons.
I think the idea is that the new Trek series is hoped to attract people into the new CBS streaming service.
It's the future of television. They're getting their foot in the door. Broadcast television will eventually go the way of the dodo. Furthermore, Star Trek has always struggled on broadcast television. TOS struggled in the ratings. TNG and DS9 survived as long as they did, because they were broadcast in first-run syndication. Voyager and Enterprise were broadcast on a fledgling network. Enterprise was cancelled due to poor ratings. Discovery has a much better chance for success on a streaming service.
Broadcast TV is still free and will still reach the largest audience. Streaming may have a place in the future, but it isn't anywhere close to supplanting Broadcast TV, in fact it still draws heavily from broadcast TV as well.
I said it in '79! I was a bit annoyed that they changed the Klingons at the time - I thought the originals looked frightening enough! I'm over it now. The guys'n'gals with shoe polish all over their faces look kinda ridiculous now. I don't think they need to change them again NOW though!
Which demographic are you talking about? Young(ish) people don't watch much broadcast TV at all. They don't have DVRs and prefer streaming content on demand from Netflix or Amazon. When not streaming, they're playing video games, are on youtube or social media. Broadcast TV simply doesn't figure, which is why CBS wants to become a player in the streaming business.
>>>I think you have a skewed view of this. Broadcast TV isnt going ANYWHERE. It will ALWAYS exist. A large portion of the American public will simply never pay for TV or radio and will just "make do" with what is offered free Over The Air. The networks will make their money with the advertising as they have always done. Certainly they will augment their programming with pay for streaming, but it will be an adjunct service and not the main thrust. People only have so much spendable income, and very few will pay for something that always offered free. And if a show they really like is only offered as a pay service like the new Star Trek, they will simply wait a few days and obtain it free on You Tube or whatever other service pops up in the future, and there will be tons of them.
So? We're talking demographic trends. The broadcast networks will be around until a minimum profitability threshold is reached due to those changing demographics, and that's approaching fast (and who wants to put up with in-program ads anymore?!). What will they do when that day comes? Either switch to their streaming platform, or become pure production companies selling their product to other streaming platforms (quite likely) or enter into co-production with them, or, well, go out of business.
I generally agree with what you're saying. To me, broadcast/cable/streaming are all just delivery mechanisms for programming, although streaming generally allows for totally asynchronous viewing. The networks and streaming services are generating their own content because nobody wants to simply be a delivery service; the $ is in the content. One bump in the road is real time/local interest stuff. It's a small segment of broadcast programming, but will they ever do away with local news at 6:00? Will local stations ever shut down their transmitter and just record/stream stuff from the studio? And where will their outlet be? Netflix? CBS, NBC, etc. ? It seems as though there are just too many streaming outlets, and the ones that have high quality commercial free HD programming are all subscription. How many different pay streaming services will people ultimately subscribe to? And of course the free services run ads, like broadcast. I just can't picture how that will all shake out and what business model makes sense. My personal complaints with streaming are that there's still a bandwidth bottleneck (for me anyway) getting multiple HD streams into the house, say nothing of 4k stuff. And, some shows have not been encoded well and/or are chopped up syndication versions. When I'm geared up for critical viewing (like a 3 hour epic movie), I always get the BD from Netflix. I don't know; I'm definitely not part of the "watch Game of Thrones on your iPhone on the train on the way to work" demographic.
One could argue that, if CBS feels the younger crowd don't watch broadcast TV and only watch streaming (while, conversely, less lucrative older demographics still watch broadcast TV and do less streaming), then they could put the new show on *both* broadcast and streaming services. If the sought-after young demographic don't do broadcast TV, they would still seek out the show on CBS All Access, right? There *are* numerous shows that still air on broadcast or cable that then go on to have huge streaming numbers (Walking Dead, etc.). One other problem for "CBS All Access" is that it just doesn't have the prestige in most people's minds that Netflix or even Amazon have. "CBS All Access" sounds like the typical broadcast/cable app that basically is a variation on the "On Demand" section cable providers offer. Not only *is* that what is has been in the past prior to offering exclusives, the *name* itself sounds like a run-of-the-mill network re-run app. However it has happened, there is a certain amount of prestige now being a "Netflix Original Series" or even "Amazon Original Series." "CBS All Access" doesn't sound like a company that is going to dive into the feature film arena and win Oscars. So if they're trying to compete with Netflix and Amazon not just in terms of *what* they do (stream content), but what their company produces, then CBS with "All Access" is kind of all over the place. They may have been better off starting some new streaming service, perhaps in cooperation with a few other companies, and giving the actual streaming service some prestige in name and theme first.
I don't know if your post is supposed to be a joke or not. I was answering a specific question which was quoted above my answer that you then quoted. I'm not sure if you are having a laugh at me or didn't realize I was offering an explanation to a specific question. No hard feelings or anything, but linking the thread we are in to my answer is odd.
I linked my exact post above (follow the link, or scroll the page) where I used nearly the exact language as your carrot sentence. No hard feelings here either, and not trying to be funny, just pointing out that I'd already posted almost exactly what you said.
I don't see dropping news at 6 to be any kind of a problem (in the near future). Forgive me, but your objection comes from an older perspective, where live TV news programs were/are a part of the established culture (demographics again). Do you think younger people gather around the TV at 6 to watch the news? I sure as hell don't and I ain't no whippersnapper. Instead they get their news from Facebook feeds (for better or worse) or from links their friends share or just go online to a news website or even twitter, etc. It really is anachronistic to think that they would wait for the 6 o'clock news to get that information (which may be several hours out of date anyway). I'm not saying this particular aspect will disappear tomorrow, but that it will do so, I have no doubt. Yes, the picture is a little murky at the moment because the industry is at an inflexion point and everyone's scrambling to do their own thing so that they don't get left behind (a parallel situation is happening now in autonomous driving cars - every car maker/tech company is trying to crack it because they see the future of mobility). Ultimately what I think will happen is that there will be a rationalization of the different services into maybe a handful (or fewer) global players that will have access to a big chunk of programming (but not all) and so you will only need to subscribe to a few services if you wanted access to the broadest selection of programming.
Autonomous cars, lol. Not a good example - that's not happening anytime soon, and if it ever happens, it isn't going to do what people think it is going to.
