The future of the home of Star Trek TV continues to be in flux, with a new report on Paramount+ potentially joining forces with the Peacock streaming service.
ParamountPeacock+?
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Paramount Global and Comcast are exploring “joining forces in streaming through a partnership or joint venture, among several potential strategic options.” Like Paramount+, Comcast’s Peacock streaming service has struggled to compete in the streaming wars, with neither service turning a profit. Both services hover around around 1% of the total TV viewing market share, compared to around 8% for market leader Netflix.
Paramount has already formed a number of strategic partnerships for Paramount+, including Walmart, the world’s largest retailer. Last year it was reported they were in talks on bundling Paramount+ with Apple+. However, it sounds like the deal with Comcast could be more than just a marketing bundle, potentially combining Paramount+ and Peacock into a single streaming service. According the the WSJ report. “bringing the two streaming apps under one roof could produce significant cost savings—from spending on programming to marketing—and create a more in-depth offering for consumers, especially with regard to live sports.” This new report follows last week’s news that Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery plan to launch their own combined streaming sports venture.
This is not the first time Comcast and Paramount have discussed a partnership, and the two companies have already combined forces with the SkyShowtime streaming service available in a number of markets in Europe, which features Peacock and Paramount+ originals, including Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Prodigy. A combined service could see Star Trek sitting alongside reruns of The Office, NBC Universal and Dreamworks franchises, Peacock originals like Mrs. Davis and Poker Face, and Premiere League football.
Star Trek collection in Paramount+
Paramount Global is under intense pressure to show profit growth to investors and deal with its debt burden. Earlier this week the company announced layoff, accounting for 3% of the workforce. As we have reported in December and January, the company is fielding offers for a potential sale or merger. One of the potential merger partners is Comcast itself, although that is not considered likely. The latest potential bidder is the Allen Media Group, and Paramount Global’s board has reportedly formed a special committee to assess the potential deals.
Paramount+ and Peacock teaming up could have an impact on the Star Trek TV franchise. Paramount+ is now the exclusive home to new original and legacy Star Trek TV series (with Star Trek: Prodigy being the exception, licensed to Netflix). Paramount+ has several Trek TV projects in development or production (Strange New Worlds, Lower Decks, Starfleet Academy, and the Section 31 movie). A joint Paramount/Comcast streaming service would likely cut back on total content spending between the two, which could impact future seasons, TV movies and series currently being considered. However, it could also breathe new life into a streaming service that has struggled to turn a profit and is at risk of being shuttered, especially following a potential buyout of Paramount Global.
The one thing that seems clear is that 2024 is shaping up to be a pivot point for Paramount Global and the streaming service that has become the home of Star Trek (with a few exceptions). TrekMovie will continue to monitor the situation and report on any updates.
Interesting idea, but why do this in the middle of the potential sale of P?
This would bring live sports and NFL to the package…the combination would have potential.
The streamer would be spun off into the partnership. There’s been plenty of chatter that the potential suitors would sell the streamer or shut it down.
Don’t they already have NFL via CBS?
Peacock is starting to get some NFL games, including a Wildcard Playoff Game.
Paracock?
It’s fine to do something like this for consumers, but these joint ventures rarely end well, and they aren’t nimble because they have so many corporate masters to approve decisions.
At least they are being proactive in case nothing comes of all the merger/takeover options.
Mountcock
Peemount….
Golden…..
Peacock+ with Showtime
Peetime…
Peatime with Showcock.
My condolences to the mods.
Now available on TicPick…
That’s a golden idea. I guess I am showering you with praise.
Brought to you by Charmin and Depends.
The bathroom humor writes itself…
At this point a few lottery winners could get together and BUY STAR TREK.
Well, most lottery winners are bankrupt in a couple of years. Buying Trek would certainly keep that trend alive and well….
Ha! Excellent.
The issue isn’t the IP so much as distribution.
Really the best thing for Star Trek now is for it to be sold off to Apple to make and distribute (they do the best sci fi now) or Paramount keeps making it and licenses distribution to Netflix to get it out there.
It would get lost on Netflix though. A blip for a couple weeks after a binge and some murky ratings data and then it’s buried until the next season.
Apple is a more secure prospective owner, but I really think people take for granted how wonderful it is to enjoy a franchise constantly being fed because it’s a crown jewel for its owner. Paramount is not a perfect steward and it’s now embattled, but Star Trek has always been precious to it, and the company has been keeping the fires lit under the franchise as a top priority. Do we really want to see it licensed out to mega streamers and risk getting lost, playing second fiddle to other franchises somewhere like WBD, or treated as disposable content instead?
We may complain, but we’ve had it good for ages – first run syndication, flagship show of a network, big budget movie reboot, flagship franchise of a streaming service that in 8 years will have brought us as many new shows as were made in the previous 51.
As many new shows, but far, far fewer episodes (fewer new episodes than Star Trek: The Next Generation did all by itself (165 vs. 178.) And Paramount loves Star Trek so much that they did almost nothing for the 50th Anniversary in 2016 and haven’t made a movie since Beyond. They love talking about Star Trek, but I’m not sure they love paying for anything new.
No one is making shows with huge episode counts, nor will anyone start doing it again, plus audiences are accustomed to big budgets, so I refuse to be ungrateful for the episode counts. Ditto Paramount Pictures being skittish about making another flop.
I’m also not going to get hung up for old management and the Viacom/CBS schism. Star Trek fans are better off with it as a priority to Paramount than a lesser priority for another owner, the only (big) issue is their precarious finances.
What? Pretty much all the network TV dramas are still making 20+ episode per year. All those NCISs and Chicagos, for example. Granted, they’re a lot cheaper than Star Trek, but that was true in the TNG/DS9/VOY era, too. You gotta spend money to make money. It is only streaming/cable that is being stingy.
Streaming and premium cable are spending way more on their shows with smaller episode counts than network tv shows are for longer seasons. The audience for network TV is so small now, all the pennies are getting pinched. Network TV shows now are cheap and they look cheap, especially the second they are asked to do anything beyond venture outside their standing sets or employ VFX or far flung location shoots or makeup and costumes not rooted in a contemporary wheelhouse. Now you have series like Bob Hearts Abishola, Blue Bloods and Lois and Superman ruthlessly cutting cast salaries and characters just to be able to make it to being renewed.
The days of Lost, or even CW fantasy and superhero shows are long over. Even Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise were unusual in being relatively expensive network space sci-if shows with big episode orders. The Orville was lucky to get a 14 episode second season and its production values were all over the place on Fox.
No one today is going to commission a sci-fi show for 22 episodes, and everyone expects productions to look as glossy as the Paramount+ shows. Add in the competition like Apple TV+’s sci-fi, Star Wars on TV, and even a bigger budget Doctor Who and there is absolutely no going back to ordering longer seasons of a cheaper show. And one has the money to do more episodes of these shows the way they are made now. By necessity it takes longer to make an episode of these shows than it did in simpler more hectic times, and frankly you’d be hard-pressed to find casts and crews willing to go through that much sustained rigamarole anymore.
Huh? There are tons of TV shows still with 20+ eps per year?
Expensive sci-fi shows? No. So see my reply above.
Well, now that you’re being much more specific, sure.
“as many new shows as were made in the previous 51”
More is not always better. Definitely not in this case.
They are constantly investing in the franchise and there are still people clamoring for more. These boards are a microcosm of fandom – people wanting more Prodigy, more Discovery, bigger episode counts, a Star Trek: Legacy show, more movies… The quality vs quantity is not what I’m debating. Having an owner who values your franchise above most, if not all, of their other properties and keeps investing in it, is not something to take for granted. We like to complain that Paramount doesn’t always take us seriously, and yet we’ve gotten 5 shows in 7 years with a new tv movie and spin-off on the way. No one can be expect to love it all, we didn’t even do that in the 90s, but a lot of people probably have, and surely there’s been *something* for everyone within that.
I seriously don’t see how the potential of the most massive and consequential upheaval of Paramount’s ownership we’ve ever been through (even bigger than the Viacom-CBS split and reunification) could be good for Star Trek unless the studios are kept intact and propped up by a deep pocketed benefactor.
one could argue that the resugence of Trek fandom in the past 15 years or so is precsiely ** because ** of Trek being on Netflix and it finding new fans – especially DS9 and Voyager and to even a lesser degree Enterprise getting a boost in appreciation (even for all it’s problems)
Yes. But that doesn’t mean they should get first run rights to the new shows where they’d be binged like sugar candy in the blink of an eye and get lost in a sea of content.
I think not licensing the reruns is silly though – Paramount+ and Peacock and even Disney+ and Max tried to hoard all their homegrown content and ended up going back to licensing some of it out because that was lots of money left on the table, money Netflix has.
Amazon did The Expanse though. They could be good for Star Trek.
I agree, Apple is the most promising buyer. Apple TV+ needs the library of programming, and getting the CBS network means no thorny antitrust issues of one company owning three of the country’s major broadcast networks (NBC, CBS, and The CW) which would happen if Paramount and Universal merge.
The problem is world building a new planet a few times a season. It seems like no one really wants to pay for that. I mean, if we can only afford filming in a quarry, then my lottery offer holds.
Apple and Disney both are willing to pay for that.
The proposed live sports deal that would see FS1 and ESPN combine with WB for a streaming package seems to have caught people’s attention. Maybe media companies are willing to work together to stream their programming.
Not sure what the future will bring, but one can only guess that the tv streaming and digital media world is bound to look a lot different that it does today and who knows where we will be able to watch Star Trek… on both sides of the border.
Kinda feels like we’re heading toward the middle ground between the recent streaming “boom/push” and cable. Everybody is going to bundle up into package deals.
That deal also has the NFL seething.
Yeah I think they were serious about purcasing some percentage stake in ESPN.
IMHO, the NFL can stand to do some seething. If there is a greedier organization on Earth, I’ve never heard of it.
Why would they care given they have long term agreements for years?
https://cordcuttersnews.com/nfl-execs-may-try-to-stop-disney-fox-and-warner-bros-discoverys-new-sports-streaming-service-plans/?amp=1
Ah, I see, it’s about propping up cable who still owes them a lot of money on the current deals. Thanks
When that all gets combined, we might as well just go back to DirectTV and Cable…so perhaps in five years we we all be wondering what exactly was the point of the cord cutting?
bumbling streaming together. we really have come full circle and re-invented cable
Yep. And they’ll then break up and merge with someone else and break up again….. I expect relative chaos for years to come.
Probably a good idea. The reality is I have both of them and haven’t paid full price for either of them in years. I paid just $20 to have Peacock for the entire year. Before that I was only paying 99 cents a month. I been paying about $50 a year to have Paramount+.
There are constant deals on these services because it’s obvious they are desperate for subscribers and deep in the hole.
And yeah bundling is becoming more and more common with nearly every major service. Paramount+ already added all of Showtime and apparently that’s still not enough to stay viable.
I really hope it can continue but I really won’t be surprised if Star Trek eventually ends up on Netflix or Amazon in America in the next few years.
I try to look for deals where I can too. Apple TV+ for a year when I get a new i-something. I paid like 150 for 2 years of Disney+ and Hulu + and ESPN (don’t care about that one). Amazon Prime video comes with Prime. I get a discount on Peacock because my internet is Comcast.
Prime practically pays for itself with all the free shipping. It may be an evil empire but it’s really convenient…..
Peacock with ads has always been once of the best deals out there, last I checked.
Right? I am not a Bezos fan but I had to live a while without access to a car and it was practically a necessity for me
Amazon adding ads to the existing plan was pretty below the belt though.
Yeah I can’t argue with you there. That company makes money had over fist. They probably just added the adds to pay for Bezos’ yacht
Sci fi fans are so high on him still for giving The Expanse a reprieve, but even that was penny pinched and limped to a premature ending.
Well first, the viewing numbers did not ramp up after the big splash they made to acquire it — we can love a series as much as we want, but at some point the ROI has to at least approach being viable. Secondly, the latter seasons are simply not as good the first two seasons (part of that is the story is not as great in the middle set of novels). Finally, not only is there a large time jump after book 6, but the VFX and set production budget that would have been required to tell the story of the final three books would have required significantly more $$$.
The final (un-filmed) three books in the series are awesome, BTW. Maybe they can come back to that someday when the actors are older, which will fit the time jump anyway.
I agree, but Amazon has made some pretty painful shows that cost way more, with Rings of Power and Citadel being the latest. The last season’s problems felt more like they were budget-driven than anything else. And the persistent problem with streamers is how opaque the public ratings data surrounding their shows is (and it was practically non-existent for The Expanse), and there are so many competing metrics right now too.
Then again, 20% of my 401K is Amazon stock. :-)
That was a pretty low move, agreed. And I went and paid extra for no ads, too. That still doesn’t sit right with me.
I just heard about this literally an hour ago on a podcast (haven’t had Prime in ages). I guess people are mad because now there is a class action suit lol. So people aren’t taking it lightly.
Yeah I look for deals all the time as well. I currently have HBO Max for $3 a month but only for 6 months. I have Hulu all year for 99 cents a month for literally the last four years now lol.
Apple TV seems to have some decent ones but the best one was getting it three months free on Roku.
The deals I rarely find are any for Disney+, Amazon or Netflix. You might find like a free week or something but not great ones which tells you a lot.
Yeah Disney is stingy that way. The only reason I got mine (and it’s not much of one) is cause it was when they fist created the Disney bundle and it was a one time promotion.
I smell an Orville/Star Trek crossover
That would smell, all right….
I remember when NBC took over Brooklyn 99 from FOX and I was sure there was going to be a crossover with Law and Order. Boy did I miss on that one lol
No chance of that. Dick Wolf owns NBC in everything but title. Unless he wants it, it isn’t going to happen. NBC might have wanted a crossover but if Wolf wasn’t interested, that was that.
Give it up! Get back into the production business and license your stuff to Netflix again, people. Jeesh!
I agree Josh. For example, I think it a shame in many respects that a show like SNW which has managed to post some decent numbers is holed up on Paramount+, when it could be so much bigger on Netflix.
Netflix would release it all at once. We’d all furiously talk about it trying not to trip over spoilers or each other’s viewing pages, there would be a media blitz for about a month… and then everyone would come down off their sugar high and the latest seasons would just get buried in Netflix’s sea of churning content.
Return Star Trek to NBC? LOL!!
Joking aside, this is why Hulu should have never been chopped up and sold off. Every studio thought they could build their own, charge the same as Hulu did with less programming, pull their content from people like Netflix and be successful. Gee I wonder why that didn’t work out.
Combining services again IMHO is the future of streaming. Because honestly streaming as a tech isn’t going anywhere. It’s just way too convenient over cable or satellite.
Having said all that, I still wish this would have been the Apple+ option. Apple’s share in streaming may be small but given their programming they clearly know what they are doing. Also… money!
Apple wouldn’t want the broadcast assets of Paramount Global, but I have to think owning the Paramount film and tv studios and IP while offloading the rest would be very tempting.
Some of the potential suitors for Paramount would carve it up in a way that could potentially split Star Trek again.
Please please don’t let that happen again!!!
Yeah, my first thought was, “Well, TOS started on NBC, so it would come full circle if it went back there.” :-)
Yeah I can just imaging the promotions now hahaha
Join the change-in!
It would be hilarious if Peacock and Paramount+ combined and Star Trek would be back on NBC essentially. Time is a flat circle and what not.
As long as Star Trek does not wind up in the hands of Warner/Discovery … If Paramount+ and Peacock did merge, my guess is all original CBS network programming (that currently streams on P+) would revert back to Hulu.
Hulu is a rough state right now. It is owned by Disney now and IIRC Disney pays Comcast for NBC programming. But even that programming is reruns. All the new NBC and Universal stuff goes on Peacock. So I am guessing if this were to be the case, all the old shows from Picard and Discovery (soon) down would go to Hulu but New stuff like SNW would be on Peacock.
They’re all in a “rough state” right now. Hulu is doing just fine though. By CBS network I wasn’t referring to Paramount Plus originals like the modern-era Trek shows. I was talking about the actual CBS broadcast shows that stream on P+ – the FBI shows, Survivor, Colbert, NCIS, etc. Those used to stream “next day” on Hulu after airing on broadcast. If Paramount Plus were to get gobbled up by the Peacock, I highly doubt CBS is going to let NBC stream its broadcast shows.
The streaming originals – like Star Trek – fine move ’em to Peacock.
Parac**k
🤣
And a happy peacock to you too.
Like Jet Blue and Spirit or Sears and Kmart, putting two weak companies together doesn’t make one good one.
I was managing a WaldenBooks back when company owner Carter/Hawley/Hale got bought up/absorbed by Kmart. Wasn’t too long before lots of tiny weird changes started happening. I actually got a verbal ‘memo’ — nothing on paper of course! — requesting I sign my full name on everything requiring my signature instead of the contraction I had used for years, which apparently looked too much like ‘Kmart.’ Bigger bad calls followed, like hiring in a rookie DM who took our Silicon Valley-based district — which had been #1 in the country for several years — into the toilet, largely by firing or forcing out most of the long-time managers. Could have all just been a coincidence, I guess … but it stuck with me, obviously.
I, for one, plan to subscribe to the new network, Mountcock… though it will probably come up short and fail to deliver satisfaction.
I’d still pay $30 a month for a Star Trek + channel.
New content every week.
Longer seasons, allow per digital downloads.
If this gets us Star Trek: Legacy and more shows in the 25th century. I’m all for it 👍