Streaming service

A streaming service concerns a sustained consumer viewing service which can be differentiated from the more typical rental video on demand, and/or traditional broadcasting options. As of 2023 there are several of these services where Star Trek is available to watch on an ongoing basis.

While streaming services have similarities with the traditional broadcasters, and regardless of whether or not they require a (subscription) fee, they differ in this respect that productions offered by them, in most cases free of commercials, are accessible at will and at any given time, contrary to the traditional broadcasters where productions are beholden to assigned time-slots. The majority of traditional broadcasters worldwide, incidentally, have in the meantime established their own streaming services as well (some requiring an additional subscription beyond the traditional television license fees/taxes), where viewers can re-watch productions that have originally been aired the traditional way. In the UK, BBC iPlayer of the broadcaster BBC is one such service. Paramount+ is in essence an American counterpart for CBS Studios Inc., but differed initially in this respect that it also offered original content, most conspicuously, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard, Star Trek: Lower Decks, Star Trek: Prodigy (until June 2023), and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. BBC iPlayer though, has in the context of the below-mentioned "streaming wars", subsequently followed suit with its own original content.

Similarly, while streaming services very much resemble the digital and cable (rental) "Video-on-Demand" (VoD, or "pay-per-view" – PPV – as it was initially also known as) services as offered by, for example, Amazon.com, the major difference concerns the very limited time-span the one-production-only is available to a consumer who has paid for it through VoD as a rental, in contrast to the unrestricted access to all productions a streaming service offers – provided that a subscription is taken out for the commercial ones. VoD is in essence the successor of the classic, physical home video format rental circuit.

Streaming services offering Star Trek content[]

Streaming wars[]

After a tentative start, it was Netflix that became a huge worldwide success story in the early-2010s, easily beating off the competition which they left in the margins of the market, including CBS All Access (the later Paramount+) and Hulu. As a result, Hollywood studios, especially those still without streaming platforms of their own, made Netflix their first choice to stream their productions, which included Paramount, who chose Netflix over CBS All Access. This rather peculiar state of affairs – peculiar because Paramount and CBS used to belong to the same (old) Viacom conglomerate before it was split up on 1 January 2006 (see: main article) – was caused by the intense rivalry between Les Moonves (head of the then newly-formed CBS Corporation) and Philippe Dauman (head of of the newly-formed, Paramount-owning Viacom).^[1] Dauman had no intention of helping Moonves out with his pet project CBS All Access, on which the latter had staked his career and fortunes, and after Moonves' CBS had slapped Viacom with hefty license fees for the right to produce films from franchises, including Star Trek and Mission: Impossible, that had originally been Paramount properties to begin with, but which were stripped from them in the split without the slightest compensation in any form or format whatsoever. And while this rivalry seriously hurt the interests of both companies eventually,^[2] it also benefited Netflix greatly, helping it to become absolute streaming market leader for the better part of a decade with relative ease, though it also made it complacent.

That cushy position for Netflix came to an end on 12 November 2019, when Hulu-owner The Walt Disney Company launched its own streaming service Disney+. Disney had in the meantime acquired major Hollywood studios such as Lucasfilm Ltd., Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel Studios, and 20th Century Fox, and their corresponding intellectual properties (IPs), which included such crowd-pleasing franchises as Star Wars, Aliens, The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Disney's own properties, and the very popular Pixar productions. Market analysts had already accurately predicted that Disney's unbridled expansion drive would inevitably lead to a "streaming war" as Disney would pull all these productions from competing streaming services, Netflix in particular, once their own was up and running. [30] History has shown that this indeed came to pass, and it left Netflix in dire straits, forced by the substantial loss of popular content to respond by considerably stepping up its investments in the production of original content, including content of foreign origin to better serve foreign markets.

Nor were Netflix' woes over yet, as other streaming services, inspired by the breakout success of Disney+, have embarked on similar expansion paths to better compete with Netflix, such as Prime Video, and CBS All Access, which was after the reunification of the two former separate conglomerate parts rebranded as Paramount+, this time with a combined Paramount/CBS catalog. [31] Both streaming services began pulling all properties they own from Netflix as well, a process which was all but completed as of 2023. By 2021 for example, all Star Trek films – Star Trek excepted – were despite the July 2016 deal (which, after Prime Video in the late-2000s, netted Netflix as the second of two, exclusive third-party streaming rights for the then-entirety of the Star Trek films and series, including Discovery in Netflix's case – see: main article) already withdrawn from Netflix by ViacomCBS. While Netflix as market leader had become the most obvious primary target in the billions of US dollars involving "streaming wars" for all the other (up-and-coming) streaming services, they were not above targeting each other as well,^[3] truly justifying the "streaming wars" qualifier. [32] [33]

However, because of its large library – the substantial loss of popular content notwithstanding – worldwide coverage and the stepped-up production of quality original content,^[4] Netflix still held a competitive edge as of 2021 when it passed the (worldwide) two hundred million subscriber mark in January that year, [34] though Disney+ and Prime Video were rapidly gaining ground. It was the latter in particular that did so through its May 2021 acquisition of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and its backlog catalog (Netflix therefore again taking a severe blow, when it lost its crowd-pleasing James Bond film library as well, which became featured internationally on its new home in late Spring 2022, including its then latest outing No Time to Die which had never been offered to Netflix), making Prime Video the second-largest streaming service in the world at that point in time with 175 million worldwide subscribers, second only after Netflix. [35]

At the end of September 2021, Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: Enterprise were all removed from Netflix in the United States, [36] followed on 2 April 2022 by Star Trek: The Next Generation [37] which left Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as the only remaining Star Trek series on the platform in that market before it too was pulled from the streaming service on 1 July 2022, [38] signifying the definitive end of the Star Trek presence on Netflix. A half year earlier, in November 2021, the first three seasons of Discovery were already removed from the platform in all markets, though, in Europe at least, all the other series remained available on the streamer for the time being. They too were eventually yanked from the streamer globally, after the worldwide roll-out of Paramount+ was effectuated during 2022. The removal of Discovery from Netflix was timed to coincide with the premiere of its fourth season. [39] Following fan outcry, it was later announced that the series would be rolled out 26 November 2021 on Paramount+ in those markets in which Paramount+ was already available. For those markets still without the service, the series was instead made available via the free ad-supported service Pluto TV. [40]

On 7 December 2021 at the UBS Global TMT Virtual Conference, ViacomCBS president Bob Bakish (the successor of the aforementioned Philippe Dauman) explained the decision to cut out Netflix as follows, "As we increasingly transition to leveraging our particular franchises and original production for our owned and operated streaming assets, principally Paramount+... that, in turn, will create a decline in that third-party business over time as these deals roll off. I would note that as an example of that, we just took back Star Trek: Discovery internationally from Netflix. And so, we now have that property globally. That's clearly a core franchise for us, and it's working," further implying that third-party licensing revenues were expected to decline rapidly in the near future, including those from Netflix for other shows. [41] It appears that the November 2021 termination of the Discovery streaming rights came with financial compensation for Netflix, [42] which could only mean that the streaming rights contract had not expired yet, and that some sort of pay off was called for.

It also became clear at the conference that the September 2021 withdrawal of the other Star Trek series came without financial compensation for Netflix USA, as ViacomCBS had chosen not to extend the streaming rights deal once they had expired after the pre-negotiated time-span had lapsed. Bakish's remarks about the "roll-offs" indicated that foreign Netflix subsidiaries were soon to follow.

Netflix was by no means no the only one to have lost Star Trek from its catalog as competitor Prime Video too lost most of its Star Trek content in January 2022 for the very same reasons, [43] save for Star Trek: Picard and Star Trek: Lower Decks. These were temporarily exempted, as the first-time foreign streaming rights for the first three seasons of either series were bought by Prime, after which it was expected that these too would be pulled from Prime – which in the case of both actually came somewhat sooner than expected when a begin was made on 17 February 2023 to stream the new third season of Picard, along with the previous two and Lower Decks, on foreign Paramount+ subsidiaries in the UK, mainland Europe and Australia, with all three seasons of Picard slated to be added to Paramount+ in South Korea later in 2023. Picard's third season debuted on the foreign Paramount+ subsidiaries alongside its debut on Prime Video, meaning Prime was no longer the exclusive series streamer outside the Americas. It is in the context of the increasingly vicious streaming wars, construed as a harbinger that Picard at least will be pulled from Prime Video the moment the third season release schedule is completed, heralding the end of everything Star Trek on Prime Video as well eventually. [44] In effect, the fourth season of Lower Decks, which debuted five months after Picard's third, was not even made available to Prime for streaming even though the first three seasons remained so for the time being.

It was actually CraveTV which became the first major third-party streaming service for which the franchise completed rescinding the Star Trek streaming rights in whole. Crave was left entirely devoid of Star Trek, with the removal of the complete Star Trek: Strange New Worlds series from that platform on 9 September 2023. [45]

The inevitable outcome of the streaming wars became apparent for Netflix on 21 January 2022 when its market share value plummeted with nearly twenty percent (representing a value loss of US$45 billion) after the streamer had to announce that it was reasonable to assume that a permanent growth slowdown was in the making, as, for the first time in over a decade, new subscription numbers were expected to drop by almost half. [46] Three months later, on 19 April 2022, Netflix was forced to concede that the situation was, aggravated by events beyond the immediate scope of the streaming wars, even more dire than their already pessimistic January forecast had led to believe, when they had to announce that the company had experienced for the first time in their history a net loss of over 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022, instead of the hoped-for 2.5 million subscriber base addition. The company's stock market share value, still reeling from the blow it took in January, took another severe hit when it dropped an additional twenty-four percent (representing an additional value loss of US$40 billion, meaning the company had lost almost half its value in a little over three months) upon the announcement. [47]^[4] The downward trend continued in the second quarter of 2022 when Netflix was forced to concede an additional loss of 1 million subscribers, which was in effect less than the gloomy 2 million that Netflix itself had predicted at the end of the previous quarter; it was actually "rewarded" by shareholders by a 8 percent rise of the stock-price, despite the lawsuit shareholders had leveled against the streamer alleging that the company had previously misled investors about declining subscriber growth. [48] By November however, the 2022 stock value drop had further increased to 60 percent. [49]

A slowly, but consistently dwindling Netflix appeared to have lost its position as market leader to Disney+, when the latter ostensibly overtook Netflix in subscriber numbers in October 2022 by a margin of twelve million, [50] but Disney presented this claim in a more flattering light than was warranted, as the subscription numbers of all the streaming services they owned, such as Hulu, ESPN, and Star+, were lumped together. By mid-2023 Disney+ was still lagging behind Netflix in proper subscription numbers by over sixty million global subscribers. [51] Netflix on the other hand was still able to profit from its original reputation as an all-inclusive provider, justifiable or not, and has as the only streaming service managed to turn around the negative trend as detailed below, and again exhibits a steady growth in subscription numbers to reach 260 million by April 2024, likewise as the only streaming service capable of doing this. [52] As explained below, Disney+'s grandstanding at the expense of Netflix, backfired big time when it became only all too clear how badly the company was performing financially, disastrously so even, in the first half of the 2020s.

Proliferation fallout[]

The explosive proliferation of streaming services in the late-2010s/early-2020s turned out to be exceptionally detrimental for the entire streaming industry, as it caused a dilemma for potential subscribers faced with not only an overabundance of choices but also a severely fragmented content supply. Unwilling to take out a plethora of subscriptions, they responded to this situation by substantially changing their behavior through "streamer/service hopping" – taking out a temporary, short term subscription (typically at a discount) before moving on to another service. Almost unanimously, all streaming services countered this phenomenon by switching from a complete new season lump offering of a series, to the classic weekly single-episode installment release format, meaning a follower of the new series in question had to maintain his or hers subscription beyond the trial period, if a trial period was still being offered in the first place. In essence, streaming services now adopted a policy trying to "coerce" costumers to stay subscribed, a policy not turning out all that successful as piracy in the form of illegal downloading started to explode again after a steep decline in the initial Netflix-era of the late-2000s/early-2010s. [53] [54]

Additionally, every single streaming service, including Netflix, now faced a severe dilution of catalog content on offer because each service started to "hoard" their own productions as exclusives, Paramount+'s Strange New Worlds being a prime example where Star Trek is concerned. This in turn forced them to dramatically increase the hefty investments it required to produce their own "exclusives" at high costs in order to entice new subscribers. All of this has led to the circumstance that none of the streaming services managed to come anywhere near achieving the profitability Netflix once had a decade earlier, with the majority of them never having achieved profitability at all by 2023, loosing money hand over fist in actuality. This held especially true for the with much pomp and circumstance launched Disney+, despite its highly promising start in 2019 with the highly successful debut of its made-for-television Star Wars flagship production, The Mandalorian (thereby succeeding where CBS All Access had failed dismally with Discovery^[5]), hemorrhaging company value instead, a state of affairs shareholders were not particularly happy with [55] [56] – by April 2024 Disney+ had already incurred more than US$11 billion in operating losses during its short life span, causing its shareholders to become enraged. [57]

A critical assessment error all post-Netflix streamers had made was that each and every single one was of the opinion that theirs possessed the catalog costumers could not live without, which held especially true for Disney+. All of them soon discovered that none had a catalog large and/or diverse enough to hold on to their subscribers for any longer period of time, not even Disney+. It had in effect been the very reason for the huge success Netflix had enjoyed originally, as it was perceived that everything had been available under one roof. Paramount+ became one of the first streamers to fully realize this, as it found out that even after the consolidation of the CBS libraries with those of Paramount, their catalog still was not large enough to engender even a semblance of customer loyalty. [58] [59] It was therefore that they sought out a joint venture with Comcast to combine the libraries of their holdings with their own, in order to further beef out the catalog of the newly in 2022 established SkyShowtime streaming service of which Paramount+ was only a part. In essence, Paramount+ became the first streamer to start retracing the steps to the original Netflix era, and they followed up a few months later with a similar move for the home market through the consolidation of two of its platforms into one, Paramount+ With Showtime. Incidentally, it is in this context of streamer catalog building that the prior acquisition frenzy of various Hollywood studios by such companies as Amazon, Comcast, and Disney in particular, are to be assessed – to little avail in Disney's case as detailed below.^[6]

Unlike its competitors, Netflix itself still remained profitable, and had managed to temporarily halt its own steady profitability decline by considerably whittling down its consumer services, prohibiting account sharing, and offering a much cheaper, ad-supported variant of the streamer in November 2022. [60] The plan was quickly aped by the competitors, Paramount+ included. [61]. Another cost-saving measure the entire streaming industry has under advisement, is the replacement of expensive proprietary series production by cheap, tacky reality shows, but which is the industry shooting itself in the foot a second time around as the absence of both these and the commercials had been the third-most major consumer incentive (after the [initial] catalog size and the completely-at-will-watching option) for taking out a streaming service subscription in the first place. [62]^[7]

All the above is indicative of how little understanding the industry has of its own customer base, as by implementing these measures the once defining differences between streaming services and traditional broadcasters, which were the instrumental success factors for the streamers initially, are becoming increasingly blurred to the point where consumers no longer discern a difference between the by them initially perceived added intrinsic value of the streaming services and the usual way fare is offered by traditional broadcasters.

And indeed, it was halfway through the year 2023 that it became painfully obvious how crippling the industry losses were becoming when Paramount+ reported a first quarter loss of no less than US$511 million despite a 4.1 million increase in subscription numbers from the end of 2022 to sixty million. [63] The negative trend continued unabated in the subsequent quarter, [64] even though quarterly losses narrowed down by about seventeen percent to US$424 million. [65] While substantial, Paramount+'s first and second quarter losses pale in comparison to those of competitor Disney+ which respectively reported a first quarter loss at US$1.1 billion on top of its first ever subscriber loss since its 2019 launch at 2.4 million, [66] followed by a second quarter loss at US$659 million accompanied by a further four million subscriptions decrease. [67] Whatever profits, if any, the streaming service industry had realized during the lockdowns in the 2019-2021 COVID-19 pandemic-era had all but evaporated by then, those for Netflix excepted.

Still, all the cost-saving measures undertaken by the streaming service industry, initially appeared to start taking effect as Paramount+'s net losses for example began to level out at US$238 million in the third quarter of 2023, [68] to no avail however, as it turned out because the next quarter showed a steep rise in losses again to US$490 million. [69] And the first quarter of 2024 offered no respite either at losses to the still considerable tune of US$286 million, which the conglomerate euphemistically reported as a win in public when it compared the losses with the first quarter 2023 US$511 million loss only in an obvious effort to throw Wall Street analysts off, [70] as what news site Deadline had already in 2022 called "The Ol' Streaming Razzle-Dazzle",^[8]when holding conglomerate Paramount Global had been unsuccessfully trying to downplay similar losses. [71]^[9]

By the time spring of 2024 arrived, Paramount Global as by far the smallest of the large multi-media conglomerates^[10], and quite possibly the Star Trek franchise itself, stood in real danger of potentially becoming the first actual victim of the "streaming wars". All this has resulted in a fifty percent stock value drop of Paramount Global in 2023 alone (after Paramount+ on its own had already incurred a US$3.5 billion loss for 2022 and 2023 alone, only aggravated by respective multi-million losses incurred by the more recent virtually uninterrupted stream of theatrical film flops as produced by Paramount Pictures [72]), which has sparked off a frantic search for a buyer of the on the verge of total collapse teetering company as a whole who is willing to save it by putting up the funding for investments and the resolution of the crippling mountain of debts [73] – the latter having reportedly surpassed the US$14 billion mark by June 2024. [74] Against all odds, a savior was actually found in the form of Skydance Media, already the holding company of Paramount's alternate reality, Mission: Impossible and Transformer film franchises co-producing partner, Skydance Productions, when a merger was announced on 8 July 2024. [75] The merger came shortly after a prior deal had failed to come to fruition on 11 June 2024, reportedly because Skydance had as Paramount's live-action film co-producing partner unsurprisingly only wanted to acquire Paramount Pictures initially, not the entirety of Paramount Global, as Sheri Redstone, the owner and CEO of holding conglomerate National Amusements had hoped for. [76] When Skydance agreed to a merger instead of a takeover, Redstone had decided to give in after all, which only served to emphasize the precarious state the conglomerate was in at the time.

For the Star Trek franchise too, the lack of profitability appeared to have consequences as well as Bakish's grand scheme of building the "Star Trek Universe" concept, instituted at the start of 2021, became unhinged by mid-2023. Not only has Prodigy been removed in June 2023 from Paramount+ (and thus the entire franchise), but despite Bakish's 2021 adamant assertions to do so, his firm intent to remove each and every Star Trek production from all other third-party platforms (foreign Netflix included but who incidentally had picked up the cancelled Prodigy show, marking the return of Star Trek on that platform in the home market) and turn them into Paramount+ exclusives only, seemed by the second half of 2023 to have been put on hold indefinitely, the by-then completed global rollout of Paramount+ in one format or another notwithstanding. Simply put, the franchise was by year-end no longer in the position to afford missing out on a single dime of revenue, even if it had to come from industry competitors. And it remains to be seen what the plans for the streaming service – or Star Trek itself for that matter – of new Paramount Global savior/owner Skydance Media will be.

External links[]

• Streaming service at Wikipedia
• Streaming war at Wikipedia
• Streaming at TheVerge.com – current affairs site keeping track of developments in the streaming market, in the "streaming wars" context specifically.

Footnotes[]