[Mark Holtz]

From Neowin:

Oversaturated streaming market set to push Star Trek fans to piracy

An official Star Trek Twitter account has stated that season four of Star Trek: Discovery, which was due to arrive on Netflix on Friday for international audiences, has now been pushed back to early 2022 due to Netflix losing global rights to the show to Paramount. To be clear, those in the United States and Canada will be able to start watching the show on Thursday but international audiences will have to wait if they plan to watch the show legally.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

 

[harsh]

I thought the standard distribution was that ST:d would debut on Paramount+ and then air sometime later on broadcast TV. When did Netflix become part of the plan?

 

[James Long]

"Netflix on Friday for international audiences" ... places where Paramount+ does not yet reach (international launch planned for 2022).
Not sure what broadcast TV you are expecting international viewers to use.

In the US CBS broadcast the first season of Discovery but that seemed to be more related to a pandemic lack of content/promotion of Paramount+ than a long term plan to release the entire series to broadcast TV over time. Broadcasting the first show of a series and then telling the audience to go sign up for streaming is a marketing strategy. Having the first season on broadcast was good but it still seemed like an ad for the streaming service.

 

[Mark Holtz]

I thought the standard distribution was that ST:d would debut on Paramount+ and then air sometime later on broadcast TV. When did Netflix become part of the plan?

Domestic (United States) broadcast was always through Paramount+, but the International streaming rights were through Netflix. Now that Paramount+ is expending internationally.... sigh....

People are going to suffer from streaming overload.

 

[James Long]

People are going to suffer from streaming overload.

I already do and I only use one service (Peacock, which is free with Xfinity cable).

I'm sure I could figure it all out, but I just want to turn the damn TV on and watch good programs. I don't want to have to figure out what services to add or drop or find when content moves between services.

 

[SledgeHammer]

People are going to suffer from streaming overload.

Exactly what I've been saying for years now. Who the hell wants to manage 20 different providers, 20 different apps, 20 different bills and 20 different CSRs from 20 different countries?

 

[raott]

Exactly what I've been saying for years now. Who the hell wants to manage 20 different providers, 20 different apps, 20 different bills and 20 different CSRs from 20 different countries?

Consumers will dictate who survives. Personally, I only pay for Netflix. Hulu, ESPN, Disney are all free with Verizon. Amazon free with Prime. Apple free (I think that just came off being free so I will likely cancel given the limited content). I won't pay for any of the others. Not enough value add.

 

[B. Shoe]

Consumers will dictate who survives.

This. Trying to compare apples to whatever fruit you choose, we're still in a toddler age of streaming. New services will start, some services will get swallowed up into one another, etc. It's not unlike when cellular phone service exploded, or other industries. Some services pop up and seem too niche, or priced too high to survive. And they likely won't. But consumers will have the biggest say.

A lot of you will scoff at reading this, but streaming services, managing services, finding content, etc., really isn't as cumbersome or difficult as a lot of people on the board perceive it to be.

 

[Mark Holtz]

From Ars Technica:

Star Trek: Discovery is tearing the streaming world apart
Season 4 boldly goes where no multibillion-dollar franchise has gone before, angers fans.

Dan Leckie has been a Star Trek fan since he pressed play on a VHS tape of the original TV show during Christmas of 1991. Leckie, from Aberdeen, Scotland, was instantly hooked on the sci-fi series and its subsequent iterations and regularly attends conventions to meet up with fellow fans. But on November 16 he noticed something weird: Netflix had stopped promoting the first three seasons of Star Trek: Discovery-and previews of season four, due to launch on November 18, had also vanished.

What Leckie had spotted would soon become a point of outrage for Star Trek fans the world over: Netflix had lost the rights to the fourth season of Discovery outside of the US, and the previous seasons, too. They would now appear on Paramount+, the streaming service formerly known as CBS All Access and owned by ViacomCBS-but not until 2022, and even then, not everywhere. (In the US, Star Trek: Discovery has always streamed exclusively on Paramount+/CBS All Access.) And Star Trek is just the beginning. What's bad news for Discovery fans now is yet another glimpse of the increasingly muddled future of streaming.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

 

[Mark Holtz]

A lot of you will scoff at reading this, but streaming services, managing services, finding content, etc., really isn't as cumbersome or difficult as a lot of people on the board perceive it to be.

It's not me that you have to convince, it's my eighty year old mother who is paying $75 per month to watch the Hallmark channel on DirecTV stream. I'm paying $90 per year ($11/month otherwise) for the Criterion Channel which has older and niche movies, plus a Plex media server. I intentionally purchased Roku Televisions so that it would be easy to operate. I needed gigabit Internet for working from home (and work pays for it), the HBOMax just came included. To take advantage of upgrade promotion, I had to bite my lip and get unlimited data on my phones. Displey+, ad-supported Hulu, ESPN+, and Discovery+ just happened to included. Even my mother says that sometimes she has the television on for "noise" around the house.... you can get that with Tubi and Pluto TV free.

It's a change in behavior and habits, and some folks are just afraid of change.

 

[B. Shoe]

It's a change in behavior and habits, and some folks are just afraid of change.

I don't disagree. But this mentality isn't limited to elderly folks, nor is the notion that all elderly people aren't able/don't want to adjust to updates in tech.

I've said it several times on this board; the streaming life might not be for everyone right now. Especially if you're in the need for specific content that lives outside of the Top 75 bubble. And it's okay if not. But when I see people take individual, specific reasons why streaming might not work and generalize it to "it doesn't work at all for anyone", it's frustrating for me to read.

 

[James Long]

It's a change in behavior and habits, and some folks are just afraid of change.

Fear has nothing to do with it. There is a certain level of comfort in continuing to watch TV the way one has become accustomed to watching TV.

One might as well tell someone who has always driven an automatic transmission car that they MUST now drive a stick shift - and then count how many people just give up driving. It is different, people don't like it and no level of insulting and demeaning comments will convince people to like the change.