I09 sees the wheels coming off the Paramount+ strategic model with the cancelation of Prodigy.
Interesting piece with some new angles…
This time last year, the series was the bold vanguard of an attempt to bring the venerable sci-fi franchise to new audiences in a way Star Trek hadn’t attempted in years, and the latest in what was now a whole fleet of Star Trek shows on the platform. In a swift, single move—not just the takeback of a second season renewal, but the complete erasure of the series from its platform—the studio’s stratospheric ascent seems to have come crashing down all around it.
I never watched Prodigy, but seeing Paramount fall into the same pattern as HBO Max by summarily removing content will guarantee that I cancel my current subscription and take to the high seas.
With physical media dying off or at least not prioritized, this compounds the situation because for a lot of these shows there’s no hard copy of the media that you can fall back on or keep as a personal archive; it’s all up to the whims of whoever’s in charge at the moment.
It makes the alternative far more practical.
So much this, we cancelled our HBO sub as soon as all the crap/shit TLC/Discovery stuff was put on the platform. That kind of crap is exactly WHY we ditched cable in the first place, and exactly WHY i was willing to pay more for the quality content HBO was producing and had in its library.
Paramount was always destined to fail, as is Disney+ (though that will take longer). The reality is that what people want is to buy their preferred streaming provider and have access to everyone content on that platform. They are not interested in having to subscribe to EVERY platform just for one or two shows.
I think Disney is one of the few platforms that can survive the streaming bubble. The mouse has acquired an obscene number of huge IPs over the last couple of decades - Marvel, Star Wars, The Simpsons… not to mention Disney/Pixar’s own output. It also helps that even without streaming they make more money than some countries.
https://www.techradar.com/news/disney-plus-loses-its-magic-touch-as-millions-cancel-their-subscriptions https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/us-celebrity-news/disney-subscribers-boycott-streamer-axed-30047706.amp
I doubt that to be honest, I can dig up more news, but my understanding is that Disney is already struggling to be profitable, they are finding that customers are not willing to pay for their walled content and are cross licensing with other platforms things that they would have tried to keep in house previously.
Oof, I hadn’t heard about any of that. I’m genuinely surprised that even Disney can’t make a sustainable streaming service.
I’m just flabbergasted by the situation. I can’t think of a worst way for Paramount+ to have handled things. Prodigy gets good word of mouth. Prodigy’s physical media release is done using the cursed method of splitting the season into volume 1 (episodes 1 to 10) with volume 2 to be released in the future. Hasn’t happened yet. Prodigy is greenlit for a season 2. Prodigy is cancelled. Prodigy season 1 is removed from Paramount+ a few days after the announcement. Season 2 is waves hand around, getting finishing touches, and it’s availability for viewing to be determined, maybe never. I’m getting mental whiplash.
At some point, customer satisfaction and loyalty (to Star Trek; peripherally to Paramount+) should be greater than how many nickels a company can squeeze from a penny.
There’s a dimension of ‘killing the goose that laid the golden egg’ and eating it.
I can’t see how this is anything but a very tiny and super short term benefit to Paramount Global’s net earnings numbers for Q2 2023.
Metrics from 2022 show that Star Trek is one of the two franchises driving subscription demand, and that Prodigy helped sustain and grow the base through the fall/winter before the run up to Picard. Without Prodigy to help fill in the schedule in winter 2023-2024, Paramount+ can only expect season subscription drops by their Star Trek base.
It seems like this action might make things look slightly better at the Q2 earnings call meeting, but smart investors should see it as a an indication that Paramount will lose revenue next year, if not sooner due to backlash from the fanbase.
