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Star Trek: Discovery is tearing the streaming world apart - Ars Technica
Nov 21, 2021 2 mins, 20 secs

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.

What’s bad news for Discovery fans now is yet another glimpse of the increasingly muddled future of streaming.

“A lot of fans, in the UK and around the world, are outraged that they'll have to pay for yet another subscription service to enable them to see Discovery, and eventually the rest of the Star Trek TV series,” says Leckie.

The rights deal with Netflix for Star Trek covered 190 countries and territories—but Paramount+ will only be available in 45 countries by the end of 2022.

Analysts are also skeptical about the benefits to Star Trek fans from the shift to Paramount+.

Rosen, a former Viacom digital media executive and founder of Parqor, a streaming service analyst firm, believes it’s highly unlikely Paramount+ can replicate the economics, scale, or sophistication of Netflix's marketing model around major franchises such as Star Trek.

The bet Paramount and ViacomCBS are making is that fans of Star Trek love the brand enough to follow it to whichever streaming service ends up offering it—rather than whichever is the most convenient for them.

That isn’t beyond the realms of possibility: The average American household accesses eight streaming and video on demand services in a given week, according to data gathered by technology research company Omdia—though that includes free catch-up services and websites like YouTube.

Omdia research indicates there are 292 video streaming services available in the United States, and 182 in the United Kingdom.

When Gunnarsson began analyzing the streaming world 10 years ago, Hollywood studios were lax in how they sold the streaming rights to their services, seeing it as an unnecessary extra.

Star Trek is just the latest victim of the global rights tug-of-war, and the likes of the US Office and Friends, both of which are no longer on Netflix in the US, could soon also vanish from Netflix worldwide.

Services like NBC’s streaming platform Peacock, which launched in the UK and Ireland this week, are unlikely to keep their biggest shows sat on Netflix for long.

“For Star Trek fans and ViacomCBS shareholders, it sucks,” he says.

The latter, he believes, will be left carrying the can for the higher marketing expenses required to bring eyeballs to Star Trek on Paramount+, rather than leveraging the built-in benefits of Netflix’s massive audience.

With animated series about lower-ranked staffers on starships already streaming, future shows could delve deeper into the Star Trek canon.

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