Ahead of the merger with Showtime Paramount+ has cancelled more shows. The most surprising of which is Star Trek:Prodigy
The animated coproduction with Nickelodeon was very well received and had been renewed for a second season. The second season is in post production and will be sold to another streamer/broadcaster.
My view is that cancelling already renewed content is a sure fire way to lose subscribers.
A thing I also don’t understand is why they are scrubbing the service from some of the cancelled shows (you can’t view the previous seasons either). Why?
A show I was going to watch, but now can’t, was Queens of the Universe, a song/talent competition for/by queer people. We already don’t have that many queer shows, let me at least watch the first season of it.
It’s so they don’t have to pay residuals to all the folks that worked on the show. Otherwise every time you stream an episode, Paramount has to cut checks.
Ngl, I still feel like they’re shooting themselves in the foot with this in the long run. Sure, this saves them $$$$ on residuals, but it also reduces the variety of their library (an important part of attracting subscribers, it’s not all about the big headline titles) and makes people feel less secure that their favorite shows will be finished or remain available, so they might not even start watching until it’s finished, and that kills early viewership numbers.
I feel like more and more people will subscribe for a month, binge one or two shows, and unsubscribe until the next big thing they’re ibterested in comes out.
Very much agree, but Paramount+ has never been good at marketing outside of the US. It’s simple, if you make shows difficult to watch/find then people don’t watch and don’t subscribe.
It’s to do with licensing fees. Just hosting a show carries a cost for the streamer, and if it isn’t driving growth or retaining customers enough to justify that cost, it’s going to get cut. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/29/streaming-services-remove-movies-shows-heres-why.html
My friends used to ask me why I pirate shows that are on common streaming services and now I can point out some of the shows that are disappearing completely.
I’m gutted, really enjoyed prodigy and was looking forward to watching it with little boy (once he was old enough)
Fingers crossed they find a buyer and we can at least get to see the second series
There’s always a chance another service will pick it up if Paramount+ really goes away I suppose.
OP said season 2 is in post-production and it’ll get sold to another streaming service probably. It’s not dead yet, I think. Especially not with Across the Spiderverse raking in cash and making animation (hopefully) look more tempting to corporates.
I think you’re right, Amazon has seemingly done well with Picard and Lower Decks (outside of the US) so it’s possible that they will want to add another Star Trek.
Paramount’s big mistake is having poor availability (taking too long to roll out Paramount+ and then having staggered release dates for shows in different areas) and complicated distribution arrangements that means they make less money.
In essence they treated streaming like DVD/Blu-Ray distribution which negates the benefits of streaming to the consumer.
Yeah, it was unusually high quality show, a lot of likeable characters and the pacing was solid. Just weird that they go, “Oh yeah, let gut all of the things that make us viable to subscribers.”
I don’t even bother with these streaming services anymore. I’m kinda just over it. I spent years with a Netflix sub struggling to find things that’d catch my interest. It’s the cable tv syndrome of “hundreds of channels and nothing to watch”.
This is why I jump around. I’ll keep something only long enough to watch what I want and the cancel and go else where.
🤦♂️
