The Incredibly Shrinking Franchise: Is Further Loss of The Star Trek Library Next?
Paramount may put fans in the position of paying even more for less
Like the inexorable collapse of a black hole, it’s no secret that we’ve been witnessing the contraction of the Star Trek franchise for at least the last year or so.
Star Trek: Discovery recently ended its run after five seasons, and the animated Star Trek: Lower Decks is set to do the same with its upcoming episodes.
And although Paramount has announced the forthcoming series, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, it ended Star Trek: Picard without picking up the spin-off fandom was clamoring for, Star Trek: Legacy.
So after a few years of expansion, the Star Trek franchise is, once again, a smaller place.
The question that seems to be facing us now is: Just how much smaller?
An entertainment website recently reported that Paramount executives could well decide to pull down more archival content, basically anything that isn’t highly profitable:
What’s going on at Paramount right now is part and parcel of Disney making Fox titles harder to access, and Warner Bros. Discovery sh-tcanning movies for tax write downs, and it’s the early warning sign of what might be a massive period of library loss.
Paramount’s carrying immense debt of more than $14 billion.
Much of what’s driven Paramount — and other Hollywood studios — into this financial misery has been their decisions to maintain their own individual streaming services like Paramount Plus.
Operating these streaming services requires huge outlays in technology and infrastructure. And if Paramount can pare back what it has on offer at any given time on Paramount Plus, that could help reduce costs.
Star Trek: The Next Generation is always a perennial favorite on streaming.
But what if the next time you hopped on Paramount Plus and wanted something a little different and, suddenly, Star Trek: The Animated Series, or Star Trek: Enterprise just wasn’t there anymore?
Heaven forbid: What if one day the original series just was gone?
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This is not nearly as far-fetched as it might originally sound considering that we saw this exact thing last year when Paramount pulled all the episodes of Star Trek: Prodigy off streaming before selling the animated series to Netflix.
We’ve come to expect access to the entirety of the Star Trek franchise, on-demand, via Paramount Plus.
But if Paramount really begins maintaining its online library based on profitability then we’re facing a new reality in which not only are our options for new Star Trek reduced, but we begin losing old favorites, as well.
And fans would have to pay more for the privilege: Paramount once again is raising the subscription rates for Paramount Plus.
Paramount Plus with Showtime will increase to $12.99 a month, while the ad-supported, non-Showtime version will come in at $7.99 a month.
As Chad Porto at Redshirts Always Die lamented:
The reason for a Paramount+ subscription is gone for Star Trek fans, especially after they abandoned their plan for 52 weeks of new Star Trek content a year. If the service isn't putting out enough content to keep fans subscribed year-round, then why bother? Especially with the new price-hikes.
The good news — if there is any — is that there’s a new round of industry rumors that say that a deal for Skydance Media to acquire Paramount could happen as early as next week.
We’ve heard these rumors before, but the sooner that cooler heads buy Paramount and put Star Trek on a healthy and sustainable footing, the better.
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