There are three people in this picture: Sonequa Martin Green as Burnham, Emily Coutts as Keyla Detmer, and Oyin Oladejo as Lt. JoAnn Owosekun.
Dan has been a fan of Star Trek ever since he pressed play on a VHS tape of the show in 1991. The sci-fi series and its subsequent iteration was instantly hooked on by Leckie, from Aberdeen, Scotland, and he regularly attends conventions to meet up with fellow fans. The first three seasons of Star Trek: Discovery had stopped being promoted by Netflix, and previews of season four had vanished as well.
The fourth season of Discovery outside of the US and previous seasons were lost to the streaming service, which caused outrage for Star Trek fans around the world. They would not be on Paramount+ until at least 2022, but not everywhere. In the US, Star Trek: Discovery is only available on CBS All Access. Star Trek is just the beginning. The bad news for Discovery fans is that the future of streaming is not clear.
Intellectual property owners used to sell their rights for TV and movies through paid TV, physical home video, and cinema. Online streaming was not seen as a priority. Everything changed quickly. Disney regained the streaming rights to its vast catalog in November of last year, and has 118 million subscribers to date. Others are following quickly, from Discovery+ to Britbox. As streaming services scramble to produce more original content, anyone wanting to sit down and watch their favorite TV shows is left with a problem. People are being asked to pay more and more to access rival platforms, rather than subscribe to a single streaming service.
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A lot of fans in the UK and around the world are angry that they will have to pay for another subscription service to watch the rest of the Star Trek TV series. Glenn van t'Hof is a Star Trek fan. The European release date is two days away. This is not a service to the fans. The move to prevent people outside the United States and Canada from seeing the fourth season of Discovery will cause many to pirate the show, according to Leckie. The rights deal with Paramount for Star Trek covered 190 countries and territories, but only 45 will be available by the end of the year. Three-quarters of their market can't watch without piracy.
Analysts are skeptical about the benefits to Star Trek fans from the shift to Paramount+. Andrew A. Rosen, a former executive at Paramount and founder of Parqor, believes that it's unlikely that Paramount+ can replicate the economics, scale, or sophistication of the marketing model of the streaming service. Neither company responded to requests for comment.
The bet Paramount and CBS are making is that fans of Star Trek will follow it to whichever streaming service they choose, rather than choosing the most convenient one. According to data gathered by technology research company Omdia, the average American household has access to eight streaming and video-on-demand services in a week. The average in the UK is six to seven, and five to six in mainland Europe. Tony Gunnarsson, principal analyst of TV, video, and advertising at Omdia, says there is no difference for the audience. They dip in and out of everything. It is only going to get worse for consumers as major media companies try to catch up to Netflix. There are over 300 video streaming services in the United States and over 180 in the United Kingdom.
