StillPaisleyCat

StillPaisleyCat OP , 11 months ago

Some thoughts here.

I agree these kinds of assessments require a bit of a deep dive.

Let’s look at the business case then, the economics and the long haul marketing strategy.

Does the narrative around Prodigy being unprofitable, a write off hold up? Could Whitbrook be putting his finger on something valid?

Let’s also keep in mind that the head of scheduling for streaming at Paramount has been saying that their business strategy for Paramount+, as they integrate Showtime, has said repeatedly that their streaming strategy is built on ‘the 3 Fs’:

Fandoms, franchises & familiar faces.

Prodigy quite obviously was designed to tick off all three elements of the strategy, so what’s the failure point or mismatch as they winnow?

The narrative that Prodigy wasn’t popular enough on Paramount+ doesn’t scan.

First, from what metrics we have available publicly for 2022 (Parrot Analytics mainly),

1. Prodigy was one of only two Paramount+ animated originals that performed well in audience demand, falling slightly behind Lower Decks.
2. Overall demand for the franchise and subscription uptake continued to build during Prodigy’s run in the fall-winter of 2022-2023 in contrast to the acute fall-off earlier in 2022 during the runs of Discovery season 4 and Picard season 2.
3. Star Trek and the Sheridan Yellowstone franchise accounted for half of Paramount+‘s subscription demand in 2022, with net subscription increases during the runs of SNW, Lower Decks and Prodigy.

So then, if Prodigy is doing well in attracting and retaining subscribers and Star Trek is one of two principal franchises supporting their business strategy, where’s the problem?

Let’s look at Nickelodeon, the original destination for the show.

Nickelodeon’s linear audience numbers have been falling overall. Prodigy’s numbers aren’t great on Nick, but none of Nick’s new shows are taking off as they once were.

Going into the pandemic, Nick was such an important anchor for cable in the US that Paramount was obliged to make promises for content exclusivity windows for Nickelodeon when it negotiated its last carrier contract for the US with Comcast. When the pandemic came, suddenly kids were online as never before, and Nickelodeon quickly diminished in its power to attract linear viewership.

So, one can draw an inference that it’s Nickelodeon, not Paramount+, that’s financial trouble is a key point in the decision. Nick is losing money on Prodigy, that needs an exit pathway for an expensive show it can’t afford to partner in.

BUT…

Why then, given Paramount’s 3F streaming strategy, animated shows less expensive and underrepresented in Paramount’s streaming offerings, doesn’t Paramount just rework the deal between the streaming side and Nickelodeon?

Here’s where systematic bias may be coming into it -

Paramount+ has been successful in building a broad subscriber base across ages, genders, race and ethnicity while still gaining ground in ‘middle America.’

This is not the case for other streamers. MAX is struggling to bring together the male-skewed HBO audience and the older-female Discovery one.

Let’s look at what else was cut along with Prodigy.

• a show targeted at the LGBTQ audience canceled during Pride month
• a show targeted at a niche female demographic
• a family show headed by one of the strongest female leadership icon characters of the 90s, with another principal character voiced by a Black actor.

Paramount used a lot of dense marketing technobabble about fit and alignment to explain that the choice to cut and write this particular set of 3 shows. They’ve previously talked about popularity during the cuts of Showtime’s more niche, arty products.

If we listen to them, and accept their justification, the implication is that these LGBTQ, women and black targeted shows no longer are their demographic priorities. They don’t fit with where P+ with Showtime is going even if they all obviously check the 3F boxes. Meanwhile, there’s been no language backpedaling on the 3F strategy.

At the same time, Paramount Global is trying to sell off BET and BET+.

The conclusion isn’t necessarily misogyny, but clearly that Paramount Global is no longer strategically prioritizing its diverse representation of demographic groups.

They are telling us, their advertisers and their investors that Paramount/CBS is turning the entire business back towards prioritizing a much less representative audience.

There’s an implicit assumption that they can continue to retain the demand of women, racially diverse and LGBTQ demographics, while skewing their new investments towards the older, middle American audience of the Yellowstone franchise and the slice of the Trek audience that Picard season three was targeted to draw back in.

My conclusion - Whitbrook has a point. They wouldn’t have done this with Picard or Kirk.

It says more about Paramount’s strategic shift away from prioritizing representation and diverse demographics more broadly.

It’s not just misogyny, but it’s in there. Without unconscious bias and systemic misogyny, the scheduling folks wouldn’t assume that they can hold girls and women as an audience while taking them out of principal roles.

StillPaisleyCat , 11 months ago

I didn’t expect to like this episode as much as I did.

Wesley’s Kirk is growing on me, and I give the EPs credit for using the alternate timeline Kirk’s to let his performance coalesce. I also like the deft weaving of the crazy car driving, heartbreaker Kirk with the think five steps ahead genius that he also had to be.

The acknowledgement in-universe that the timeline and humanity’s development has been interfered with is entirely credible given the accretion of temporal incidents across every era of the franchise.

I’m not sure how I feel about it giving comfort to those who feel so strongly that this isn’t the same timeline as the original TOS one. (I see some chortling on this point elsewhere.) Likely the temporal physics of this is best left for a deep dive /c/Daystrom Institute discussion, but I prefer hold to a view that this is absolutely still the same Prime timeline but that the timeline itself has been perturbed repeatedly even if the key events have kept their integrity. In fact, the Romulan temporal agent, while not a reliable narrator, gave credence to the idea that the Prime timeline had proven unexpectedly robust against major intervention by humanity’s enemies.

I was delighted to see DTI show up and be named. It seems all of a piece of DTI’s rigidity that they would leave La’an alone to deal with the trauma. It does however mirror Pike’s own experience in sealing his future with the time crystal. One senses that there must be some kind of intersection or mutual revelation to come, leaving aside the Chekhov’s gun of the temporally dislocated watch.

Knowing that Anson Mount had to relocate to Toronto with his wife and newborn explains why episodes featuring others in the ensemble were front loaded for this season. He’d said before he committed to the show that creative conversations would be needed as he wasn’t wishing to repeat the production experience he had in Discovery season two. A creative conversation with the EPs that limits a principal character’s presence is fairly extraordinary, but Mount seems to have done it in a way that’s generous to the rest of the ensemble.

With an ensemble so strong, and as we didn’t see as much of Chapel or Una as we would have liked last season, I’m fine with waiting to see more Pike later in the season. It sounds as though we have a Spock focused and an Ortegas to come before some big ensemble pieces in the back half.

StillPaisleyCat , 11 months ago

She left the gun that had shot Kirk in plain sight to be found be the security team she believed were on their way.

And in fact we heard the footfalls of the team running towards the room just as La’an hit the button and vanished. She didn’t even have time to get herself out of young Khan’s sight.

StillPaisleyCat , 11 months ago

I don’t think we’re going to see in this show any Starfleet officers committing information to personal logs that could threaten history.

SNW seems very conscious that personal logs aren’t entirely personal beyond access.

Una recorded and deleted her personal log acknowledging she is Illyrian in season one.

Later shows in the continuity have revealed to us that some personal logs to become available to next of kin, or are even studied by future Starfleet personnel.

Having Uhura pointedly resist providing the personal logs to La’an in ‘Ad Astra Per Aspera’ also underscored to us that it’s the ethics of communications officers that protect privacy.

StillPaisleyCat , 11 months ago

Never thought that letting an episode run longer in streaming would be viewed as a negative.

I wouldn’t have cut anything.

StillPaisleyCat , 1 year ago

I took as needling the Vulcan Jag…which he couldn’t resist. The set-up was his uncontrolled outburst in the Enterprise mess.

StillPaisleyCat , 1 year ago

Given that one of the reasons for migrating here was Reddit’s disregard of an disrespect towards persons with disabilities, perhaps it would be important to offer some (more than one) Star Trek custom theme that meets the needs of people with different accessibility issues.

While I know many Berman-era fans love LCARS, and it was innovative for its time, it’s really not at all accessibility informed.

Not to mention, that options for the board should be welcoming of fans of all eras, not just the 90s.

StillPaisleyCat , 1 year ago

There actually isn’t a generally agreed order of approach, and many folks tend to assume what worked for them will be what’s best for others.

Most of the shows were designed to stand alone if need be, and can provide an entry point. They’ll fill you in on the essential lore along the way.

At this point, your own tolerances for 60s and 90s styles of television and visual effects might be a deciding point. If you want to jump right in with something new, Strange New Worlds is designed as the new live action entry to the franchise - but others have started recently with the animated comedy Lower Decks or the family show Prodigy.

There was a sidebar “Where do I start?” FAQ on the subreddit that listed options (release date; in-universe chronological; by personal preferences for serialization or not).

@ValueSubtracted could you make that available here please?

StillPaisleyCat OP , 1 year ago

Fair enough.

I too felt Picard season three was heavily overhyped, especially by many of the Star Trek specialty sites.

In general though, I welcome nonspoilery general early reviews, especially from less specialized professional reviewers.

In this case, I am noticing that the more mainstream reviews are the most positive and the specialized genre or franchise reviews are working for a more measured tone than with Picard.

Is it because the genre reviewers have felt the disappointment with of some of fandom with Picard, or is it because they are at heart TNG era fans? Makes one wonder.

In my own case, I can forgive much of the overly positive reviews of Picard because I really found the early episodes the strongest, with the writers doubling down on everything that most concerned me in the back half of the season. It was episode 6 where the wheels of plot and character began to come off and nostalgia was given the work of heavy lifting TNG fans through to the end.

With SNW being episodic, six episodes would seem to be enough to know if the shows continuing strongly or hitting a sophomore slump. No one yet has called slump. So it seems that those who liked season one should expect to be satisfied with season two.

StillPaisleyCat , 1 year ago

In my view, having rewatched Voyager again decades after first run, the show not only took successful risks in several episodes like the Demon duology or The Thaw, it has some ‘best ever’ episodes for employing some classic Star Trek tropes.

At the time, I suspect some fans focused on the ‘not new idea’ more than ‘did it better than’ but at this point it’s fairly clear.

For fans who came to Voyager first (including our kids), the original TOS and TNG episodes that Voyager built upon just seem weak by comparison.

More, when SNW does something similar, people are viewing these kind of episodes from the perspective of how well done within a type rather than criticizing them for reworking a trope.