Much has been made about SFA’s less than stellar ranking on Paramount+ in the United States and the early US Nielsen rankings (from the first two weeks in January).
This Flix Patrol global roll up of the show’s rankings across streamers provides some helpful insights. Keep in mind that Flix Patrol looks at overall rankings, not just recent releases or originals.
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Starfleet Academy is doing very well outside of North America
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SFA is doing well on SkyShowtime across many countries -
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globally, SFA is doing very well on Amazon channels - # 1 in Germany, # 2 in the US and UK
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the streamer where SFA is performing worst is Paramount+ in the United States, which has arguably targeted a red state US market since the ViacomCBS merger, to the detriment of other demographics.
All this seems to say that Starfleet Academy is a global hit for Paramount, reaching new demographics and new markets, but not a fit for the Sheridanverse Pro sports streamer Paramount+ was narrowed towards.
No idea if the executives at Paramount are paying attention to anything beyond Paramount+ or the US market, but my assessment is that SFA provides genuine diversification and is successfully reaching a global audience in a way that Star Trek shows historically have not.
I don’t think I could guess where this is going even if I had expertise in reading numbers like this. No matter how good SFA’s raw numbers are, it may get cancelled anyway simply because the new ownership wants to take the franchise in a different direction. On the other hand, no matter how bad SFA’s raw numbers are, if the numbers it does have are from desirable new demographics it might be a good enough business case for them to keep it around. 🤷♀️
It sounds like we ought to hear if Kurtzman’s contract is renewed or not fairly soon, which seems like it would be a pretty strong indicator one way or the other.
“All this seems to say that Starfleet Academy is a global hit for Paramount, reaching new demographics and new markets, but not a fit for the Sheridanverse Pro sports streamer Paramount+ was narrowed towards.”
If that’s true, I guess it’s UPN all over again. Starts with Star Trek as the lead only to have it slowly sidelined by a focus on a different audience, including a focus on professional fighting. The only way it could be more like UPN is if it was getting ready to merge with a similar-sized service owned by Warner Bros.
Oh dang.
As long as Star Trek remains popular enough, I think it might be advantageous to not be considered one of the “crown jewels” - flying under the radar has its advantages.
I really despise having to read the tea leaves about this stuff, but in the absence of solid information here we are.
An interesting anecdote that I’ve noticed is that two podcasts (Star Trek Academy, which I recommended a few days ago, and Larry Nemecek over on his YouTube channel) have said that SFA has led to a large increase in their audience. What does it mean? Who knows!
Oh! That is an interesting pair of indicators.
Nemechek tends to draw the old guard. If he’s seeing his reach increase, it would be a leading indicator for a shift.
Flix Patrol just compiles the public rankings from the streamers themselves as far as I know.
Parrot Analytics used to make public their rankings that incorporate everything available, including social media volumes, and presumably ‘alternative views’. They were excellent leading indicators and covered many markets that the other metric companies didn’t. However, they stopped making their top ten streaming shows list available, let alone their show by country details, and we don’t see them reported in entertainment media as we once did.
As someone who liked Discovery and the Abramsverse, I’m wary because I supported Section 31 until I saw it. The Internet was right this time, Section 31 was hot garbage, by far the worst Trek I’ve ever seen. I don’t agree with most of the Internet about a lot of things about Star Trek, but I’m with y’all on that one.
I will still give SFA a 2-3 episode chance, but I’m waiting for it to finish airing, and we’re watching The Expanse first (in the middle of the first season now). Got a show or two on the docket after that, then we might work it in, but I don’t have high hopes. But I’ve been asking for this series to exist for over 20 years, so I want it to succeed. (Not enough to subscribe to Paramount though.)
I supported Section 31 until I saw it.
Hey, nothing wrong with optimism.
Hell, I still think that story could have been decent, had it been a 10-episode series as originally intended.
But yeah, I think SFA has turned out a very strong first season, so far.
It has its ups and downs but many of us view it as the strongest live action first season in this era.
For older fans, episodes 5, 6 and 8 seem to be the favourites so far.
In fact episode 8 is so important for 90s fans, that I would argue that it’s worth hanging in until then at minimum.
What annoys me endlessly in SFA is the constant lens flares they add, and the unrealistic looking droids floating around all the time. It’s super distracting.
I have no issues with the ‘dots’ given this is the 32nd century. It really puts the fine point on assigning physical labour as a disciplinary measure.
The lens flare is part of a directional code that’s getting dated at this point. I notice that in the premiere - which Kurtzman directed himself - he went for long camera pans with fewer jump cuts, and fewer lens flares.
As long as Osunsami remains the supervising EP and supervising director in Toronto however, I don’t think that it’s likely we’ll see Kurtzman’s own style of direction reflected in the shows.
