If you live in a country in Europe that doesn’t have Paramount+ you have not been able to stream Star Trek: Discovery, but that all changes in March.
Disco on SkyShowtime
In Europe, Paramount Global has divided things up for streaming with the biggest markets (UK/Ireland, Germany/Austria/Switzerland, France, and Italy) getting a localized version of Paramount+ and the rest of the continent getting SkyShowtime, a joint venture with Comcast. When SkyShowtime launched last February it didn’t include all of the original Paramount+ Star Trek shows. But now Star Trek: Discovery is finally arriving on the streaming service.
Seasons 1 – 3 of Discovery will be available to stream from March 8 and season 4 arrives on March 22. This is great news for fans in European countries without Paramount+ who lost access to the series when it was removed from Netflix at the end of 2021, shortly before the launch of season 4. Pluto did stream season 4 live in some markets but for most fans in SkyShowtime countries, this will be the first time getting access to the fourth season.
SkyShowtime will then debut the fifth and final season of Discovery on April 5, one day after the Paramount+ debut.
Here is SkyShowtime’s version of the new trailer…
Star Trek on SkyShowtime
SkyShowtime also includes the new Paramount original shows Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Prodigy. In addition, the service has every season of the classic Star Trek shows (TOS, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise). Currently, SkyShowtime also has all three Kelvin Universe Star Trek movies as well as Star Trek: Nemesis. Amazon Prime Video streams Star Trek: Lower Decks and Picard in the SkyShowtime markets.
In an interview with THR earlier this month, SkyShowtime CEO Monty Sarhan talked up their Star Trek offerings, saying “And we superserve fans. If you look at Star Trek, we have so much of this amazing franchise from Paramount. We have Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Voyager, Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek The Original Series, we have Enterprise – all of that, and we have almost all the movies. So if you’re a Star Trek fan, SkyShowtime is the place for you.”
Here is a SkyShowtime video from 2023 featuring Star Trek: Strange New Worlds stars Rebecca Romijn and Anson Mount answering fan questions…
As a joint venture with Paramount Global and Comcast SkyShowtime offers a selection of content from Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon, DreamWorks Animation, Paramount+, Showtime, Sky Studios, and Peacock along with original programming. It could be seen as a model for a potential joint venture that could bundle Paramount+ and Peacock together, which has reportedly been in discussion by Paramount and Comcast.
Here is a look at what’s coming in 2024 on SkyShowtime
SkyShowtime is available in Albania, Andorra, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. It is available through select television providers in some markets and across Apple iOS, tvOS, Android devices, Android TV, Google Chromecast, LG TV, Samsung Smart TVs, and the web.
SkyShowtime is also introducing a new lower-cost ad-support tier in all of their markets starting April 23 with monthly subscription pricing starting at €3.99 to €5.99 (depending on the market).
For more info visit skyshowtime.com.
Courageously spending millions of dollars to withhold content to spite Netflix, only to then not be able to show it to millions of viewers for another two and a half years, by which time the show is cancelled. Brilliant strategy.
Netflix was also providing funding for the show right (or at least, they were paying to be able to have the worldwide rights)? Paramount essentially paid money to be given less money, and then narrowed their audience in the process?
I seem to recall reading that Netflix paid so much to air the show internationally that it essentially funded the series.
that’s 100 percent true… they were paying over 100 million… then paramount gave it back and cancelled the deal before season 4 started pulling the rug out from under overseas fans. paramount even bragged about owning disco fully. then paramount paid for season 5 all by themselves… cut the order to 10 to save money and cancelled it before it even aired and delayed it another year. still doesn’t make sense. the show was paid in full by netflix until they ended the deal.
I guess on one hand you have to applaud them for thinking long term and truly wanting Star Trek to feel exclusive to one site. And also to ultimately have fans just pay for one site to watch all the new shows on instead of the multitude of places now.
But yeah it was also short sighted and they way overestimated people’s willingness to subscribe to yet another streaming site just to watch one show. And I’m guessing the overwhelming majority of Trek fans abroad would rather have Netflix since they still have all the classic shows which is 700 hours of Star Trek they can watch and Discovery with just a few seasons and episodes isn’t a huge pull for most unless they really love the show.
Now of course the show got cancelled over it partly due to Paramount hurting for money and cutting content. I’m sure that $100 million is looking mighty good right now.
Why the vitriol?
There’s a difference between deriding a corporate strategy and being a rude d*ck about a person for no good reason.
They clearly overestimated how much people wanted to watch Discovery or paying for another service to watch it and it cost Discovery in the end. A highly stupid move and the show probably could’ve went another 1-2 seasons.
And not being able to time the negotiations to coincide with when the service was up and running in more places was bonkers.
Yep! Made no sense. Especially since also Star Trek isn’t even that big abroad outside a few places, so it was never going to be a huge pull like it would be in America. I doubt few people in Italy were on pins and needles to get Discovery.
It wasn’t even people not wanting to pay for another service. Paramount+ simply wasn’t available in a lot of markets where people can watch Netflix.
Yeah obviously the bigger problem lol. Yeah none of it made any sense.
Talking about “shooting yourself on the foot”. Although sometimes I wonder how Paramount is being lead, with all the shenanigans about Trek movie announcement and now this total dropping of the ball. They should probably get a Ferengi to lead the company.
It’s wild. They waste money on a lot of things public and internal, but also are always imposing austerity measures – Paramount Pictures has probably been more known for being stingy over the last 35 years more than it has for its stretches of largesse. They announced a whole new slew of measures today that affect the studio, CBS, and Paramount+, on top of recent layoffs.
“SkyShowtime also includes the new Paramount original shows Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Prodigy. In addition, the service has every season of the classic Star Trek shows (TOS, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise).”
And TAS?
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Good for our fandom siblings across the pond who’ve been wanting to see the shows but have had to wait. But man, it really feels like CBS, Paramount, Viacom, or whatever corporate entity whose name we’re using this week to refer to Trek’s owner-custodians has way more trouble than it should getting this franchise in front of appreciative eyeballs.
I wonder sometimes about the focus on exclusivity, and how it seems there’s typically just one carrier for a given Trek series in a given market. Not so many years ago (back when there was nothing newer in the franchise than Discovery), at least here in the US one could stream the classic shows on not just one but several different services. Netflix, Hulu, Prime, and (for a short while) CBS: All Access all had the classic shows – TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise – simultaneously, rather than them being exclusive to just one single outlet. Eventually, as the old licensing agreements expired, the shows disappeared from Netflix, Hulu, and Prime (unless one got CBS:AA / Paramount+ as a Prime add-on channel), as they tried to make exclusive Trek a selling point for Paramount+, but that meant the franchise had less reach and exposure.
Obviously it’s better for us if Star Trek shows and movies are available through as many outlets as possible, but I can’t help but wonder whether it might be better for its corporate master, too. Would they ultimately do better keeping Star Trek exclusive to Paramount+ as a means of incentivizing subscriptions, or would the overall corporate empire make more money by licensing it out non-exclusively to a bunch of different services, like they did several years ago?
Only they have the data on which subscribers are only really watching for the legacy Star Trek content. I would think getting an infusion of licensing cash is a better business call than gatekeeping the legacy shows and movies since they can always claim Paramount+ is the only place to find the new shows. I understand the inclination to not try to feed the Netflix beast, but they have more money to burn than Paramount Global. It’s time to at least do some light “arms trading” again.
the netflix beast was paying for the entire discovery budget until paramount ended the deal before season 4 began. leaving the overseas fans with nothing. they killed the fanbase overseas and gave back 100 million dollars at the same time even though they weren’t ready to launch overseas p+. none of that made sense. and now netflix had prodigy which is kind of hilarious.
the only way trek grows is for people to find it… and no one’s gonna find shows exclusive on paramount plus. that means you have to be looking for trek specifically. i became a trekkie finding it accidentally on local tv years ago. they should sell trek everywhere… legacy or new show and new shows are soon to be legacy shows.
The issue for Paramount is that they can’t get a handle on how to best benefit from that growth. Licensing Trek out exposes it to more people and brings them lucrative fees and likely a fair amount of trickle down merchandising revenue. Probably would stoke some renewed interest in new content, be it legacy sequels or more shows like Discovery.
Licensing also benefits competing streamers and feeds them in a market Paramount has a vested interest in on two fronts – as a fellow streamer with a sizable base but profitability issues, and as a broadcaster with a huge but waning empire that Netflix wants to destroy.
If all competitors fall by the wayside and Netflix is the only streamer, then it will have too much outsized power in all aspects of negotiations, and that’s a real danger. As an aside, Hollywood studios really should have left Netflix, Apple and Amazon to negotiate with the unions separately – they are not playing the same long game.
Paramount is also so used to having an outsized stake in the distribution and revenue new Trek ventures generate, Prodigy being exclusively on a rival streamer it has no investment in is pretty wild.
In the end, content is still king and Paramount+ needs a big library and a steady stream of new shows to remain relevant, but I agree they could stand to start licensing again, otherwise they’ll never be able to afford paying for it.
i became a trekkie when i was home sick as a kid and came across it… city on the edge and ive loved all of it ever since… with varying degrees of love. i agree it should be available to everyone at some point so people can find it. if it’s exclusive to one streaming channel few people get then that means people need to search out trek specifically.
Originally I supported the idea of Star Trek being exclusive to one site. It would funnel fans to one site obviously and save them money in the long term. Seeing where things are today I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I obviously understand keeping the new shows in one place but I imagine it was the classic shows most people watched and that probably created more new fans for the base because it was accessible in so many places. I would see people saying they watch watched Star Trek for the first time on Netflix or Hulu.
Now it forces new fans to subscribe to a site many still don’t see eager to subscribe to. And when it was already on 3 other sites, chances are everyone had at least one of them as a regular subscriber.
It seems to have made the fanbase much smaller, especially since there seem to be very little new fans checking out the new shows because it’s just very limited on where to watch it
I’m really hoping in the future the classic shows gets distributed to other streamers again (but still staying on P+ of course). And maybe in time for the newer shows too. Paramount+ is just not a strong enough site to bring in more fans and the new shows feel like they are in a tiny bubble due to lack of exposure.
And when you have MAX which has over twice the amount of subs and with a higher monthly cost now licensing their DC content to Netflix again maybe it’s time for Paramount to follow suit
(this is more about paramount being a mess vs star trek but) paramount was getting paid 100 million plus from netflix to air discovery overseas which paid for the entire budget. when they gave the money back and took the show back, they acted so proud that they owned it all… they even announced it and bragged disco was all theirs. then they made the first season with no money coming in from netflix, cut it to 10 eps… and cancelled it before it even aired and delayed it a year. it’s strange. the show was free for them until they axed the netflix deal.
and i remember when that happened… so many overseas fans had the rug pulled out from under them. and it was done like days before the premiere. i remember ripping the episodes for people overseas and sending it to them because they had no other option.
going all the way back to the 70s and paramount’s attempt to create a new network using star trek which eventually turned into the motion picture… to them using voyager to launch UPN then enterprise on the CW and Discovery for cbs all access then paramount plus and who knows what is next… it just shows they’ve never had any idea what they are fully doing but they use star trek every time.
it’s amazing we have as much good star trek as we do thanks to the dedicated writers and creatives, considering the mismanagement at paramount for decades. i think the 80s were the most solid for the management side at paramount.
This idea that Netflix paid for the show is outdated and needs to die.
We have public records of Seasons 1 and 2 budgets based on the tax credits they received and the amount spent in Canada alone. Then add above-the-line costs and post-production.
https://www.mpa-canada.org/press/star-trek-discovery-on-an-economic-mission-for-ontario-spending-over-257-million-in-just-two-seasons/
netflix paid for the show completely. it was what it was. i worked at paramount and enterprise and have friends there who still are in the know and this is not only true it’s old news. i knew this before season 1 even ended. they gave netflix the money back then cut the order then ended it then erased prod and very quickly went from announcing a trek a week all year to 2 shows… and im sure the new cw-like show will be much cheaper. nothing anyone can do but truth is truth. trek always survives. and people always love the new shows 10-20 years later.
Yes despite it all we now have over 800 hours of it which is amazing even if you don’t like all of it.
Paramount clearly sees it’s value over 50 years later but it has been mismanaged here and there, the latest being the new movies and probably overestimating the amount of new shows since they are now cutting back on those and the films are still DOA despite having so much promise in the beginning.
But we are still getting a steady stream of new stories and content and it beats the dry well of having no new show on for over a decade and just a few Kelvin movies every 3-4 years.
As far as I’m aware SkyShowtime do not broadcast anything above 1080p, and no HDR… and it seems even the audio may be limited to stereo.
Speaking of which, Prodigy on Netflix only has stereo sound and not the full 5.1!
Hilarious how some of the same fans who whine incessantly about DSC are suddenly so uber-concerned about Europe’s access to it.
LMFAO
Actually, you are not able to see Lower Decks season 3 and 4 in the Skyshowtime region as Amazon Prime only has season 1 and 2, at least in Denmark…