Here’s an interesting piece about some of the concrete if prosaic realities that Skydance — that ate the larger Paramount and now is set to swallow the yet larger WB-Discovery — will need to contend with to serve its estimated combined 200 million subscribers.
For those of us who’ve experienced the unfortunately incapacity of the Paramount+ application, it’s clear that its tech stack won’t do. However, WB-Discovery HBO MAX isn’t state of the art either.
This idea of Paramount+/HBO Max integration is frankly “too new” to “contemplate how you can merge two streaming services of that size together,” Rayburn told THR. “There’s no way you would know.”
Here’s what we do know: “We … plan to put the two services together, which today gives us a little over 200 million direct to consumer subscribers,” Ellison said last week. “We think that really positions us to compete with the leaders in the space.”
We will never see 26 episode seasons again.
It currently takes more than one week to shoot a 42 minute episode.
Also, actors are not willing to lock into shows that leave them unavailable for movies or other television shows.
Star Trek and other streaming series are able to cast A-listers not just because they are willing to pay high pay rates and list them as executive producers but also because the A-listers are able to lock in multi season contracts with Star Trek while still being available to do other things.
But 10 episodes is not the maximum possible. Large ensembles like Starfleet Academy have enough main cast members that not everyone has to be on set every day.
As well, it’s possible that 4 or 6 episode limited series might be the perfect vehicle to bring back a Legacy character or explore something like the Department of Temporal Investigations. Under the old management those weren’t negotiable.
Why Paramount had such a bizarrely rigid policy after the ViacomCBS merger has never been adequately explained.