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Rumour: Star Trek series leaving Amazon Prime and possibly Netflix as well

With the new Star Trek series being initially exclusive to CBS All Access, rumours have begun to surface that CBS will be pulling all Star Trek content from their business partners turned competitors Amazon Prime and potentially Netflix in the very near future.

By venethus Fri 05 Feb, 2016 6:50 AM - Last Updated: Sun 03 Apr, 2016 1:16 AM
With the new Star Trek series being initially exclusive to CBS All Access, rumours have begun to surface that CBS will be pulling all Star Trek content from their business partners turned competitors Amazon Prime and potentially Netflix in the very near future.

Netflix which began offering streamed television and movie content way back in 2007 quickly became a market leader thanks to the lack of competition and their already sizeable catalogue of shows and films, a massive part of the appeal was the ability to watch so much content in one place and the service now boasts well over 70 million subscribers. Their success has led to the creation of more competitors wanting to claim their share of the streaming market. Whilst competition is usually a good thing for consumers it is increasingly the case that do get access to all of the television shows and movies that you want you need to subscribe to numerous services.

CBS launched it's CBS All Access subscription service in late 2014. The service currently boasts a catalogue of over 7,500 episodes available, an impressive sounding number but a far cry from the figures boasted by Netflix who have thousands of TV shows and movies at their disposal. With CBS All Access only breaking the 100,000 subscriber barrier as recently as late 2015, CBS still has a long way to go before it can challenge the big players such as Amazon, Hulu and of course Netflix. One way to do that might be to pull it's content from those that are now their competitors, forcing fans to shell out for yet another service if they want to legally and conveniently access their content.

The six Star Trek series (yes The Animated Series counts) have all been available on both Amazon Prime and Netflix although their availability does vary by region but this could change very quickly, CBS are already using Star Trek as a way to promote their CBS All Access platform with the new series being initially exclusive to the service, so it isn't impossible to believe that CBS will seek to lure as many Star Trek fans as it can by making CBS All Access the one stop shop for all Star Trek television shows.

This could represent quite a gamble for CBS, will they bank on fans to subscribe to yet another streaming service to fulfil all of their Trek TV watching needs (the movie rights still belong to Paramount so we are unlikely to see any changes there) and lose out on the revenues gained from selling Star Trek to other distributors or will they play it safe and at worst use the threat of pulling Star Trek as a way to negotiate better terms with Amazon and Netflix? With the increase in popularity of Star Trek thanks to the admittedly polarising reboot movies this could be some shrewd business by CBS or it could go 'Enterprise' on them and never fulfil it's potential and be quickly abandoned.

What do you think? Will CBS take the risk and what does it mean for Star Trek fans? Would you part with more of your gold pressed latinum for another streaming service if it meant being able to watch Star Trek on demand or is this far no further?

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Writer Bio
Michael is an Engineering student and writer for UFPlanets.com. He is a veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard and a licensed amateur radio operator (KK6UWI), who resides in Southern California.

Christopher is on an ongoing mission to seek out new life in the hopes it is less annoying than most of Earth's population. It isn't going well.


Written by Chris Halsey and Michael Koger
Edited By Chris Halsey - chris.halsey@ufplanets.com
and Stefano Elia - stefano.elia@ufplanets.com
5 Comments
Fri 05 Feb, 2016 6:00 PM
Excellent article Venethus! I wonder what this could mean for Star Trek fans outside America? It took quite a while to get Netflix in the UK, do we get access to CBS All Access or will it be region exclusive?
Wed 17 Feb, 2016 1:23 AM
Bad move...
Wed 17 Feb, 2016 2:44 AM
If not everyone can access it, it is going to fail.
Wed 17 Feb, 2016 3:04 AM
Nice article Venethus. I don't believe enough people would subscribe to another streaming service, let alone switch to one with limited content.
One good question would be why does CBS feel they need to start a streaming service instead of taking the money as proceeds from Netflix and Amazon?
I doubt CBS or Paramount has enough content currently to have their own service I'm fairly sure that the other networks like NBC, Fox, ABC/ Disney are not going to allow their content on CBS, nor would CBS want it.
I can understand them wanting some of the market share and money, though have to realize that to do so provide what the consumers want.
Hopefully common sense can win out here, and not pull the content from AP and Netflix.
Wed 17 Feb, 2016 9:07 PM
One question I have is where is this rumor coming from. No offense intended but I'd rather see an official statement. It's easy to get worked up over a rumour, a rumour that could be the work of trolls.