The fall of HBO Max may foretell the future of Star Trek and Paramount+

HBO Max has failed and it’s very possible Paramount+ isn’t far behind.

God save the NFL because if you’re watching Paramount+ you know they don’t have a lot of offerings on that service besides the ability to watch the NFL. The entire platform is being tentpoled by the NFL, Star Trek, and Spongebob Squarepants. That is not a trio that can support a streaming service that is spending nearly half a billion on Star Trek properties alone.

The shows are expensive, so expensive that, according to Indie Wire, they sunk $1.6 billion into shows in just the second quarter of the fiscal year (April, May, and June). That’s roughly $6.4 BILLION they’re spending a year to bring in roughly 60+ million subscribers. Even if everyone is spending $12 or more on Paramount, they’re still just making $764 million.

I’m not great at math but that means every year Paramount+ is going in the hole to the tune of $4.8 billion. According to Zippia, they only have 6.2% off the market share. Now, Showtime, their other service has 6.0% but considering they stream all Showtime content to Paramount+, it’s actually not telling you what you think it is.

What it’s actually telling you is that .2% of the estimated 63.7 million subscribers don’t have Showtime. Not that there are nearly 100 million subscribers. They have/had fewer subscribers than HBO Max.

HBO Max is dying because it can’t afford to keep operating, which is why so much content is being removed. If HBO Max can’t survive, Paramount+ may be in deep trouble.

Star Trek will likely be shrunk down significantly in due time

Netflix has nearly $14 billion in debt. I would hazard a guess that Paramount has about half that, at most, for their streaming services. Most streaming services are carrying significant amounts of debt. The WWE Network was in hole millions and needed to sell itself to Peacock to avoid eating a huge loss.

Now Peacock is paying to operate their service and air its content. So the WWE turned a sunk cost into a net gain. If you don’t think that other studios are going to do the same in the near future, you’re kidding yourself.

Star Trek will likely be impacted by the streaming services’ struggles in due time. I would not be surprised to see a dip in quality sooner rather than later and then fewer shows being made at once. They’ll likely go back to the old model of Trek, filming 18+ episodes for one or two series to save on cost.

If that ends up happening, who knows what happens with the brand as a whole?