Let's disregard quality. When it comes to the quality of Star Trek programming, it's entirely subjective. You can make your arguments for or against but in the end there is no viable way to determine if something is definitively good or bad. Let's ignore quality for that reason. When we talk about 2024 as far as the Star Trek brand is concerned, it's undoubtedly a bad year for the brand.
We saw Playmates end their toy line with Star Trek at the end of 2023/start of 2024, taking Star Trek off of toy shelves after only being back on them for a short while. We saw the delay of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the revival of Star Trek: Prodigy on Netflix, the end of Discovery, the cancellation and end of Lower Decks, and nearly 10 years later, still no movement on Star
It's hard to say that 2024 was the worst year in Star Trek history because we could easily find worse. Yet, it's fair to say that Star Trek as a brand took a hit this year and a lot of that has to do with the upheaval at Paramount Global.
A recent article from Fortune (via Yahoo Fiance) has covered a pretty interesting and robust series of issues that went on behind the scenes this year. Constant layoffs affected everyone, with some having to wait substantial time, described as "inhumane" before finding out if they lost everything by being laid off.
800 people were let go days after CBS (Paramount Global's primary television channel) hosted the Super Bowl, the most-watched event in television history in the United States. In the summer, another 2,000 (approximately) people were let go. That made up about 15% of their workforce. Almost a quarter of their workforce was purged from January of 2024 to this point in mid-August.
These 2,000 firings would come over the course of several months. Some waited at least six weeks in between rounds of firing before getting the bad news, all while three active CEOs earned millions upon millions. You heard that right, Paramount Global was paying three people to be CEO at the same time. Coupled with the same CEO price tags.
All the while the people who make the content that Paramount makes money on were being thrown out like trash. All of this led to a class action lawsuit that accused the company of violating the law and even accused Paramount Global of "union busting" tactics.
All is not lost, however.
We know that they're in the process of turning over the reigns to Skydance. A process that will close sometime in the first six months of 2025 according to industry insiders. However, that could always change and things could always get even more muddled. Hopefully, that stabilizes things.
Yet some believe that it may not get better. Maybe not as a whole, who's to say, but Star Trek is a prized entity within the Paramount umbrella, and they're going to want to cash in on this franchise as much as possible. So, assuming everything goes according to plan, Star Trek may be one of the few franchises to rebound with the new ownership in place.
More shows may be announced, more films may be made and more merchandise will be created. If Star Trek can continue to find new people to love their products and keep (or bring back) older fans, then the new leadership will be more inclined to push for more Star Trek content to be made.
A stable Paramount Global just means a stronger outlook for Star Trek. Something we haven't seen in a few years.