Paramount+ may merge with Peacock in the near future
By Chad Porto
The home for Star Trek may no longer be exclusive to Paramount+ in the near future. Rumors abound that Comcast, the owners of NBC and its streaming service, Peacock, have met with Paramount Global about merging with Paramount Global's streaming service; Paramount+. Peacock has been one of the more financially sound platforms in the space, but like every service, they're hemorrhaging money as well.
They're just not in as dire of a position as Paramount+ is. This possibility isn't out of nowhere, as the two have an international streaming service dubbed SkyShowtime, so the two have had a working relationship well established.
While the talks were over just the streaming service, with how bad things are at Paramount Global, a merger of the parent companies hasn't been ruled out either. This comes about a month after it was revealed that Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global had talks on a potential merger as well.
A potential sale of the company is likely going to keep things from happening any time soon, as the company is still being shopped around. Sky Dance Media and Allen Media Group have already made some sort of offer for the company, but so far no sale has been made just yet.
And that hold-up is likely why we don't see anything getting moving with regard to a streaming platform merger. Any merger of streaming services would likely go through without much of an issue, but anything like a major broadcast entity meagering would likely be subject to challenges due to the creation of a monopoly.
As far as what this means for Star Trek fans, not much yet. If a streaming merger goes through, the new company will carry a lot of collective debt still, so it wouldn't be a saving grace situation for the brand, and any cutbacks to the franchise would still likely happen as the new owners would look to eliminate expenses so they could pay off their debt faster.
On the off-chance that downsizing doesn't happen or that the status quo isn't hindered too much, it's likely that viewership for Star Trek could skyrocket if the new proposed owners opt to keep Trek on their service instead of leasing it out to other streamers the way Netflix picked up Star Trek: Prodigy.