Star Trek: Prodigy creators are excited about Netflix's young audience

Star Trek: Prodigy was created to help introduce new viewers to Star Trek, especially young viewers. The animated series details a young crew of different aliens that escape a prison colony and come together aboard a ship that no one really knows how to operate. And along for the ride is the holographic Captain Janeway who introduces the crew to the Federation and Starfleet. So anyone who has never seen a Star Trek show can start with Prodigy and learn along with the crew of the Protostar.

As good as the show was, it was still jettisoned by Paramount+ because as the creators, Dan and Kevin Hageman told IGN, the numbers just weren't there. Paramount+ was a relatively new streaming channel at the time of Prodigy's debut, and the channel didn't have a lot of young viewers. That's not the case with Netflix which picked up the series and just released the first season on Christmas Day.

Netflix has over 247 million subscribers around the world as of the third quarter of 2023. That was an increase of over eight millions subscribers since the previous quarter, and we don't know exactly how many of those are kids. But we do know young viewers are tuning in as Prodigy is now in the top ten on Netflix across the globe. And that's exactly what has the Hagemans excited.

"“On Paramount+ we had a lot of Trek fans, adult fans, and it had to spread the word because it was like a young Nickelodeon show, and at the beginning, no one really took it seriously. And then word spread within the Star Trek community, and they loved it. I think with Netflix they do have more kids’ eyes. We’re going to hopefully get more of that kid audience.”"

- Kevin Hageman

It's only bee three days since Prodigy was released on Netflix, and the numbers keep climbing. So clearly, the series is finding its target audience. So Paramount+ removing Prodigy from its channel is looking like the best thing that could have happened for the series!