I've softened on Star Trek: Lower Decks these days. The show was never my cup of tea, and it pales in comparison to Star Trek's Strange New Worlds and Prodigy, but it's leaps and bounds better than Discovery and Picard. It's a middling show and its five-season run helps cement that fact. It was not a show that really stood out on its own.
It was emboldened by the endless cash that Paramount+ had a the start of its life cycle. Yet, when the banks came calling for past debts to be paid by these streaming services, all of a sudden just having content wasn't enough anymore. It had to be content that was bringing people in on subscriptions. By all accounts, Lower Decks didn't do this.
Animated shows are routinely less expensive to produce than a live-action sci-fi show like Star Trek, so if the show was doing well and garnering an audience, it wouldn't have been canceled. So we can surmize that when it mattered most, Lower Decks didn't do enough to drive the audience to the platform. It was never in the top show's streaming, nor was it ever a show that garnered a lot of critical praise from the mainstream.
There was a small segment of Star Trek fans that loved it, and who will continue to love it, but most of us just didn't care enough about the show to invest in it. Some, like Giant Freaking Robot, will argue that the lack of Star Trek fan support is a sign that the fandom doesn't "appreciate" shows like this, or that they don't "know what they want" from the franchise.
But the inverse is actually true. The fandom has shown up for Strange New Worlds. A classic Star Trek show with some modern trappings. It's a show that has done well and is the best-performing show fo the Nu Trek Era. At least by the metrics we have available to us. When that's the case, when we know that Strange New Worlds is one of the most watched shows each week it's aired, it's easy to say that fans want what Strange New Worlds is offering.
Lower Decks wasn't really a hit outside of a portion of the fandom. That in itself is a declaration from the fandom that they know what they want, and it's not shows like Lower Decks. It's cool if you like that show. It's great if you think it's the best show going. It's just also not the case for the rest of the fandom. They want classic Trek, and they've not been shy about saying that for nearly eight years now.
Maybe when people say something, we should listen. That way companies like Paramount Global don't have to waste money on projects that cater to a niche audience.