Star Trek: Discovery Is Pulling Off A Streaming Miracle
Considering how the show was unceremoniously canceled, it certainly seemed Star Trek: Discovery didn’t have much of a streaming audience. Incredibly, however, that seems to have changed in a big way for the show’s final season. Recently, the show was ranked number eight on Nielsen’s original programs top 10, and since Knuckles ranked at number six, this is the first time that two Paramount+ shows were in the top 10 chart.
The Numbers Keep Climbing
For Star Trek: Discovery, this streaming triumph is proof that the show keeps climbing the charts. Two weeks ago, it ranked in last place on Nielsen’s top 10, and a week ago, it ranked number nine. By the numbers, it looks like the Star Trek show that everyone tried to write off started strong and has only gotten better in terms of streaming minutes (in this case, Discovery had 285 million minutes viewed).
It will be interesting to see if Star Trek: Discovery continues putting up these amazing streaming numbers or not. One of the downsides to Nielsen’s data is that it is always significantly delayed. In this case, the show’s awesome numbers are reflecting the week of April 22 – 28, which covers a few days after the premiere of the fifth episode “Mirrors.”
We’re Almost To The End
As of this writing, Discovery just dropped the ninth and penultimate episode of the season, the Jonathan Frakes-directed ep “Lagrange Point.” Given how Nielsen reports the data, it may be over a month before we know whether Discovery maintained its audience throughout the season or if people began tuning out after episode five.
With any luck, the audience has stayed: while we’ve had our criticisms of the show, and while this may be damning it with faint praise, it’s fair to say that Discovery is better now than it has been in several years.
Paramount+ Is Starting To Brush Up Against The Big Guys
Regardless of whether Star Trek: Discovery continues to rise in the charts or not, it’s already impressive that it made streaming history with Knuckles. As you have likely suspected, Paramount+ has only a fraction of the subscribers of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and other major streaming rivals.
When a Paramount show breaks into the top 10, it means that a significantly higher number of its users are watching it than the average top 10 show on Netflix.
Paramount Regrets?
This isn’t the first time that Star Trek: Discovery has landed on the Neilsen top 10, but it is interesting to note how high the show’s streaming numbers have stayed. It’s obviously too late to renew the series, but we can’t help but wonder if Paramount execs feel any regrets about seeing the show they canceled continuing to flourish.
In effect, it seems like they canceled an extremely popular show in order to gamble on a youth-centered Starfleet Academy show.
Star Trek And Sonic
At any rate, Star Trek fans should be amused that not only did Discovery make streaming history, but it did so with the help of Sonic the Hedgehog’s supporting character Knuckles.
Maybe these two franchises could make legions of fanfiction writers happy by having an onscreen crossover. That might allow us to finally get an answer to the most important question of all: whether the Chaos Emeralds are just special kinds of dilithium crystals.
Source: Nielsen
