In light of CBS's announcement that the new Star Trek series will be digital streaming-only, I thought it might be interesting to share some data I have on how potential Star Trek viewers would respond to that.
On this site (and its precursor), I had a survey up asking people if they would watch the show if it was on TV and if it was on pay/streaming only, and I asked their age. I've gotten over 4,000 responses over almost 2 years and it's pretty interesting.
Overall, you can see an equal amount of interest from Gen X'ers (36-50 year-olds) and Millennials (19-35 year-olds). Together they make up 77% of a potential audience. That's a pretty good demographic.
On this site (and its precursor), I had a survey up asking people if they would watch the show if it was on TV and if it was on pay/streaming only, and I asked their age. I've gotten over 4,000 responses over almost 2 years and it's pretty interesting.
Overall, you can see an equal amount of interest from Gen X'ers (36-50 year-olds) and Millennials (19-35 year-olds). Together they make up 77% of a potential audience. That's a pretty good demographic.
Also, the "would absolutely watch" is very high, around 92-93%
Granted, I was asking about Star Trek Uncharted, but the show the CBS press release described is similar in nature: new ship, new crew, new adventures, exploring current social issues.
Where it starts to get a bit dicey is when you ask people if they'd watch it on a pay/streaming service.
Here you can see the total responses for broadcast TV, by age group:
And then for pay/streaming:
There's some significant changes there. This chart shows the change in Absolutely/Maybe/No per age group. All that yellow and red on the positive side of the axis is bad.
That's a big increase in "maybes" when you switch the show from broadcast TV to pay/streaming. Not surprisingly, Millennials (19-35) are the group least likely to be scared off by that change and the Over 50 group is the most turned off by it (the 2 first groups and the last group have sample sizes a bit too small to make their data all that meaningful).
Another way to see this change is in the overall "would watch" responses when going from broadcast TV to pay/streaming:
Another way to see this change is in the overall "would watch" responses when going from broadcast TV to pay/streaming:
That's a drop of about 27 percentage points in the "absolutely" category.
That said, CBS may not care about that big of a drop because the benefits are pretty good for them. They get direct revenue for the show through subscribers, the show basically pays for itself and could be profitable from the get-go. It's also good for Star Trek because it's not subject to sponsorship, being cancelled because of bad ratings and the lack of commercials would modernize the show's dramatic format, bringing it more into line with quality shows like Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, Daredevil, House of Cards, etc.
There is one large caveat with all this data: I only got responses from people who visited my site. So that probably means these are people who were already interested in a new Star Trek series. This doesn't really reflect what new viewers the show could bring in.
But: when you ask someone to pay to watch the show, you're pretty much limiting yourself to already-interested viewers. Unless they have a lot of other content on CBS All Access, I don't see the, getting much in the way of casual viewers checking out the new Star Trek show.
That said, as I understand CBS All Access' current model - you can watch for free with lots of ads that you can't skip, or you can pay to watch with fewer ads (but not ad-free). Only their "classic" shows are offered ad-free.
I'm not sure if this will change before Star Trek debuts on the service, and I imagine they'll want to create other exclusive content for the service, so we'll see, I suppose.
That said, CBS may not care about that big of a drop because the benefits are pretty good for them. They get direct revenue for the show through subscribers, the show basically pays for itself and could be profitable from the get-go. It's also good for Star Trek because it's not subject to sponsorship, being cancelled because of bad ratings and the lack of commercials would modernize the show's dramatic format, bringing it more into line with quality shows like Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, Daredevil, House of Cards, etc.
There is one large caveat with all this data: I only got responses from people who visited my site. So that probably means these are people who were already interested in a new Star Trek series. This doesn't really reflect what new viewers the show could bring in.
But: when you ask someone to pay to watch the show, you're pretty much limiting yourself to already-interested viewers. Unless they have a lot of other content on CBS All Access, I don't see the, getting much in the way of casual viewers checking out the new Star Trek show.
That said, as I understand CBS All Access' current model - you can watch for free with lots of ads that you can't skip, or you can pay to watch with fewer ads (but not ad-free). Only their "classic" shows are offered ad-free.
I'm not sure if this will change before Star Trek debuts on the service, and I imagine they'll want to create other exclusive content for the service, so we'll see, I suppose.
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