It’s a funny thing about a global pandemic shutting down most television and film production for the better part of a year: It tends to cut down on the amount of new content available to feed into the maw of the ever-insatiable autumn TV schedule. Hence news today that CBS is turning to some of its streaming properties to help bulk up its fall schedule—including the news that Star Trek: Discovery will air its entire first season the network this fall, starting on September 24.
As Variety points out, this isn’t, technically, the first time the series has aired on the network; CBS ran a few episodes of the series in its early running to stoke excitement for its move to CBS All Access, back when we were all laughing and gay, and there was so much TV out there that you could relegate a show like Discovery over to the streaming folks. Meanwhile, the series is just one of several already-extant shows to be making the jump to CBS to keep the sweet sweet distraction juice flowing; as part of a previously arranged deal, PopTV’s One Day At A Time (formerly Netflix’s One Day At A Time) will run its fourth season on CBS, starting in October. The network is also expanding its upcoming seasons of Love Island and Big Brother, because folks, the well is dry.
Various networks have attempted to bridge the gap to safe production in various ways over recent months; The CW, for instance, opted for a strategy of first raising, and then breaking, our hearts, by flirting with a run of the U.K.’s Taskmaster that it quickly pulled the plug on. (Also, lots of other acquisitions and unscripted content.) CBS was really hoping to get some actual new shows—Chuck Lorre’s B Positive and Queen Latifah’s The Equalizer—up and running, but the coronavirus has refused to play along with the network’s very modest and reasonable Q3 aims.
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Careful, or people might start to figure out that most jobs are unnecessary busywork.
Not the first time they’ve done something like this. They own Showtime so during the writer’s strike they aired heavily censored episodes of Dexter on CBS to fill time on their schedules.
Are they going to bleep out all the swearing in ST:DISCO to placate the FCC?
ST:DISCO would be a great nickname for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Or for Star Trek: Phase II. I bet if it had gone forward as a television series, instead of morphing into ST:TMP, it would have a disco-y theme song! God, it really would have – I just remembered those disco 45s of the “Close Encounters” theme.
Of course it exists, and is fabulous.
I always liked, “Star Trek: The Motionless Picture”.
Didn’t they already put a few episodes of The Good Fight on CBS earlier this year?
More of this, please: I’d love NBC to get desperate enough to run that new season of AP Bio that’s slated for Peacock-only.
This isn’t Plan B. This is more like:
“OH MY GOD! WHAT DO WE HAVE LEFT TO KEEP OUR ADVERTISERS AROUND!?”
As someone who watched Big Brother for years (yes, I know the show was a trashpit) and still sort of keeps up through updates as some past players I liked are back, CBS must be desperate if they are extending the season. The ratings aren’t that great and the show is pretty weak this season (even one of the participants said they told her they weren’t happy with how the season was going). I haven’t kept up with One Day at a Time since their move to POP. How has it held up? The third season was a mixed bag for me but I’m glad it is still on.
Sorry, I misread the article the first time – I didn’t realize the date is about the same for Big Brother, it just started later.
One Day at a Time didn’t make many days. Only seven episodes out of a scheduled 14 were aired, and one of them was animated. I still enjoyed them thoroughly.
ON TV? Like – for free? What a wild concept for CBS.
Not really for free, They will use this thing called advertising in which during the show, small breaks will be used to sell people watching various products and services. You don’t pay money but instead pay with your time and attention. Its an interesting model that may just catch on.
I don’t get why people are confused about this. Yes, it’s 100% free for viewers. It’s paid for by advertising they HOPE you will watch, but you are under no legal, moral, ethical, religious, or any other compulsion to watch those advertisements. You are free to turn the station, move around the room, go to the bathroom, or simply use a time shifting device and skip ahead. Which, it turns out, a significantly large number of people have been doing for decades and it’s why advertisers are freaking out so much.
Sure you say that, but the guy with the gun tells me I have to watch all the commercials or my dog gets it.In all seriousness. You are right that its not a financial cost and its easily skipped but you are “paying” for it with your time and engagement(or even lack of engagement). Its a concept that will become more important as this century goes on.
The show has Klingon nudity, multiple f-bombs and some of the episodes run over an hour. How chopped up and mangled is it going to be?
You just HAD to remind us about the Klingon nudity.