CBS Announces Premiere Date for Star Trek: Discovery, But Don’t Expect to Be Able to Binge It

After several delays and lots of uncertainty, we finally have a premiere date for Star Trek: Discovery. We also have a schedule for it. What? You expected that since it’s available exclusively on a streaming service that you’d get to binge it all at once? Nope. Looks like CBS All Access is following Hulu’s lead on this one.

Star Trek: Discovery is set to premiere on Sunday, September 24th. Like Hulu original series, CBS Access will be releasing episodes of Discovery weekly. However, they also don’t seem quite ready to let go of some of the habits of broadcast television. Episodes will be released in two halves, with the first half of the season being released every Sunday September 24th through November 5th. Then, there will be a break until January 2018, when the second half of the series will drop.

No word on the January premiere date yet.

According to Deadline Hollywood, “The break…will allow the show more time for post-production on latter episodes.” However, this also helps their marketing strategy. When, for example, AMC releases seasons of The Walking Dead in two “volumes” or “chapters” or “parts,” even though the winter months have typically been a hiatus time in television, they get to market the same season twice. Once when it premieres, and then again for its mid-season “premiere.”

So, it seems that, despite taking the “leap” into streaming, CBS is still trying to hold onto some of the trappings of broadcast television. Premiering the show in the Fall, having a mid-season premiere in January…

I’ve been skeptical about CBS All Access for a long time. I don’t understand paying for a streaming service that is also an airing network. Other streaming services work, because they are entities (or digital “networks”) unto themselves. Paying them a subscription fee makes sense. Broadcast networks have websites that you can access for free, because it’s paid for by advertisers. For CBS All Access you’d have to pay money for original programming from a network you already get for free. It makes zero sense to me.

International viewers won’t have this problem, because they’ll be getting the show on Netflix.

But I really love Star Trek. CBS All Access may be something I subscribe to and then cancel before and after each new season of Discovery. What about you?

(via Collider, image: CBS All Access)

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