CBS and Viacom get back together, plan to expand Star Trek universe

We live in a world of super-corporations fighting for for our subscription dollars — Disney, Netflix, WarnerMedia…so what’s one more? Per The Wall Street Journal, media giants Viacom and CBS are merging into one company, dubbed ViacomCBS. Notably, these two were one company for years, but split apart in 2005.

But times have changed. As soon-to-be CBS CEO Joe Ianniello said in an earnings call with investors, “scale is becoming more and more important all the time.” Basically, in the age of giant streaming services, it’s hard for “small” companies to compete. I guess they figured their only hope was to merge into one mega-company and pour all their combined resources into a streaming service — probably CBS All Access — that can go toe-to-toe with heavy hitters like Netflix and the upcoming Disney+ and HBO Max.

Is this good for consumers? God, I dunno. We’re about to enter a reality where there are, like, 10 major streaming services competing for our attention. It could be hard on the pocketbook, or maybe they’ll compete with each other to offer better deals.

And of course, there will be oodles of content. CBS already has original shows like The Twilight Zone and Star Trek: Discovery going strong on CBS All Access. Viacom brings with it franchises like Mission: Impossible and Transformers. True, those franchises aren’t as ubiquitous as, say, Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe over at Disney, but in a world where intellectual property is everything, you hold on to what you’ve got.

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And maybe ViacomCBS could make one of their properties into a mega-franchise. In particular, the company is going hard on all things Star Trek. In addition to Discovery, CBS has Picard on the horizon, with Patrick Stewart returning to the role he made famous in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Then there’s a Discovery spinoff starring Michelle Yeoh and an animated show called Below Decks, about the unsung members of Starfleet.

And now, after the Viacom merger, CBS once again has access to all the characters from the recent Star Trek movies, creating even more opportunities for Trek content — ostensibly, those streams haven’t been allowed to cross since the 2005 split, although that was starting to happen anyway, with Ethan Peck playing Mister Spock over on Discovery. But now it’s official: the entirety of the Star Trek franchise is under the control of one company again, and the plan is to jump straight to warp speed.

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h/t Deadline