Star Trek: Discovery season 1 will air on plain old CBS this fall

Star Trek: Discovery is available exclusively on streaming service CBS All Access, but when a pandemic prevents you from making new content, things change.

With the film and TV industries still trying to fight their way through the coronavirus, the walls between network and streaming service grow thinner. To wit: CBS has announced that it will air the first season of Star Trek: Discovery on TV this fall, even though it had previously only been watchable to people with a subscription to streaming service CBS All Access.

Okay, technically they ran the first couple of episodes of Discovery on normal TV back when it first premiered, but that was only to get people interested in CBS All Access. Running the whole season is new. And I think it’s pretty clear they’re making the move because of the coronavirus. With the pandemic slowing down production around the world, they don’t have as much new content for their fall season as they usually do, so it’s time to dip into its streaming reserves.

CBS will also be airing episodes of PopTV’s One Day At A Time (formerly Netflix’s One Day At A Time) and expanding the upcoming seasons of Love Island and Big Brother. You gotta give the people content.

There are shows that are going back to work, but it’s tough. Coronavirus precautions make shooting more difficult than it used to be — just look at how complicated an ordinary conversation is on the set of The Witcher — and there’s always the possibility of an outbreak.

It’s a sticky situation. Meanwhile, the third season of Star Trek: Discovery will premiere on CBS All Access on October 15.

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h/t The A.V. Club