After Plummeting Viewership Numbers, Star Trek Boss Alex Kurtzman Announces First Season Of Star Trek: Discovery Will Air On CBS In September

John F. Trent |

Aug 26, 2020

Star Trek boss Alex Kurtzman announced on Twitter that the first season of Star Trek: Discovery will air on CBS in September.

Kurtzman wrote on Twitter, “Black Alert! Star Trek beams to broadcast for a limited time, with a special presentation of the first season of CBS All Access’ Star Trek: Discovery coming to CBS Network beginning September 24 at 10/9c.

Black Alert! #StarTrek beams to broadcast for a limited time, with a special presentation of the first season of @CBSAllAccess’ #StarTrekDiscovery, coming to @CBS Network beginning September 24 at 10/9c. pic.twitter.com/NsNFCUUmpH

— Alex Kurtzman (@Alex_Kurtzman) August 26, 2020

This will be the first time the entire first season of Star Trek: Discovery will not be behind CBS All Access’ pay wall in the United States of America. CBS previously aired the first episode of Star Trek: Discovery for a limited time on YouTube.

The first season aired beginning in September 2017 and concluded 15 episodes later in February 2018. While the show wasn’t available in the United States outside of CBS All Access, it did air in Canada on CTV.

According to Numeris, the first episode topped the charts in Canada with viewership at 2.274 million. By the 14th episode the show was airing on Space+ and only had 938,000 viewers.

In it’s final episode, the show did not even break the top 30 most viewed shows in Canada. PYC2018 Primetime was the least viewed show in the top 30 with 927,000 viewers. That means Discovery had less than 927,000 viewers by season’s end.

That means the show lost at least 1.347 million viewers in the course of 15 episodes. That’s almost a 60% loss in their audience from the season premiere.

Not only did the show bleed viewers in Canada, but it received poor audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes. The first season currently has a 51% Audience Score from 8471 ratings. It has an average rating of 2.95 out of 5.

The show seemed to fare better with IMDB users. The lowest rated episode in the first season was episode 8 “Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum” with a 6.8.

The show including the second season currently has a 7.3 rating on IMDB.

Season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery would follow the ratings of the finale of Season 1. The premiere episode would not appear on Numeris’ Top 30 chart for its premiere week. The lowest ranked show was America’s Got Talent: The Champions with 978,000 viewers.

The second episode would also fail to chart with viewership below The Titan Games which had 940,000 viewers.

The season’s finale would also fail to chart in April falling below The Blacklist which had 816,000 viewers.

The second season would receive an even worse Audience Score than the first one on Rotten Tomatoes. It came in at 36% from 2,572 users. It had an average rating of 2.33 out of 5 stars.

On IMDB the second season would also see two episodes receive a 6.5 score from users. That was the lowest score the entire season. Those two episodes were episode three “Point of Light,” and episode 5 “Saints of Imperfection.”

It’s probably no coincidence the debut of the first season of Discovery will air on CBS just a few weeks before the third season airs on CBS All Access on October 15, 2020.

It’s not too hard to imagine that ViacomCBS and Kurtzman are attempting to find an audience for the show after the first season saw over a million people in Canada vacate the series in just the first season and the second season failed to even chart in the Top 30 with the finale having at least less than 816,000 viewers.

What do you make of this move to broadcast Star Trek: Discovery on CBS?