Gizmodo’s James Whitbrook has yet more to vent on Paramount+‘s cancelation and erasure of Prodigy.
I hadn’t considered the cancelation from the perspective of systemic misogyny, which Whitbrook effectively is carating.
However, given that Janeway was surely chosen as the legacy captain for Prodigy because Voyager had proven itself to be an effective gateway for younger and new viewers on Netflix, Whitbrook’s inference Paramount views her less important to the franchise than Picard is biting.
Paramount wouldn’t dare treat what it’s done for Patrick Stewart and Jean-Luc Picard as a tax break. Casting aside everything that Prodigy stood for, and in the process doing the same to Mulgrew and Janeway’s legacy, is a cruel twist on what is already a cruel fate for the show.
Just as Roddenberry’s utopian future transcends sexism, racism, ableism and other isms, so too does the cold-blooded calculation of the corporate accountant. Networks will cancel shows that lose money and renew shows that make money over whatever timeframe their cost/benefit ratio is run on. Personally, I think Prodigy is a breath of fresh air for the franchise, and cancelling it/removing it the network is a mistake from a brand/franchise/portfolio management perspective. But spinning its cancellation as an example of misogyny is silly. You might as well argue that Paramount hates kids cause there are many more children as main characters in the show and only one adult woman.
Some thoughts here.
I agree these kinds of assessments require a bit of a deep dive.
Let’s look at the business case then, the economics and the long haul marketing strategy.
Does the narrative around Prodigy being unprofitable, a write off hold up? Could Whitbrook be putting his finger on something valid?
Let’s also keep in mind that the head of scheduling for streaming at Paramount has been saying that their business strategy for Paramount+, as they integrate Showtime, has said repeatedly that their streaming strategy is built on ‘the 3 Fs’:
Fandoms, franchises & familiar faces.
Prodigy quite obviously was designed to tick off all three elements of the strategy, so what’s the failure point or mismatch as they winnow?
The narrative that Prodigy wasn’t popular enough on Paramount+ doesn’t scan.
First, from what metrics we have available publicly for 2022 (Parrot Analytics mainly),
So then, if Prodigy is doing well in attracting and retaining subscribers and Star Trek is one of two principal franchises supporting their business strategy, where’s the problem?
Let’s look at Nickelodeon, the original destination for the show.
Nickelodeon’s linear audience numbers have been falling overall. Prodigy’s numbers aren’t great on Nick, but none of Nick’s new shows are taking off as they once were.
Going into the pandemic, Nick was such an important anchor for cable in the US that Paramount was obliged to make promises for content exclusivity windows for Nickelodeon when it negotiated its last carrier contract for the US with Comcast. When the pandemic came, suddenly kids were online as never before, and Nickelodeon quickly diminished in its power to attract linear viewership.
So, one can draw an inference that it’s Nickelodeon, not Paramount+, that’s financial trouble is a key point in the decision. Nick is losing money on Prodigy, that needs an exit pathway for an expensive show it can’t afford to partner in.
BUT…
Why then, given Paramount’s 3F streaming strategy, animated shows less expensive and underrepresented in Paramount’s streaming offerings, doesn’t Paramount just rework the deal between the streaming side and Nickelodeon?
Here’s where systematic bias may be coming into it -
Paramount+ has been successful in building a broad subscriber base across ages, genders, race and ethnicity while still gaining ground in ‘middle America.’
This is not the case for other streamers. MAX is struggling to bring together the male-skewed HBO audience and the older-female Discovery one.
Let’s look at what else was cut along with Prodigy.
a show targeted at the LGBTQ audience canceled during Pride month
a show targeted at a niche female demographic
a family show headed by one of the strongest female leadership icon characters of the 90s, with another principal character voiced by a Black actor.
Paramount used a lot of dense marketing technobabble about fit and alignment to explain that the choice to cut and write this particular set of 3 shows. They’ve previously talked about popularity during the cuts of Showtime’s more niche, arty products.
If we listen to them, and accept their justification, the implication is that these LGBTQ, women and black targeted shows no longer are their demographic priorities. They don’t fit with where P+ with Showtime is going even if they all obviously check the 3F boxes. Meanwhile, there’s been no language backpedaling on the 3F strategy.
At the same time, Paramount Global is trying to sell off BET and BET+.
The conclusion isn’t necessarily misogyny, but clearly that Paramount Global is no longer strategically prioritizing its diverse representation of demographic groups.
They are telling us, their advertisers and their investors that Paramount/CBS is turning the entire business back towards prioritizing a much less representative audience.
There’s an implicit assumption that they can continue to retain the demand of women, racially diverse and LGBTQ demographics, while skewing their new investments towards the older, middle American audience of the Yellowstone franchise and the slice of the Trek audience that Picard season three was targeted to draw back in.
My conclusion - Whitbrook has a point. They wouldn’t have done this with Picard or Kirk.
It says more about Paramount’s strategic shift away from prioritizing representation and diverse demographics more broadly.
It’s not just misogyny, but it’s in there. Without unconscious bias and systemic misogyny, the scheduling folks wouldn’t assume that they can hold girls and women as an audience while taking them out of principal roles.
@StillPaisleyCat I appreciate the long, well-thought out reply. But I’m not convinced. Lower Decks has a black woman, Tawny Newsome, first on the call sheet and Mike McMahan has said (IIRC) that by default all of the characters in the show are bisexual (something that’s been shown in various ways on-screen), so I don’t think you can point to Prodigy’s cancellation due to some bias against LGBTQIA+, women or people of colour when you have a counterfactual right there in its sister show. In fact, every modern Trek show has its diversity boxes well and truly checked, but nobody is accusing Paramount of cancelling Picard because of some network executive’s bias against an interacial lesbian relationship in Raffi/Seven.
I haven’t watched any of the Yellowstone shows (they’re on my list) but I understand that franchise has Kevin Costner, Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren in its stable. A show starring these actors is just going to do better than a show starring Kate Mulgrew (who’s last-billed, albeit with the “and” credit), just as a show starring Patrick Stewart as the lead is inherently going to do better numbers than a show where Kate Mulgrew is a supporting character. Bring in, oh say Beyonce, as a lead on a Trek and I’m pretty sure the ratings will spike through the roof. It’s not because they’re white or male, it’s because they’re more famous.
Maybe, maybe not. But if not, it’s because Picard and Kirk are more iconic, more well recognised characters than Janeway. Star Trek was never more popular in the mainstream than in the mid 80s-early 90s, with the TOS movies and TNG TV series both in full flight. VOY ran during the Berman era’s middle-age as Trek’s star (nyuk nyuk) was beginning to fade. Fans know who Janeway is, but most people on the street wouldn’t, whereas most people on the street would recognise Captain Kirk and the bald English guy from that space show.
By the way, I say all this as someone who thinks that Prodigy is a far more worthy addition to the franchise than the fan-lauded season 3 of Picard.