Star Trek: Discovery boasts strong premiere ratings

Star Trek: Discovery premiered to some impressive ratings. But how many viewers will make the jump to the CBS All Access streaming site to keep watching?

From its inception, the plan for Star Trek: Discovery was always to have the premiere on CBS and then move the show over to CBS All Access. This was a big gamble because there was (and still is) no way of telling how many people would be willing to pay $6 per month to watch the show.

According to Entertainment Weekly, the premiere episode of Star Trek: Discovery was seen by 9.6 million people, good for a 1.9 rating. The plus 7 totals are expected to hit 15 million viewers.

Those are some powerful numbers.

As soon as the first episode of Discovery aired, CBS All Access subscribers were able to watch the second episode of the series. While CBS doesn’t make those streaming numbers public, it looks like there was a lot of traffic with the service on Sunday.

Next: The preview for Star Trek: Discovery looks awesome

CBS has a goal of growing viewership on their streaming platform, which currently has around a million subscribers. CBS All Access offers a library of almost every major CBS show available, along with live television and current seasons of CBS shows. There is a basic version and a commercial-free version available at a higher price.

The fascinating thing about this plan to grow subscribers is that using Star Trek: Discovery is a major gamble. The first two episodes set the stage for the rest of the series but they are vastly different than the rest of the show. Will viewers be willing to stick around to see what happens, or have they already made their decision about the show?

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In these days of television viewership where shows are cancelled after a single episode due to low ratings, CBS is taking a big risk with an investment this big, especially considering that the service only has a million subscribers to date. Only time will tell whether their gamble pays off.