CBS owned 10 All Access this morning confirmed yesterday’s widely reported news that Jean-Luc Picard is heading to Amazon Prime for distribution outside of the United States, in a disappointing move from the eye.

In 2017, following financial turmoil at the free to air television broadcaster, CBS acquired Network 10 in a debt-for-equity swap. Since then, the network has been on several revitalisation missions to pick itself up and move forward. One of which was to launch the SVOD All Access service into a third territory, completed in December 2018.

Almost immediately, Trekzone began to hear whispers that the Netflix Star Trek deal, at the very least, wouldn’t be renewed past its expiry and the entire franchise would make the move to 10 All Access as a way of boosting the profile of the newest player in the Australian SVOD scene. Confirmation was tipped to be forthcoming a few months back, when the initial news of Picard’s destination was not on Netflix broke.

However, CBS has opted to sell distribution rights for all territories to Amazon Prime instead of supporting their newest creation with a potentially must-watch original scifi drama series. This move is especially disappointing considering the success Discovery brought to CBS All Access in the States. In fact CBS All Access executive vice president Julie McNamara said of the series back in February:

The massive success of Star Trek: Discovery’s second season launch exceeded our expectations in both driving subscriber growth and generating a phenomenal response from Star Trek fans.

In January CBS reported a 72% increase in subscribers and credited Discovery’s second season premiere (and the AFC Championship game) with that success.

Which makes this move even more puzzling…