Star Trek: Picard's first season had a lot of problems. For instance, the whole premise of Dahj and Soji being Data's daughters when he didn't even build them like he built Lal. The writing and dialogue are so bad in this show that even the once great speeches of Jean-Luc Picard are no more. However, ViacomCBS and the media have been trying to spin the perception of the show and it's obvious.
There are articles that seem to excuse the dark tone of Star Trek: Picard. Articles that have excused the violence, the killing off of legacy characters, and even the constant cursing. I've also noticed articles claiming that Picard "broke records" for CBS all access and is generally welcomed by the audience. I've decided to put that last part about how much the audience likes it to the test and see how Picard did in season one. Keep in mind that CBS does not release their view count, so we must extrapolate using other means. We start with the big picture:
Viacom/CBS stock has plummeted over the last month from $35.67 a share to $11.97. They blame it on the merger, but that was completed by December. Picard premiered January 23rd and the drop in stock price coincides with episode 5, where Icheb was violently tortured, and where Seven of Nine lost all of her character development from Voyager. Now it's been reported that ViacomCBS' parent company had to sign off on a deal with their lender, Wells Fargo, that will restructure their credit while giving up a lot of its power to borrow money. I'm not saying that this is all because of Picard, but I'm sure it's a factor.
Next we go to the Star Trek franchise itself. This comes from Google Trends, which measures interest in a topic by the amount of times people Google it. For instance, this 16 year chart for the term "Star Trek" shows that during the last years of Enterprise, peak interest was over 25% and then dropped when it was cancelled in 2005. It then hit 100% peak interest in 2009, coinciding with the Star Trek 2009 movie. Interest in the rest of the JJ Abrams films then dropped. By the time Star Trek Discovery premiered, interest was below 25% and stayed there.
If you zoom in between 2017 and the present and separate Picard from Discovery, you'll notice that Discovery's premiere sparked 100% peak interest compared to Picard's 28% peak interest. That is a 72% drop in interest between Discovery's premiere and Picard's. Remember, this is all within the under 25% interest for Star Trek in general.
Now what happens when you isolate the chart to just Picard during the time it has aired? An average interest of only 35.5%, according to the chart below. That is within the 72% drop compared to Discovery.
You may be saying to yourself, "Hey not everybody uses Google and they don't constantly Google the same things over and over, this is just one metric and may not be accurate". I can grant that. Which is why there are other ways to indicate falling interest in Picard, such as the falling audience score on Rotten Tomatoes:
Or this article titled "Star Trek: Picard Viewership Plummets Over Half A Million In Canada" where they are actually airing Picard and so must release their ratings. Also, according to Google Trends, Canada is actually the country that most searched for Picard and they STILL lost that many:
How about Picard's after show "Ready Room" continuously dropping in viewership on YouTube, and how Nerdrotic's views often surpassed Ready Room's (7 episodes out of 10):
Or how Nerdrotic's YouTube page has 34,000 more subscribers than CBS All Access' YouTube page:
Not even Parrot Analytics can save Picard as it started with only 55 million "demand expressions" in its first week, and dropped to 41 million in their last week. In their latest chart that ended May 21st, Titans has more demand expressions than Picard. Compared to television overall, Spongebob is way more watched than Picard. Spongebob, the cartoon about a sponge that lives in a pineapple in Bikini Bottom, completely dominates over Star Trek. That's sad.
Picard's first week: 55,379,166 demand expressions.
Picard's second to last week: 41,363,368 demand expressions.
We even did a random Twitter poll that was open to everyone and the results were similar - the audience for Picard is actually pretty small.
Star Trek Picard obviously did not do well in season one. It's audience was even smaller than Discovery's, the episodes after the first don't even reach 50% peak interest, viewers in Canada are turning off the TV and ViacomCBS' may be forced into bankruptcy. These articles that excuse the violence and cursing in Picard and tell you that the show is doing fine are selling you spin. They sort of have to if they want to continue their working relationship with these studios, not to mention some of these sites are owned by the studios.
So where are you going to get honest opinions on pop-culture? Let me suggest a few YouTube channels that have no affiliation with these studios or the media and will not try and sell you spin:
Midnight's Edge
Nerdrotic
MechaRandom42
Doomcock
Orville Nation
That Star Wars Girl
Geeks and Gamers
Bowlestrek
Midnight's Edge
Nerdrotic
MechaRandom42
Doomcock
Orville Nation
That Star Wars Girl
Geeks and Gamers
Bowlestrek
Some may read this article and simply dismiss the seven factors I have presented (Stocks, Trends, RT, Canadian Ratings, YT Views, Parrot Analytics, Twitter Poll) as "horse hockey". They either don't like that the facts presented go against what they wish to believe, or maybe they have some counter facts of their own that they would like to present. If so, please leave these counter facts in the comments below. (Any insults or straw-man arguments that have nothing to do with this article will be deleted.)
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