Scheduling Not Complete

Star Trek Discovery, the latest chapter in the 51-year-running franchise, is slated to air this September on streaming services around the world. This after over a decade’s wait by many Star Trek fans who have been patiently awaiting a new series.

Discovery is set to air its pilot episode on September 24th at 8:30pm ET on CBS followed by the rest of the season (generally one episode per week) being available on CBS All Access online streaming service. The second half of the pilot will be available on All Access immediately after airing of the pilot on CBS. In Canada, it’s slated to air on Space Channel on September 24th on cable, and on CraveTV – Bell Media’s video streaming service. Netflix will carry Star Trek Discovery around the rest of the world, premiering on September 25th.

These details have been provide by CBS and through StarTrek.com and been known for some time. However one key date is missing for Canadian fans. To now, there has been no date provided by Bell Media (owner of CraveTV) for when the series will be available for streaming.

All other carriers made announcements months ago.

We reached out to Bell Media and to CraveTV twice over the past few weeks. When we did hear back from them we were told “[Bell doesn’t] have final schedule details just yet for STAR TREK: DISCOVERY on CraveTV.”

What is arguably the most critical detail for Canadian viewers isn’t even finalized yet with the show airing in just five weeks around the world. This leaves no time for CraveTV to market the series to locals.

Possible Conflict of Interests?

Just when will CraveTV’s decision be made public? “[We’re] hoping this will be released in the coming weeks.”

It appears that Bell Media and CraveTV have left specifics surrounding the show to the last possible minute. It’s unclear why Bell would wait this late, though they own and operate satellite cable in Canada, presenting a possible conflict of interest.

Bell owning both Space Channel and satellite cable tv services may be at odds with also being the sole streaming distributor of the series. It enables Bell to force Star Trek fans into purchasing both their satellite TV service and their CraveTV online streaming service. Bell can also force viewers that have competing cable tv packages without the Space channel to also purchase access to their channel and subscribe to their CraveTV service.

We reached out to Bell to ask them about this but didn’t hear back as of the time of this writing.

If Bell does decide to enact these strategies, it’s likely that there will be an upswing in pirated copies of the services through services such as Torrents or by other means.

We’ll be sure to update our Canadian readers if or when we hear back from Bell Media or as soon as we learn more.