Paramount poaches Star Trek, Australia’s sports streaming smackdown: Vertical Hold Ep 356

How were Australians (almost) robbed of Star Trek: Discovery at the last moment – until Paramount backflipped? How fragmented will sports rights get? Are we headed back into the bad old days of the dreaded pay TV bundle? Special guest TV Blackbox viewer advocate Steve Molk!

Vertical Hold is brought to you by Aussie Broadband – changing the game with their award-winning network and Australian based support.

Listen!

Subscribe!

Space… the final frontier. These are the journeys of the podcast Vertical Hold, as we travel through the labyrinthine mess that was CBS Viacom’s attempts to delay the airing of Star Trek: Discovery outside the USA, despite the presence of Paramount+ in Australia.

Our continuing journey ponders the broader implications of how content companies are really starting to hoard their particular content crown jewels, and whether that means we’re headed back to the bad old days of paying $100+ for pay TV, especially once sport is factored into the equation.

To guide us through the galaxy of streaming choices, we’re joined by the one and only Steve Molk from TV Blackbox!

Also, that thing that Alex talked about, where rats were trained to play Doom? He wasn’t making that up.