Star Trek: Discovery Premiere Attracts Nearly 10 Million Viewers

Star Trek: Discovery made its debut on Sunday, Sep. 24, airing on CBS and attracting an audience commensurate with its status as the first Star Trek series to air in over a decade.

Discovery’s special telecast premiere reeled in 9.6 million viewers and a 1.9 rating among adults 18-49, according to CBS’ time zone-adjusted nationals (via EW). The network expects that total to rise significantly—projecting 15 million viewers and a 3.0 rating—when delayed viewing is taken into account. CBS also revealed that Sunday was the biggest new subscriber day ever for their streaming service, CBS All Access, though they didn’t disclose any streaming viewership figures.

Even these strong numbers don’t necessarily mean that the series will live long and prosper, however. While the Discovery premiere did air to a wide audience on CBS, the series will now shift solely to CBS All Access for the remainder of its run, and it remains to be seen how many viewers will be willing to fork over six bucks a month to ride along on the Discovery.

Obviously, CBS is betting that fans of the show will do just that, and in droves. The network projects that CBS All Access, which launched in 2014, will quadruple its current subscriber count of one million by 2020. And the streaming service is also home to the acclaimed The Good Wife spinoff The Good Fight, along with a deep reservoir of broadcast shows, including numerous previous Star Trek shows, Twin Peaks and … Young Sheldon.

Here’s the case CBS Interactive president Marc DeBevoise made for the service:

“Try it; All Access is free to try and if you don’t think it’s worth the value, we get it. It’s not going to be for everybody. We know some of our customers are going to be cord cutters, some are going to be people who want CBS another way and some just want the premium content we’re offering. Also, it’s not like we’re price gouging here. I think it’s a reasonable price for the value we’re delivering. It’s not just what you get on CBS, it is 10,000 episodes of content plus live TV. We have to show people the value of the service, and I think we will.”

Star Trek: Discovery airs new episodes on Sundays at 8:30 p.m. EDT. You can stream episodes one and two via CBS All Access here, and watch the show’s opening title sequence below.