Star Trek

in every way like executives saying “find a way to get young people into it without costing us too much money” and not producers and showrunners saying “let’s make a really good show.”

So TNG. And DS9. And Voyager. And Enterprise. And the Kelvinverse. Literally every show/movie ever made in Trek has been with money at the forefront and none of them have been made with "lets make a really good show" as the core concept. No show in history has been made with that as the core concept with maybe the exception of Mr Rogers. There are no bright eyed idealists who sit at Star Trek meetings and invent the show. Every single one of them has been calculated and tested and based 100% off of profit figures. This isn't a new concept. Berman controlled Trek longer than anyone else and none of those shows were made with 'Good Star Trek' in mind which is proven from behind the scenes stories from every cast member of every single show. TNG had problems with Berman on making certain episodes to the point that they became famous for never being made as well as the casting/contract negotiations for the women who were put through hell. DS9 was a story that was outright stolen from another and creator after he pitched the idea to CBS and was meddled with so much by Berman and production that the show runner had to actively lie to producers and keep things from them to make good Trek. Voyager was largely left alone but only due to the testament of Kate Mulgrew being awful enough on set. Enterprise was purely a creation of Berman and is demonstrated through every gross decontamination shower. The Kelvinverse is largely hated by people for many reasons but not least of which being the JJ Daily Show line of him not liking Star Trek and wanting to make Trek for people outside of the core group.

Discovery was not meddled with, at least not at first. The showrunners were given a huge amount of creative freedom because it was a free-for-all at that point and they were able to do all sorts of things executives might have turned down otherwise. The entire media landscape has changed since then.

This is actually the opposite of what happened. Discovery came in originally as an anthology series to follow individual crews across individual ships per season. It was also set to have a darker and spookier theme from the show than was in other shows. Bryan Fuller actively said that he was trying to make the 'Star Trek answer to American Horror Story' and literally none of that DNA is left in the show. The studio then kept pressing more and more until the only thing that was left was a darker tone and 1031 being left as the registry. That ID chosen specifically because it is the date of Halloween and was supposed to reflect spookiness. The only other thing Bryan had his foot down on that didn't shake was the lead actress. He wanted a woman of color as the role and Sonequa was his first choice but it would have required waiting for her contract with AMC to be up which led to tensions with CBS execs to the point that they asked him to step down as a showrunner. They then replaced him with two other people who were already working on the show and both of them were fired in the second season. Kurtzman then took over until Michelle Paradise (a writer on the show up until this point and a lesbian) became co-show runner in Season 3 onwards. She's the reason why got so much more LGBTQ representation on the show in Season 3.

Discovery was heavily meddled with at first to the point that the show isn't reflective of the original pitch and the show runners were fired. From then the show has been able to do basically whatever it wants. Helps that Kurtzman is a co-showrunner in that regard so more weight but the show is blatantly not swaying to company interests when it pisses people off to no end. Discovery gets far more negative press coverage than positive press coverage. Discovery barely got any coverage at all from Paramount themselves in the lead up to the final season of the show.

But that being said, my issue with your comments is exclusively the demographics bit. Nothing in this comment I particularly disagree with. But I'm reading your responses in other comments and will address that there. Sorry.