Midnights Edge posted this lengthy video about the controversies around Discovery, the new Picard Series, and talks about the deals between CBS and Paramount. If true, then thank goodness Les Moonves is out!
In a nut shell it says most of the reasons for all the differences between the current movies and and canon comes down to an alternate copyright CBS gave Paramount, which states the look and feel of the movies must be substantially different from the original.
But they found that its been a licensing nightmare for product as fans only want "Prime" trek merchandise (and judging from this board thats mostly true).
The real kicker seems to be that, under Moonves, CBS only sees Trek as a way to get subs... thus the reason its relegated to AA, however, as we know, its very expensive to produce, so it seems the grand idea is to basically allow TV trek (Discovery) to be produced by paramounts Trek alternative license so that paramount doesn't loose it... and CBS gets their content funded as I assume they are kicking in money to produce Discovery S2 and is the reason Kurtzman , whi is bad robot and Paramounts guy has the creative control of Trek. But Paramount and Bad robot want to merge the two timelines to erase prime trek and make the merch more appealing to fans as it makes the Alternate Trek Copyright basically the only one of value.... I think I got the summary right... but watch the video for yourselves.
I gotta say if thats really whats going on, then I gotta agree with detractors that they really are missing the point of what Fans liked about Trek.