I would just like to comment with all that is going on with "Stargate Universe" being canceled stirring up fans of science fiction. Would the biggest name in science fiction should consider to start putting together a new television series? We are coming up on a decade now since we had a show. If something can rise up to and fill in fan needs for a great Science Fiction show, it will need "Star Trek" in its title. Many people are disgruntled about the direction Syfy Channel is going over the last year. Taken on Wrestling, a cooking show, and more reality shows. Some are starting to feel that it is going down the dark path like Spike, History Channel, MTV. They have no space shows planned for the upcoming season. This is not about which network or channel would get a Star Trek show, but CBS has a wide open gap they can fill with a space show now. I said it many times CW is a very good destination for Star Trek. They just ended Smallville and probably won't have anything for awhile to draw ratings. I do know that CBS and Paramount may wait until after the next JJ Abrams film to be released in theaters before even drawing up plans for a new Star Trek show. People will flood to watch it because it would be a decade since the last Star Trek show and would not be much in the way of other space shows.
SyFy--and quite few other networks--prefer sci-fi/fantasy stuff more centered on Earth than aboard starships. It's cheaper, easier to produce, and generally pulls in a bigger audience than spaceship-based shows. In a real sense, that philosophy hasn't changed since 1966, IMO...
Earth Based Sci-fi/fanstasy seem to fill up Syfy schedule now. If they keep that up, Star Trek and fans of outer space tv shows demand will build up over time. When another Space show gets released, it will probably draw some big ratings. It would need a big name in the title like Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, or Star Wars to get attention. I know "BSG Blood and Chrome" is in the works, but if it is not as good as the re-imagined series, it will flop like "Caprica". The ideal of doing an Academy based Star Trek show has popped up many times since the 80s, and would be cheap to make. I have seen an ideal of something central to Starfleet Command with Federation Presidency for a TV show. Maybe a combination of two will help. However people watch Star Trek to watch cool things happen in space, so it will need Starships. Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis were planet based and occasionally used ships. Got around through the Stargate network. If another Stargate materializes, they probably start there to keep production costs down. SGU got expensive because they involved the Destiny doing all sorts of stuff during its run. The ideal of going forward with Star Trek and Stargate is not dead.
If there are not enough fans who are interested, then it doesn't matter how long you wait. Demand can't build among viewers not interested in the first place. Why is that different from any other show. If it's good it will last, if it's not it will flop. It doesn't matter if the show is called Star Trek, Star Wars, or Pete's Awesome Space show. Quality draws an audience not a brand.
Earth centric Star Trek could work. Starships and space stations designed to protect Earth from aliens and from ourselves. The first line of defence that protects and guards Earth from outside influences. The mars colony could be a major set destination and the isolationists and a certain Colonel Green, etc.. Bad stuff coming from within vrs bad stuff coming from without. It sounds like Space Rangers, but I liked Space Rangers.
The interest is already there, space sci-fi fans have been turned off from some of the lower quality stuff we have seen recently. SGU was different from the other Stargate programs, but the quality of the prior incarnations did not help people to discover it right away. Quality was much better and was starting to draw in new fans, but not fast enough. It is also the way SYFY channel has been ran recently, having wrestling on Friday and bumping other big Sci-Fi shows to other nights of the week, then doing worse for ratings. Having a big name in the title will get attention and a reason for people to tune in. It will be quality that will retain an audience. The next Star Trek movie will probably make more money than the last one because of the quality and many discovered what JJ Abrams was doing. Same writers, actors, producers are coming back again. Even with a possible different director, it certainly be of the same quality of film or better. JJ Abrams will still be executive producer and has control on who directs it. He will find someone who shares views on how the movie should be.
So why would he want a potential failure to undermine and cut into and take away from his garenteed profits margin and success? He would be upstaged. Why would people go see a movie if they can see the same thing on t.v.. Forget it. To me Star Trek is dead except in liturature and even that I have absolutely no interest in anymore. He's gonna do everything in his power a new t.v. series doesn't get made. It is competition, pure and simple. Once again, you approach from an altruistic POV. You forget who you are talking about and dealing with.
It will NOT be JJ Abrams making a new tv series or most likely not have many associated with the film. I never said that, I am saying CBS and other Hollywood producers will see the money the Star Trek films are making. They probably have to set it up independent so the story does not clash with the JJ Abrams films. Different Starship, Era, Universe. Many seem to want something in the post Next Generation timeline. My thread is not about which timeline should be used or what Trek series is better. My major point is with all that is going on with Syfy recently and the next Trek movie, if a Trek series should be considered for the fans of Star Trek and Science Fiction.
If the time was not right for yet another Stargate series, how do we know the time is right for yet another Star Trek series?
Syfy cancelling Stargate Universe leaves an gap for Space Science Fiction shows. If someone sees that with a good premise for a new Star Trek series ideal, they can go to CBS and persuade them to make a new series. Competition is low right now. If it is done right with some quality stories, it will draw in viewers. Won't have to be much of a problem of another series competing for viewers. I acknowledge the fact CBS and CW may hold off until after the next Star Trek movie completes a run in the theaters. I will be honest I am not packing a lot of faith in "Battlestar Galactica : Blood and Chrome" and the Syfy channel. They will put it on Monday or Tuesday and cancel it soon and blame low ratings on not enough interested fans. Having Wrestling on Syfy Friday has messed things up. Not just SGU, but other shows suffered from low ratings moving from Friday.
You can't put a Western series on tv and expect it do well just because it's the only Western on tv. There has to be some indication of sufficient demand.
Also too much trek is not the problem. Not enough good Trek is. It needs a revamped premise with a central underlying mystery like Talos IV or the Vulans/Romulans or the Federation. The tribble with Star Trek is that you can starve to death in a storehouse fuul of food. It has reached the limits of it's universe and it must evolve.
Whether Star Trek is on the air or not doesn't matter. Having something go away doesn't "build demand" for it. It just causes everyone to forget about it. There is a whole lot of other stuff competing for their attention at all times. You build demand by mounting a serious, well-funded marketing campaign for a TV or movie a few weeks or at most a few months before it debuts. Before then, there's no assumption that there's any inherent demand at all. A tiny (or even fairly sizable) core fanbase does not count in context of what's expected of a successful TV show or movie. The real problem is financial and corporate: 1. How do you make a profitable space opera for TV that will be pricier than most shows but have a limited audience? 2. How do you convince CBS to spend one nanosecond worrying about a franchise and a genre it obviously doesn't care about? One answer to #1 is to make it animated, and one good answer to #2 is for people with a strong track record and industry credibility to start bugging CBS about their idea. Paramount only did a movie because a guy with a strong track record and industry credibility came to them with an idea they otherwise probably wouldn't have bothered with or maybe even thought of on their own. Interestingly, both #1 and #2 are rumored to be happening. Even if it doesn't pan out, something like that needs to happen to get Trek back on TV.
Demand for Star Trek is already here and has been around for generations. It certainly is not getting any smaller or not going away. We have 2 facebook groups one with 1.1 million fans and a second with 1.5 million, both seem to be growing a thousand each day. Look at all the posts along mine with people asking for a new Star Trek show or what is going on with it. As long as the 5 Star Trek shows and 11 movies are shown it will continue to draw in new fans and be there for the fans that were always there. Now Netflix will be doing a remastered "Star Trek The Next Generation." Millions of people will be watching the episodes. When a new Star Trek show premiers, we are talking 20 million potential viewers or more because it would be the first Star Trek show to come along in a decade. You tell me Syfy channel or a network will not past up ratings. If it maintains such ratings, it will have to maintain a high quality in a manner like season 3 to the end of TNG. Giving our modern era of how TV shows are done now, they would have to do some major eventful stories within the first season. Cannot get away with doing like season 1 of TNG. I am going to leave the subjects of era, serialization, and which characters open because that is up to the producers to what they want to put together. Just has to be Star Trek at the core. Starships, Klingons, Vulcans, Phasers, Warp Drive, Transporters still have to be there.
Sorry, but Netflix only has 23 million subscribers in total. I doubt any one show gets that large a percentage to have "millions" of viewers. TNG did not have 20 million viewers when it premiered, and that was after two decades without Trek on TV. Ratings across the board have dropped since then. American Idol can barely get 20 million viewers these days. You're kidding yourself if you think Star Trek will get anywhere near those kind of ratings.
Even at 10 million, it would be very good for any television program. Somewhere I heared TNG was getting 20 million per episode in its prime. Keeping in mind the show was syndicated and Canadian stations were probably included with the counting. I remember seeing interviews stating they had 20 million viewers. Netflix is streaming video, so everyone will not be watching episodes in sequence or at a specific time, or just once, so I would say the more popular episodes will get a million or more views. Bringing Star Trek to Netflix will draw more people to subscribe to the service. Even if a Star Trek show does not super great first run on a network or cable, it will certainly make up for it in syndicated reruns after. Even "Star Trek Enterprise" has paid for itself many times over because Syfy channel has aired the episodes for 5 about years now. That along with home video sales. "Star Trek" has a vary high profit potential. Now I have to see if Captain Kirk can really kill a Gorn with a Bamboo cannon... (See Mythbusters.)
Captain Kirk has as much chance of killing a Gorn with the bamboo cannon as your numbers have of coming true. But whatever makes you happy...
The TV biz is very different today compared with TNG's day. 10M for a space opera is a pipe dream. Here's what's a lot more likely: 1M or so on Showtime. There are certainly enough Trekkies to do that. And what Showtime really wants is new subscribers. If half of that 1M were new subscribers because they can't get their Trek anywhere else, Showtime would be over the moon! 500,000 Trekkies forking over $10/month is a very do-able number. Facebook is free; subscribing to Showtime is more of a hurdle. But still I think at least a fraction of those numbers would pony up the money. Syfy seems to have lost all interest in space opera, and I doubt they could afford to license such a high profile brand.
I doubt CBS or Paramount will limit their audience to a premium channel. They more likely to get closer to 5 million viewers if it ended up on the CW. Smallville in its prime was drawing 3 million or better. They did it without Clark being Superman until the final episode. Enterprise was drawing 3 million until it "jumped the shark" with that sickbay episode. Many fans had negative feelings about that show. Looking at how well the last movie did, I will be surprised if a new Trek show gets just a few million viewers. I do not think CBS will put it on their network unless someone develops a really powerful premise. They probably insist on a big known actor or two to come in to bump up ratings. I agree Syfy is going down hill since they've been dumping there Space dramas and is stirring up Stargate fans and fans of other science fiction shows. I hope they dump that friday wrestling soon. all the good sci-fi shows got bumped to other days that had half the viewers that resulted in cancellations. I use facebook as an example of how many Star Trek fans are out there. Since I made that last posting, the numbers gone up another 100,000 on both groups. The StarTrek movie one will skyrocket next year. People are joining the groups very fast. Also consider all the fans that do not want to bother with facebook.
Paramount has nothing to do with this. For CBS, it's not about how big the audience is. It's about return on investment. There's no sense putting a show on CBS that can only get 5M viewers. That's cancellation level on CBS. But that same number on Showtime is a big hit, especially if a healthy proportion of those viewers are new subscribers. One of the key ways Showtime or any premium channel motivates new subscribers is to offer them stuff they can't get elsewhere, on broadcast or basic cable. Like Game of Thrones, Star Trek has a sizable core fanbase that would pay real money to get more of what they want, and other shows, even other space opera shows, are not going to do it for them. Even if that number is in the low millions, that's a workable proposition for premium cable. Remember, 5M viewers on CBS are not nearly as valuable as 5M on Showtime. One pair of eyeballs watching ads is worth a great deal less money than those same eyeballs connected to a credit card that is paying $10/month for Showtime. It's all about matching the content to the financial model. Cookie-cutter cop shows matches CBS's financial model but Star Trek is better suited to premium cable. I think it would also be well suited to basic cable - I'd love to see AMC do a Star Trek series - but there's the additional hurdle of CBS producing a show for another company, plus the benefit of a loyal fanbase to AMC isn't as great as to Showtime. Many Trek fans already subscribe to basic cable, so there isn't going to be the additional profit of new subscribers like there would be for Showtime. The success of the movie has no bearing on how well the TV series would do. People go to movies for very different reasons than they watch TV shows, and movies and TV shows are good at very different things. The premise has nothing to do with it. The topic is not at all right for CBS. Syfy is going downhill in terms of showing anything I'd like to watch, but their strategy of wrestling + ghost hunting "reality" TV + fluffy cheaply made sf/f = PROFIT! is in fact a good one. They are doing well financially and have no reason to change this strategy to accommodate Star Trek or anything else.