A Star Trek channel??

[los2188]

I have an idea, which I'm sure has been thought of before, but since I can't find any discussion on it here and other places, I thought I'd throw an idea out there to see what others think. My idea is to create a Star Trek channel. With all the movies, 5 television series, numerous Trek conventions that were filmed in one way or another, and the ability to maybe launch a new series, not to mention possibilities of Trek made-for-TV movie, wouldn't it be..oh, I don't know...a very real and profitable step to take? I do understand the syndication deals in place, but that shouldn't be an issue because those deals would still take place on other TV channels and such. Now granted, I thought about this with the original idea of making one more TNG Trek movie, but a movie that was made-for-TV, but it just seems to me to make a lot of sense. There's a lot of Trekkers and Trekkies out there to make this channel become a success, but on the other hand, the one thing that comes to mind is having Trek become too diluted and could suffer from, as Patrick Stewart once said, "franchise fatigue." What do you think?

[C.E. Evans]

It's an issue of ownership. Star Trek is owned by CBS and they're happy with the way things currently are (even if some Trekkies aren't).

But there's nothing stopping a local TV station from buying the rights to rerun as many Trek shows as they want on their channel. Every Trek series is available for syndication.

[Admiral Buzzkill]

If you ran all the Star Trek ever made for eighteen hours a day (lets give 2-6 AM to those folks selling Time/Life Greatest Hits and cleaning supplies) you don't have quite two months of programming before you have to repeat everything. The big problem with this kind of niche channel is that the audience hits a ceiling after a while - there's no growth built into the model.

[MacLeod]

In the UK we have several channels showing an episode of a ST show almost everyday. The only one that isn't on that often is DSN.

[Bry_Sinclair]

^ That must be on Sky, I've found no Trek on Freeview

[Tom]

Yes, it can not just be Star trek content, there is not enough. Maybe we can have a 'scifi channel'... oh wait LOL

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Well, what happened to SyFy illustrates the problem with the model - there simply aren't enough people interested to keep the audience (and therefore advertising or even subscription revenues) growing year after year. SyFy isn't the only channel that's had to "broaden out" in the past five or six years to keep going.

[Sindatur]

My Name Is Legion wrote:

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Well, what happened to SyFy illustrates the problem with the model - there simply aren't enough people interested to keep the audience (and therefore advertising or even subscription revenues) growing year after year. SyFy isn't the only channel that's had to "broaden out" in the past five or six years to keep going.

Heh, what SyFy needs to do is create a reality show for creating SciFi Pilots.

They've already done 2 seasons of Faceoff, so they could invite back some of those contestants, or use the same resources they used to find those contestants. Then gather up wannabe/aspiring Producers/Film makers, actors and any other positions that may be needed. Make teams (The Film makers may even bring in their own teams of folks they've worked with) out of those folks Maybe 4 or 5 teams, give them a budget, and follow the process of them making their Pilots week to week. When the Pilots are all in the can, devote an episode to each team's Pilot, so that would give them an additional 4 or 5 episodes.

This would allow them to basically get those Pilots for free, since they already got their investment returned by being able to air the Reality show, and the viewers could vote on the Pilots, aiding the Network in deciding which ones to move forward with.

Something like this, with aspiring artists being given this kind of chance, would likely be able to aid in keeping the budget down on the shows that did survive the process, so, cost won't damage their longevity.

Heck, they could mine this very board for contestants

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Well, scripted pilots - particularly skiffy stuff - costs a lot more than a reality series. Doing four or five pilots would run SyFy at least 20 million. I doubt that they're going to make enough profit on the reality series to make that worth doing.

[Sindatur]

My Name Is Legion wrote:

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Well, scripted pilots - particularly skiffy stuff - costs a lot more than a reality series. Doing four or five pilots would run SyFy at least 20 million. I doubt that they're going to make enough profit on the reality series to make that worth doing.

They wouldn't need to provide that much per budget for a Reality Show with unknowns. For instance look at Mark Scott Zicree's Project you posted about in General SciFi, less than 100K, or your own project, that's not gonna run you 4-5 Million, is it? I can imagine there's any number of aspiring film makers that would drool over being given even $100K to make something and get all those eyeballs seeing it.

[Temis the Vorta]

I have a Star Trek channel. It's called Netflix. The episodes are all there.

Even TVLand is developing new shows, in defiance of their tradition of being the cable channel for reruns of old shows. AMC took the same path when it started doing original material and not just showing old movies. The worth of putting old stuff on TV is diminishing as it becomes easier for everyone to get the old stuff whenever they like. The internet is the more logical place for reruns of all sorts to appear.

CBS and all other content creators would be smart to start packaging up old shows for streaming. YouTube is a great place for this. Why isn't there already a Star Trek channel on YouTube, that has all the movies and TV series readily available, as well as any other video based material such as old ads, bloopers and parodies (sortable to control the chaos)?

CBS/Paramount could still charge for premium material such as the latest movie, which is under their "48 hr pass" system. The non-premium material (however that's defined) can serve as publicity funnelling viewers into the paid content. And of course YouTube has some ad revenue, so more viewers are always better.

Shockingly, http://www.youtube.com/startrek is non-functional. (I check it every so often, just to amaze myself that it's still not active.) YouTube is probably reserving it for CBS when they get their shit together enough to make intelligent use of it.

OTOH, http://www.youtube.com/starwars is active and looks pretty much like I'd expect it to...Star Trek needs to get up to speed!