The latest story I heard that involved a "fan being invited to pitch a story" was the man who owned the Star Trek Beyond.com website was invited to pitch his story in exchange for the domain name.
CBS says it CANNOT go forward with ANY new Trek series?
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It was Michael Chang Gummelt, who made the project formerly known as Star Trek: Beyond, now called Star Trek Uncharted.
http://www.npr.org/2015/07/12/42113...me-one-enterprising-star-trek-fans-big-chance
Timby is misremembering. It was Michael Chang Gummelt, the gentleman who registered the Star Trek Beyond domain name (now known as Star Trek Uncharted) who was allegedly invited to Paramount (not CBS) to pitch.
At least, that's what he told everyone, including, sadly, NPR's All Things Considered.
Depending on who you read, at the Axanar website's review/recap of the Renegades' premiere screening, it was Sky Conway.
In another review over at MovieHole, it was Ethan Calk.
Either way I strongly suspect these to be tall tales, and the difference between the two being solely due to the lazy hack bloggers pretending to be journalists not getting facts straight and mixing up the names in their articles.
Maybe it's just the word use, but I find it unlikely that anything is keeping CBS from making a Trek series. I don't think it's a "can" or "cannot" situation. They have the rights. If they want to do it, they'll do it, and for all we know they are doing it and just don't want to talk about it.
As has been said ad infinitum, fan productions will never get to be official Trek productions. Not going to happen, sonny jim. It's just not how this works.
As has been said ad infinitum, fan productions will never get to be official Trek productions. Not going to happen, sonny jim. It's just not how this works.
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God bless you, William Shatner, for keeping the faith. *sniff*
More like UPN killed it.
He was sick towards the end and was telling anyone who would listen. Probably. I don't know. I was 11 at the time and found it a little odd when he told me.
So I rolled with it, had some epic starship battles and that's how we got DS9.
Back to the original topic...
Maybe CBS means they can't go on with Trek because they have nowhere to put it. They'd need the network to implode to open up a time slot where they'd be desperate enough to air such an expensive show pull in fair-to-middlin' ratings.
Trek is always going to be expensive.
Trek is never going to be a Top 10 show.
CBS's investment to return ratio might not work out now. They have the top shows right now and I'm sure a backlog of other CSI clones ready to go if they need something millions will watch.
Oh! That was you! Thanks for that.
Exactly why I think this is an issue. If you look at most major film productions alone these days, you have two or three, maybe more production companies and investment groups behind them. As many have said, a return to Trek will not be cheap. Despite what the people who say that Trek can be done on the cheap like a fan film, you're talking about bankrolling a small army on a weekly basis for producing a film.
And you want the best you can get for your money. I'm working on a project right now that I'm attempting to show an approximate number of people who watched Star Trek throughout its run. I realize there are charts out there that show this. I want to take it a little further. Based on my research to date, the most viewers an episode of Star Trek ever had was DS9's premiere in 1993 with approximately 17.5 million households and based upon my estimates, 26.6 million viewers. Per Box Office Mojo, prior to the reboots, the most tickets sold to a Trek movie, surprisingly was not TVH (which was 28.9 million tickets sold) but TMP with 32.8 million sold. (Trek 2009 and STID have 34.5 and 27.3 million sold respectively). The least number of viewers for a televised episode was "In a Mirror Darkly, Part I" with a rating of 1.4, approximately 1.5 million households and my estimate of 2.3 million viewers.
The likelihood of getting those 26.6 million viewers back for any new Star Trek is virtually impossible. Nothing brings in those kinds of numbers any longer. On CW, The Flash (highest rated show on the netlet) regularly gets a 1.44 rating. But the numbers have changed and that is now (per this chart) is 3.84 million viewers. I don't watch The Flash so I don't know how the show looks like but I imagine with that viewership, a 30 second spot is probably around $50,000 a spot (based upon this chart). Therefore, I can't imagine the show will have a huge budget directly from the studio. But there are always possibilities.
I've mentioned before in another thread that because of declining viewership in general therefore leading to lower ad rates and higher budgets, many shows have to utilize product placement far more than we saw in shows 15 years ago. The issue with Star Trek is that unless it sticks out like a sore thumb (in the 2009 Trek for instance), it's not going to work that well. Therefore, it becomes cost prohibitive to bring Star Trek back to TV unless it's on the cheap. Which won't bring in viewers. Which means the show won't last.
So you need to find alternative forms of funds. Which is why there will probably need to be co-financiers on the production.
I'm not convinced a new Trek will bring in even a 3 rating on TV these days. For a show like this, if it's going to be on any broadcast, that's what you would need. It certainly won't get it on CW. And I certainly don't think CBS is going to do anything right now with it, because as you suggest, the network is conservative.
tl;dr - Trek is expensive. Probably not coming back for awhile.
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A bit of information
On Facebook - Star Trek's official page is "liked" by about 3.5 million people.
Compare that to the FB pages for the following established (been on TV for more than three seasons) scripted shows on CBS that finished in the top 15 in ratings during the last rating period.
#1 in ratings: Big Bang Theory - 32.3 million FB "likes"
#2 in ratings: NCIS - 17.5 million FB "likes"
#7 in ratings: Criminal Minds - 15 million FB "likes"
#9 in ratings: 2 Broke Girls - 12.2 million FB "likes
#11 in ratings: NCIS LA - 4.3 million FB "likes"
What are some of the shows that fill in the blanks?
Scorpion - a procedural
Mom - a sitcom
The Odd Couple - a sitcom
Mike and Molly - a sitcom
So even though Star Trek has been an established cultural phenomenon for almost 50 years, it still does not have the social media pull of a sitcom about two girls working at a diner that takes a mere pittance to make.
Studios pay attention to such things, you know.
Oh, by the way - the Star Wars FB page has 14 million likes
On Facebook - Star Trek's official page is "liked" by about 3.5 million people.
Compare that to the FB pages for the following established (been on TV for more than three seasons) scripted shows on CBS that finished in the top 15 in ratings during the last rating period.
#1 in ratings: Big Bang Theory - 32.3 million FB "likes"
#2 in ratings: NCIS - 17.5 million FB "likes"
#7 in ratings: Criminal Minds - 15 million FB "likes"
#9 in ratings: 2 Broke Girls - 12.2 million FB "likes
#11 in ratings: NCIS LA - 4.3 million FB "likes"
What are some of the shows that fill in the blanks?
Scorpion - a procedural
Mom - a sitcom
The Odd Couple - a sitcom
Mike and Molly - a sitcom
So even though Star Trek has been an established cultural phenomenon for almost 50 years, it still does not have the social media pull of a sitcom about two girls working at a diner that takes a mere pittance to make.
Studios pay attention to such things, you know.
Oh, by the way - the Star Wars FB page has 14 million likes
I don't know, but I think that Star Trek is not CBS kind of show from the beginning. When I open their site, I can't find any sci-fi show there. They have detective show, drama, action, comedy, but I can't find any space based sci-fi in their list. So maybe Star Trek is not their kind of show after all. And look at what have they done to Star Trek since they got it from Paramount, they shelve it. There isn't even one Star Trek Series that produced by them.
Then, if that true, why don't they just let another studio to produce Star Trek? (not only a fan made, but a serious Star Trek series). If they can let game developer to produce Star Trek (by sell them the right), then why not let another Studio that interest with Star Trek to produce a new series (by selling them the license, not selling the franchise of course. Star Trek still belong to CBS) With that, CBS will still enjoy the profit as they are the owner of Star Trek Franchise, but they don't have the risk to invest the series. I think it will be a win-win situation, isn't it?
Then, if that true, why don't they just let another studio to produce Star Trek? (not only a fan made, but a serious Star Trek series). If they can let game developer to produce Star Trek (by sell them the right), then why not let another Studio that interest with Star Trek to produce a new series (by selling them the license, not selling the franchise of course. Star Trek still belong to CBS) With that, CBS will still enjoy the profit as they are the owner of Star Trek Franchise, but they don't have the risk to invest the series. I think it will be a win-win situation, isn't it?
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I wonder if anyone has made them a pitch that they think will be viable? I mean, there are plenty of fan pitches and concepts, but the number crunchers at CBS probably need more than that to feel like licensing the rights on TV.
I'm not sure, but my read is CBS is just willing to wait.
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