CBS Developing 2 New Treks?
- Thread starter David.Blue
- Start date
CBS didn't buy anything. CBS Television Studios is the corporate entity that used to be called Paramount Television, which owns Star Trek. The name changed as the result of Viacom's corporate split.
Thanks for the clarification!
And CBS is making money from Trek bluray sales right now. Why fund a new series when you can repackage the old ones at a fraction of the cost?
It's called opportunity cost. There are a limited number of hours that CBS has to show new programming. To maximize revenue, Moonves wants to fill those hours with the shows that will make the most money. If giving Star Trek an hour a week means canceling CSI: XYZ, then scheduling Star Trek results in less profit for CBS unless Star Trek can make more money than CSI.
I think the odds of a new Star Trek series being scheduled on the CBS TV network itself are somewhere between slim and none, IMO. But I could see CBS taking a page from the defunct UPN and using a new Trek series to launch a new network or rebrand a currently existing one (ABC, NBC, and FOX all have multiple sister networks on basic cable, but CBS doesn't have a single one there).
Because a Star Trek series would cost a lot more money to produce than either of those two shows. Think about props, costumes, guest actors, makeup, prosthetics, CGI/model work, alien planets-of-the-week, etc., all that no other normal show would have. If they spend all that money every week for a show that gets ratings nowhere near a CSI, then it would be cost-prohibitive to produce.
You're right, but I wish we could get them to believe that there would still be a huge viewing audience for a Trek series if they used rubber masks and homemade props (or even props bought from the Star Trek section at Toys R Us) and the Star Trek Online engine for all of the external effects, provided they gave us compelling stories. Heck, with good stories, I'd watch a show made ENTIRELY using ST:O.
If CBS wants to save a ton of money on their Trek series budget, all they'd have to do is recreate TOS exactly, with another recast of the classic characters. I'd watch it.
Meh... those youtube movies serve the same purpose.
Your statement is correct, yes, but why would a new Trek series have to replace one of CBS's flagship shows? Instead of Trek taking the slot of CSI or BBT, Trek would take the place of one of the under-performing shows (such as "We are Men" or "Hostages" this season).
Trek wouldn't have to make more than the top-performing shows, just more than the show that it does replace, which it could likely do easily.
It would still need to make more because it would cost far more to produce.
You're correct that the total dollar amount may be more depending on how the production costs compared, but my point was that it wouldn't have to make a larger profit.
But usually when a company invests a larger amount of money in something they want a larger return. Why invest a hundred dollars to make ten dollars if you can invest ten dollars to make ten dollars?
The same reason people invest in big companies like Apple and Google, rather than dealing solely in penny stocks.
It is true that they could get lucky and spend a third of the budget they'd spend on a Trek series and have a successful new sitcom that makes the same or larger profit margin than a Trek show would, but there is also a MUCH higher risk that it will fail.
If you invest into more money into an established franchise with a big fan-base that would watch the show it has a much lower risk of failing. It also has the added benefit, that whether the show is a success or failure, they will have more of an opportunity to make money on recurring DVD/Bluray/Digital sales as well as merchandising rights.
It is true that they could get lucky and spend a third of the budget they'd spend on a Trek series and have a successful new sitcom that makes the same or larger profit margin than a Trek show would, but there is also a MUCH higher risk that it will fail.
If you invest into more money into an established franchise with a big fan-base that would watch the show it has a much lower risk of failing. It also has the added benefit, that whether the show is a success or failure, they will have more of an opportunity to make money on recurring DVD/Bluray/Digital sales as well as merchandising rights.
Any executive in charge of green-lighting a show is going to have to explain how episodes #701-? are going to outdraw Enterprise which ended its run with less than two million viewers a week. They're also going to have to explain why the franchise suffered dwindling ratings starting with Deep Space Nine and why there was little growth in the box office numbers for Star Trek Into Darkness in comparison to Star Trek 2009.
Trek may have worn out its small screen welcome with the over-saturation of the 90's and high production costs.
I think eventually it will return, nothing stays dead forever in Hollywood. But I think the product will be so different from the Berman shows that it will be unrecognizable. Which may end up being a bigger blow to those who want Trek back than no show at all.
So, in other words, it'll be like the transition from TOS to TNG, which IMO made Star Trek the phenomenon that it is.
What Harvey said. Star Trek was a pretty big phenomenon well before TNG arrived on the scene.
TOS continues to be the King well after general audiences have forgotten about Berman Trek.
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