impact of new movie buzz on past series

[moonman]

as many of you may have noticed DS-9 has taken a sabbatical from the airwaves, voyager gets a little play on spike and G4 has replaced the monday TOS w/attack of the show. i have not seen a remastered TOS episode for quite some time. maybe the reruns became tired to some networks or they changed programming focus. it will be interesting to see how the buzz surrounding the new movie will impact an increase in airing of past series. maybe cbs/paramount will use the new movie to increase their profits from subscriptions to past series syndication rights? how about a star trek channel? scifi does a great job w/battlestar and a monday enterprise slot but much of their programming is crap at times. i do dig old x-files episodes though.

thoughts? will the buzz bring the new viewers that seem to be a big focus of the new movie to watch the past series?

 

[Mr J]

Well, Enterprise has been enjoying a successful run on Sci-Fi. It's ratings have actually matched and IIRC once beaten their first-run dramas on occassion, which is pretty impressive for a show that has already been rerun ad nauseum and been available on DVD. Not to mention the so-called 'runt' of the ST franchise.

Personally if anything I think that this movie will affect interest in TOS-R and possibly to a lesser extent TNG-R if it happens. Having said that, I also suspect that the opposite could happen and the latter-day spin-offs might get a bit more interest with the general public simply because they were less-watched previously and are more 'modern' looking visually. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Enterprise and Deep Space Nine in particular achieved a small increase in viewership as those are the shows that didn't really find much mainstream success once ST disinterest set in around TNG S7. If nuTrek rebuilds that interest then it might inspire some to look at the stuff they weren't bothered about watching before.

 

[ChristopherPike]

What I'd really like to see is somekind of cross-promotion happening on TV. My first instinct would've been a Zachary Quinto appearance on Enterprise, but obviously events back in 2005 made that impossible.

In the run up to Christmas, a station like CBS should do a mini-repeat season. Like a fan collective but shown on a major network, one or two "Best of" episodes from across all 5 series. With better knowledge of the plot to Star Trek (2008), the makers of the film could choose stories with a connection. For instance, Leonard Nimoy in TNG "Unification" is a must have addition to anything shown. Each one could be preceeded by a trailer for the film, plus any B-roll material, press pack interviews promoting the new movie.

 

[Broccoli]

^ interesting thing, though. If ENT was still on the air, this movie probably wouldn't have been made.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

A rising tide lifts all boats, as they say.

Roberto Orci has indicated, over at wwww.trekmovie.com, that the movie will acknowledge "Enterprise." This makes sense, chronologically - one wonders if they can or will similarly acknowledge the 24th century Trek shows.

Perhaps something about "Old Spock's" circumstances at the beginning of the film will accomplish this.

 

[ChristopherPike]

It'll be interesting to see if the ratings for any of the old shows go up, while the hype surrounding this film builds up. TOS-R never seems to budge much above 1.0 in the Syndication chart, while ENT rarely seems to break into Sci Fi's Top 10. There is perhaps a case for arguing that reruns might hurt Star Trek 2008's chances. I never bought into that whole "Franchise Fatigue" excuse myself though.

 

[Kinnison]

News of the new movie has prompted me to watch some of my old Trek DVDs and tapes, dig out my old blueprints and technical manuals, and re-register on TrekBBS. I doubt I'm alone in having my interest piqued.

 

[Kegek]

Kinnison said:
News of the new movie has prompted me to watch some of my old Trek DVDs and tapes, dig out my old blueprints and technical manuals, and re-register on TrekBBS. I doubt I'm alone in having my interest piqued.

True. It's also part of the reason I returned.

 

[Nowhere Man]

You can see DS9 late night on spike along with Voyager TOS remastered comes on 1am on sunday on CW I think

 

[V]

well that's not to say SpikeTV mishandled or was mean to DS9; they reran FIVE Trek episodes a day for something like four years straight; ended up rerunning all of DS9 something like 5 times or more. There's simply so many times you can rerun a series, and then it becomes reasonable to want to try out new stuff.

Still, they're not even running many Voyager episodes.

So yes, its been off the air for some time.

Ironically, the most regularly rerun Trek now is Enterprise on Scifi Monday night.

But how I long for DS9....

 

[Cyrus]

moonman said:
i have not seen a remastered TOS episode for quite some time. maybe the reruns became tired to some networks or they changed programming focus.

TOS-R was never on any network, it's still doing OK in syndication. It finishes its syndication run several months before the movie opens. What I am hoping for is that the release of the movie will prompt CBS to sell TOS-R to some cable network (SciFi, etc), so that those of us who are too cheap to buy HD-DVDs can finally see it in HD.