Prime Timeline direct to DVD or cable

[SheliakBob]

I think there's a general missing of a major point here. With the split of rights between Paramount and CBS, you have functionally two different franchises. That was the point of a movie reboot. Now Paramount has a movie property, independent of the television property, that they have complete control over. CBS television still owns the rights to the traditional franchise. They do not own the rights to the JJverse. CBS would have to buy back rights that now belong to Paramount in order to do anything building directly on NuTrek.
I suspect, though I'll admit I may just be hoping, that there is more than enough reason for CBS to pursue the traditional franchise. There are familiar characters that are tied into merchandising and lucrative, popular elements, like say the Borg, that are worth money to the studio.
Whatever the success of NuTrek, there are still many, many fans of existing Trek. There is money to be had in exploiting/marketing to that fan base. I would tend to bet that there is SOMEONE at CBS who sees this as an opportunity to wring some more money out of the traditional fanbase of Trek, and rope in some new customers from the movie's success as well.

With the split rights, we have a totally different situation than what we're familiar with. The Trek you see on the movie screen is not going to be the same Trek you see on any new television project.
I'm holding to my hope for Prime Trek product in the not too horribly distant future.
After all, Star Trek Online is Prime Trek oriented. It's going to make a whole lot of money and have a big ol' fan following. Don't you think someone is going to want to exploit the setting popularized in a successful game?

 

[ChristopherPike]

Thanks for expressing an alternate view point here, SheliakBob.

Only time will tell.

 

[USS Intrepid]

I'm with Sheliak Bob. This is a new situation, and I think it's too early to know exactly where all the cards will fall.

I'm still holding out hope for some original universe Trek though.

 

[Falcor5]

I think there's a general missing of a major point here. With the split of rights between Paramount and CBS, you have functionally two different franchises. That was the point of a movie reboot. Now Paramount has a movie property, independent of the television property, that they have complete control over. CBS television still owns the rights to the traditional franchise. They do not own the rights to the JJverse. CBS would have to buy back rights that now belong to Paramount in order to do anything building directly on NuTrek.
I suspect, though I'll admit I may just be hoping, that there is more than enough reason for CBS to pursue the traditional franchise. There are familiar characters that are tied into merchandising and lucrative, popular elements, like say the Borg, that are worth money to the studio.
Whatever the success of NuTrek, there are still many, many fans of existing Trek. There is money to be had in exploiting/marketing to that fan base. I would tend to bet that there is SOMEONE at CBS who sees this as an opportunity to wring some more money out of the traditional fanbase of Trek, and rope in some new customers from the movie's success as well.

With the split rights, we have a totally different situation than what we're familiar with. The Trek you see on the movie screen is not going to be the same Trek you see on any new television project.
I'm holding to my hope for Prime Trek product in the not too horribly distant future.
After all, Star Trek Online is Prime Trek oriented. It's going to make a whole lot of money and have a big ol' fan following. Don't you think someone is going to want to exploit the setting popularized in a successful game?

I still am kind of confused on the whole Paramount and CBS dual ownership of Trek. So can CBS do anything they want with Trek on TV or does Paramount have the ultimate say? For instance if CBS decided to make a new series of their own that was a reboot of TOS with their own new recasts of Kirk, Spock etc... and make it a true prequel and not a different time line like JJ did could they do it? Or would Paramount have the final say and not let them since it could effect the movie franchise?

 

[ChristopherPike]

I still am kind of confused on the whole Paramount and CBS dual ownership of Trek. So can CBS do anything they want with Trek on TV or does Paramount have the ultimate say?

All decisions seem to defer back to CBS, according to this:

In 2005, Viacom, which owned Paramount Pictures, split from CBS Corporation, which retained Paramount's television properties, including ownership of the Star Trek brand. Gail Berman, then president of Paramount, convinced CBS' chief executive, Leslie Moonves, to allow them eighteen months to develop a new Star Trek film before CBS would re-earn the rights to develop a new television series (in return, CBS would keep merchandising rights).

So in essence, CBS Studios still own total rights to the brand and Paramount Pictures can continue to exploit any movies they made. Bad Robot Productions and Spyglass Entertainment are current sub-contractors to Paramount, who had to get the go ahead from CBS in the first place. The impression I get since the cancellation of Enterprise, is that an agreement was in place not to work on any new series, until the new film has played out. With that now a success, where CBS goes from here is anyone's guess. But a sequel is now more or less a certainty, so whether or not they choose to capitalize on that success is their decision to make. Have you ever known an instance where a company wouldn't try to keep the momentum going and milk a success story while it lasts? We'll have to see how well the film does on DVD & Blu ray and then what follows, because it's an awfully long wait until 2011.. the soonest a sequel could be out.

 

[SheliakBob]

Interesting.
I have to admit that the exact distribution and limits of the rights after the Viacom split are not very clear to me. I've read a muddle of differing descriptions on the Internet, but I hadn't seen anything that clearly layed out what Paramount could or could not do with their movie.
Looks like we're in for at least a few years of uncertain fate for the Prime Trek.

 

[caisson2delta]

I see no reason why both incarnations of Trek couldn't work, hand in hand. The studio or whoever would be very unwise to not capitalize on the new popularity of Trek. I wouldn't be surprised if we started to see a new found interest in airing the other series, once again, with more frequency. It is inevitable that newer, younger fans, will have in interest in some of the other series, if not all. TOS has been on, but in spurts here or there and at horribly late times. Personally, showing classic trek (or whatever term everyone wants to use) would arouse my interest, even more, in the new franchise, if I was seeing it for the first time.

I am not so sure about Trek on a pay/premium cable channel. The budget and other aspects may improve, but I think the gaps between seasons and fewer episodes would hurt it. I loved nuBSG, but it was horrible to have to wait so long between seasons. It took the equivilant of the entire season, watching reruns, to sort of get caught up. I think this would be detrimental to younger viewers. I remember having the same issues with shows like the Sopranos, Deadwood, and Rome.

I totally agree with some of the more eloquent posts that marketing is key. If they want this to succeed, they need to get the product out there for those that will make the difference: the current fans and the future fans.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

With the split of rights between Paramount and CBS, you have functionally two different franchises.

That would be a disaster from a brand management perspective and therefore from a business perspective. Maybe legally, CBS cannot be prevented from causing chaos among audience perceptions by doing their own Trek, but would they really be so stupid as to frak with something that Paramount has working, and massively confuse the audience that Paramount is building at great effort and expense, simply to create something that is unlikely to work for them, anyway?

I know business can be malicious, but that would be malice to an unusual and self-defeating degree.

I suspect, though I'll admit I may just be hoping, that there is more than enough reason for CBS to pursue the traditional franchise.

CBS has a very lucrative TV business focusing on cop shows for old people. They don't have the right audience for Trek, and don't have the expertise to develop anything successful along those lines.

Why would they divert resources from their current, very solid business into something they know nothing about and has little chance of success, especially in their hands (might have a better chance in other hands)? Many businesses are known to shoot themselves in the foot by diversifying into areas they have no business being in, but CBS strikes me as a very disciplined sort of business that wouldn't do that.

CBS has tried fitfully to create "cult genre shows." The latest experiment was Jericho. That's their idea of how to do sci fi, it was pretty tepid, especially at first, and it flopped anyway. I think they've gotten the message that cult genre shows aren't their thing. And Star Trek would be way more cult than Jericho.

The one path I see to CBS doing Trek is if they recognize that they can piggyback on the brand building and mass market awareness that Paramount has created. But that means that CBS will opt for the JJ universe, since that's where the value resides. They'd be eating lunch on Paramount's dime, and I can see the attraction in that. But I just don't see any other motive that would interest a business person.

Whatever the success of NuTrek, there are still many, many fans of existing Trek.

Then why did ENT flop?

I would tend to bet that there is SOMEONE at CBS who sees this as an opportunity to wring some more money out of the traditional fanbase of Trek,

It's not even so much that nobody sees the opportunity, but do they see it as a bigger opportunity than throwing those resources into Yet Another Cop Show? After all, The Mentalist was the one bonafide scripted hit of the past season, while any number of sci fi genre shows crashed and burned as per usual. Compare that to the failure of CBS's fitful forays into genre shows. The marketplace is telling them not to touch Trek.

After all, Star Trek Online is Prime Trek oriented. It's going to make a whole lot of money and have a big ol' fan following. Don't you think someone is going to want to exploit the setting popularized in a successful game?

If that's a lucrative market for TV, why aren't there other scripted TV shows based on games? I can't even think of any on cable, much less network TV, which is a much higher hurdle because of the larger audience you need to attract.

Have you ever known an instance where a company wouldn't try to keep the momentum going and milk a success story while it lasts?

Well I could point to Trek itself - it was a success that was allowed to fail through mismanagement. But yeah, corporations are good at jumping on opportunities, and the opportunity now is to ride JJ Abrams' coattails. No other opportunity has been created. If CBS wanted to make a Trek series based on the original universe, why haven't they done so before now? I think it was either that they are not interested or that they were waiting to see if they movies would give them an opportunity that they could milk.

 

[MarauderMo]

As much as I would jump at any of these ideas (mini-series, direct-to-dvd), I believe Nemesis is the last on-screen Prime Universe stuff you are ever going to see. I suspect if a new series is ever to hit the airwaves it will be based in the Nu-universe. I wouldn't be suprised if we got an animated series based on the ST09 crew.

However if you are a reader, then there is a huge collection of post TNG/DS9/VOY material available.

If novels aren't your thing then I think ST Online is the best we are going to get. It's story is set in the prime universe and also pays homage to the nu-universe by including the prequel comics into it's canon. If you are a gamer the best we can hope for is that the game will be a huge success and we get many expansions (ala WoW).

 

[Tom]

Temis has got the beat on the whole issue. Thing is that CBS (under the current management anyways) has no interest what so ever in developing a series in the near future. CBS is to geared for proceduals and drama's now and not scifi or fantasy at all, its sad but its reality. If they could be assured very minimal risk in makin a new trek series then maybe they would do it but i would doubt it would be on CBS itself.

JJ's success with the movie does put some pressure on CBS to 'exploit' Star Trek some more. The share holders of CBS may see the success of the film and question why management has not done more to squeeze some profit out of it. CBS has such a low view of Star Trek they fired all the staff of startrek.com (some of them I knew) over a year ago making it a shell site with no to very little new content, all this while JJ was making the new film. So the film is a success now and yet CBS still had not done anything positive to startrek.com to acknowledge or feed off the films new and curious fans to star trek. I wish Viacom had the complete set of rights to Star Trek, I believe thay would do a lot more with it than Les Moonves and CBS.

 

[Hober Mallow]

[dick]So sad seeing Berman Trek fans in denial. They just can't accept that Berman Trek is dead forever. I'll pray for you guys.[/dick]

 

[Starbreaker]

We don't care anything about Berman. That was years ago. Just something on TV would be nice. I'd take an animated series right now honestly.

 

[Falcor5]

We don't care anything about Berman. That was years ago. Just something on TV would be nice. I'd take an animated series right now honestly.

Exactly! Its not like we want Berman to come back and produce the new shows or DVDs!

 

[Tom]

Berman is out of Star Trek and will not be coming back, we need to move beyond Berman (and Braga for the most part)

The only 3 former Trek producers that have any shot at showrunning a Trek series would be Ron Moore, Bryan Fuller or Manny Coto. Berman and Braga will never return to any high postions on Trek again, i can see Braga possibly writing an episode or 2 but nothing more than that. It would take a noteworthy producer to 'sell' (and I mean really blow the execs away!) CBS on a new series, Abrams and his crew right now would have the best shot at it right now, but down the road, who knows.

 

[Tyson]

I don't think Trek will return to TV anytime soon. We'll continue to see stuff set in the Prime Universe for years to come, of course. Star Trek Online is an MMO and is set in that universe, there are and will be novels and comic books and so on.

Berman sucks, but it's disheartening to see so many fans these days badmouthing a fantastic universe just because Berman and his cronies couldn't be bothered to do anything interesting with it in it's recent years.

 

[Falcor5]

Berman sucks, but it's disheartening to see so many fans these days badmouthing a fantastic universe just because Berman and his cronies couldn't be bothered to do anything interesting with it in it's recent years.

Great point. Just because Berman ran out of ideas at the end does not mean the universe he was in charge of is obsolete. There are tons of great stories that could be told with those characters or that universe with someone new in charge.

 

[Borgminister]

Always leave the audience wanting more. That's what this movie did or will do (judging by the box and legs), so at this moment in time, putting 12-24 episodes on t.v. might take away from the anticipation factor for the next movie.

After the trilogy has played out, there will be plenty of time for a new series.

Although if they did one tomorrow, I'd be there giving it a try.

 

[timelord1010]

Then why did ENT flop?

Enterprise flopped due to the hit or miss stories and poor character development in the first two seasons. If Enterprise was a true prequel series and stuck with the early days of the Federation and possibly the Romulan War without the time travel aspects it might have lasted it's 7 years as long as the merger of UPN and the WB network didn't kill it.

I think Berman's mistake was staying too long and not getting fresh blood in to write stories, Manny Coto came in too late. There were good shows before Mr. Coto like Future Tense, Dead Stop and Regeneration just to name a few, but if the first 3 seasons were like the 4th season we wouldn't be wishing for a new Trek TV series we would be just finishing one.