It is very unlikely CBS will sell the rights to Star Trek. Too much money involved.
They don't seem to be falling all over themselves to capitalize on those rights, but they'd never sell the rights outright. It's not like they're hard up for cash. It's possible they might create a
Star Trek series and license it to an outlet where it makes sense, since CBS, CW and Showtime are all problematic in their own ways for placing a series (although a series specifically adapted to the CW or Showtime might work.)
doesn't change that CBS killed Trek because it failed and they aren't really interested in another series
CBS didn't "kill" Star Trek, but it's also not obvious how
Star Trek fits into their existing lineup. CBS, CW and Showtime all have tried and true approaches to attracting an audience, and a space opera series of any sort doesn't fit any of the three.
But look at TV in general - apparently a space opera series doesn't fit SyFy either. What hope does it have anywhere else? The fact that space opera has vanished from TV altogether - despite there being literally hundreds of channels where a series could go - proves that the problem doesn't lie with anything specific to
Star Trek.
Everyone should keep in mind when Enterprise was airing, there were external things involving Star Trek that probably cause a decline in the ratings.
The most important external factor was the proliferation of cable channels, which spread the audience so diffusely that the survival strategy for shows (other than being dirt-cheap reality) was to go very mass-market on broadcast (cop shows, sitcoms) while the specialized genres skedaddled to the safer realms of cable.
The fact that HBO can have a big hit in the nichey sword & sorcery fantasy genre demonstrates that niche tastes can survive on cable, especially premium cable, where each audience member is worth more than on basic cable or broadcast and their niche tastes are worth catering to. But
Game of Thrones was a big, expensive risk for HBO and somebody will have to make a leap of faith like that to get a space opera show back on TV, whether it's
Star Trek or something else.
Premium cable is the most promising home for
Star Trek, if the name isn't fatally associated with free TV. Showtime isn't going to want that association since it undermines its business model of convincing people to pay for what they used to get for free.
I'd try to do the impossible. Create a story that can appeal to fans of the disperate shows.
Why not try to do the feasible instead? Create a story that appeals to the audience of whatever outlet it will be showing on.
Forget catering to "the fans." Forget what came before. The first thing you need to know is your audience, and your audience won't be
Star Trek fans because there's no such thing as a
Star Trek Fan Channel. The most likely options are CW, Showtime and the Cartoon Network, where the audience is for each very different and expects different things. A
Star Trek series could be shaped to appeal to any of those audiences, but until you know where the show is going, you won't know what will work.
Certainly
Star Trek fans might seek out and watch a show that airs on any of those outlets. And certainly some
Star Trek fans already are among the audience for all those outlets. But the audience most likely to find a
Star Trek show are the pre-existing fans, so it actually makes
less sense to shape a show to their interests vs shaping it to the interests of non-fans and letting whatever existing fans that want to, find the show by their own efforts.
To me, simply shuffling the pack, to feature familiar faces in different combinations, would be enough to suggest change.
And the mainstream audience will say, "oh this is that show with the funny nose aliens. I didn't watch it before, so I won't bother watching it now" And the show will promptly be cancelled after 3 episodes.
But if they see a trailer for a new
Star Trek series associated with something they already like, they're likely to say, "hey maybe
Star Trek is for ME now! This is what that trailer needs to show, and the series needs to deliver: on CW it's sexy young cadets in love; on Showtime, it's grownup, gritty and sexy dramatics in an exotic milieu; on the Cartoon Network, it's an animated series with lots of action, strange and beautiful alien worlds, actors from the movie caricatured so that they are recognizable, and no sex because the audience is a mix of kids and grownups (
The Clone Wars is the template to follow).
That's three totally different
Star Trek series. So until you know where it's showing, you don't know what it should be. And details like whether we should have turtle-headed Klingons or even which reality to set the series in, is getting too specific. The non-fans who are the potential audience for this show won't know or care about the significance of any of that.
The reason
Star Trek doesn't work on TV now is because nobody's shaped a series so that the viewers of that outlet will say "
Star Trek is for ME now!" That's the one and only thing that any new series needs to accomplish in order to thrive. Whether the resulting series will be for us too remains to be seen.
The core of Star Trek is not Picard, Sisko, Janeyway, or even Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. The core of Star Trek is an idea. And that idea transcends individual actors. For Star Trek to succeed it needs to stay true to that idea while being modern and relevant.
It would be nice if a new
Star Trek series stayed true to that idea, but it's not necessary to the series' survival. On the CW and the Cartoon Network, having an "idea" wouldn't be relevant at all. Showtime would be most likely to adopt the idea and shape a series around it, but even there, it all depends on whether the people making the show understand that it's about more than heroic captains and funny-forehead aliens on fast starships, something even people here don't always grasp.
But maybe money can smooth everyone's feathers...
