And that's basically the way it is. CBS/Paramount owns the Star Trek TV shows, while Viacom owns the Star Trek movies via Paramount Pictures. While both CBS and Viacom are ultimately owned by Mr. Redstone, that means basically squat. There is apparently no love between the two companies and "Paramount" has sort of been reduced to just a brand name the two share (basically).
Otherwise, one company wouldn't mind seeing the other fall, IMO. It's just really that bad between CBS and Viacom.
But you wouldn't see them both making TV shows about
Star Trek. Only one has the rights.
Don't confuse CBS the television network with [CBS/Paramount] the production company. CBS/Paramount can theoretically produce a show and put it anywhere, including on a rival network, on a cable network, or even in syndication. It was CBS/Paramount that was behind putting TOS-Remastered in syndication...
Sure, the owners of the rights to
Trek on TV might try to make a TV show and place it somewhere that it makes sense. But not on CBS, since it makes no sense there. I just wonder where it might be.
And that brings up my earlier comment about not being surprised if CBS/Paramount decides to do their own TOS prequel that would likely have zero to do with Star Trek XI and use all the original designs from TOS. It would be their way of capitalizing on the success of the movie by saying "Hey, kids, here's how it really all started!"
I don't think many people in the mass audience would care about that question, not enough to support a TV show.
The audience for
Trek will either be created by the movie or it won't exist. If the movie creates an audience for
Trek on TV, then that is the audience that any TV show that wants to survive must cater to. Any other approach would be doomed. We've all seen just how much of an audience
Trek has on TV anymore - a level that got ENT cancelled. Some new factor must be introduced that will boost those numbers way higher. The only factor that can do that is a very profitable mass-market movie (preferably one that can create an international market for
Trek, so that the foreign rights to the show can offset the cost of production).
If there's some corporate feud that overcomes the profit motive (something that might exist for as long as people persist in their jobs who want to continue the feud, but such things generally end with a regime change that wants to make their mark and will opt for whatever can make them look good by being profitable, and screw the silly, unprofitable feuds of the old regime), then that might keep
Star Trek off TV. But it wouldn't put an alternate form of
Star Trek on TV, because there's no reason to believe that alternate would be profitable at all.
What would make it profitable and therefore worth doing is jumping on the bandwagon launched by the movie. Without that motive, CBS will continue to be wall-to-wall police procedurals, because they are unquestionably profitable. What's their motive to make room on their schedule for a pricey space opera their audience won't give a flip about? What's the motive of CBS' production arm to make a pricey space opera they can't find a natural home for? There are far easier ways to make a buck on TV.
I even think that the design of the new NCC-1701 had less to do with trying to fit modern-day aesthetics and more to do with Viacom trying to avoid a lawsuit from CBS if they used the exact same ship from TOS...
Well that and being laughed off the screen. They had to do something about the aesthetics just so that modern audiences would take the movie seriously.
)
