Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future
It is very sad that they do not count DVR'd episodes as a 'view' by a customer.
Live+3 is counted (beyond that, ads tend to pass their expiration dates), but it's also discounted compared with live viewing, because advertisers know that DVRed ads are skipped. Why should advertisers pay for ads that go unviewed? It's not sad at all. It's business. If people didn't make money, they'd stop working to make TV shows. Do you expect people to work for free just to amuse you?
For any sci-fi show to succeed it needs to be on a dedicated sci-fi channel.
Like the SyFy channel?
I think most of the content they have is garbage but for some reason it lives on!
It's no mystery, just look at their ratings. Their "USA shows with sf/f window dressing" approach is popular among a reasonably large audience, and I'm certain they're cheaper to produce than a space opera. Why shouldn't SyFy opt for the cheaper way of getting the same (maybe better) ratings? They're not a charity.
There's no reason to believe that a different sci fi channel would approach things any "better." If there's a big enough audience for space opera to compensate for the greater cost, SyFy would be making shows for that audience.
Star Trek will return to their predestined glory through digital distribution.
Yes
BrownShatner I agree. see
this post.
Digital will favor cheap + cult + global. Anything that can garner a cultish following, yet also have a global reach, will be benefitted, and
Star Trek has that in spades.
The cheap part is the problem. To compensate, that's going to have to be a very sizable and loyal global cult.
Bullshit. We're in a golden age of television.
If you're selective and seek out the good stuff, sure. It's all down to selective attention. And why not, there's far too much content to ever consume it all. If only 1% is worthwhile, that's all I have time for anyway.
As soon as you start thinking about CBS as a business optimizing profit instead of an artist producing creative works for arts sake its actions start to make a lot more sense.
This should be stickied at the top of all threads. We're having the same problem in that thread about the CBS Sherlock Holmes show. None of it makes sense from an artistic point of view; it all makes perfect sense from a business point of view.
With a franchise this old, what's missing more than anything else is cultural relevance!
That's a good point that gets swamped too often by other discussions. It's related to my favorite hobby horse: what audience is this
Star Trek series being made for?
There simply doesn't seem to be a reasonably large TV audience for generic space adventures, which is what
Star Trek ended up being in its final years. (There's an audience for this sort of thing at the movies, where ideas and themes take a back seat to explosions and action, which is why JJ Abrams needn't worry about it.)
nu
BSG showed there's an audience for space-opera-as-political-metaphor. Maybe not a huge one, and maybe there are easier/cheaper audiences to cater to. But if you tried a similar approach, say, on Showtime, you might get better results. Not necessarily a larger audience, but since the audience is paying for a premium cable subscription, the smaller audience can generate more revenue, so that works out. (Can't leave money entirely out of this equation.)
Or, there might be a different approach. On AMC, they're doing great with a very character-centric sci fi series -
The Walking Dead. What makes that show so popular - strong characters, ethical conflicts, intense dramatic pressure, action, goriness - could easily be done with a space opera series.
TV is trash today. I've not really seen any in about 3 years. Bad enough people get their news/political/social sources from it, there's nothing else on as well. Let's hope Data's line from the Neutral Zone come true one day.
