This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future.

[MacLeod]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

Yes but was sort of viewing was Enterprise getting towards the end 3m? Compare that to DW which gathers 7-8m per episode. Factoring in differences in population size that would equate to what 30-40m viewers in US terms.

Yes DW is on the BBC so it's funding model is slighlty different but it still has to be able to justify it's budget. Perhaps the BBC are more willing to look at ancillary income DVD sales, International sales and merchandising as part of the revenue stream. Perhaps CBS looks more at revenue from ads shown during an episode when it airs. Which is not without merit as no doubt many of the shows it shows have little to no merchandising, low DVD sales and international sales. ST might be the exception, has potential for strong international sales, good DVD sales and plenty of merchandising, but the execs would have to consider ST as an exception to the ad only revenue stream.

 

[Ryan8bit]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

Yes but was sort of viewing was Enterprise getting towards the end 3m? Compare that to DW which gathers 7-8m per episode. Factoring in differences in population size that would equate to what 30-40m viewers in US terms.

Uh, no. Not many scripted shows get ratings above even 10m on average, much less 30. I don't know how it works in the UK, but it seems like an awful lot more people watch TV there.

 

[Sindatur]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

Yes but was sort of viewing was Enterprise getting towards the end 3m? Compare that to DW which gathers 7-8m per episode. Factoring in differences in population size that would equate to what 30-40m viewers in US terms.

Uh, no. Not many scripted shows get ratings above even 10m on average, much less 30. I don't know how it works in the UK, but it seems like an awful lot more people watch TV there.

That's the point being made about just how popular Doctor Who is in Britain, it brings in 7-8million people per episode, and they have 1/5 of our population, therefore, in order to compare the popularity, you'd have look at shows that get the highest number (Of course the multiple of 5 doesn't quite work, because in the US, we've had 5000 [yes, slight exaggeration there] channels on Cable for much longer and much more prevalent in the average household, so, their viewing habits aren't as diluted in Britain yet as they are here. But, certainly it compares to the CSI, or NCIS shows that rake in over 20 million in the US)

 

[Ryan8bit]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

CSI shows don't even bring in half that these days. And yeah, the comparison just doesn't work for whatever cultural difference over there. Instead of Dr. Who getting 5x the ratings here, it would be more like 5x less. It would probably be on par or less than what Enterprise was getting given the same circumstances. There's no quantifiable ratio.

 

[MacLeod]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

I think you've missed my point. Excluding the soaps, DW is about the highest rated scripted Drama in the UK.

The point was that a show that is gathering 7-8m (and it can get 10m) viewers can justify a higher budget than one that is only getting 3m.

So if for example ENT was getting 7-8m viewers in the US it could have perhaps justifed it's budget. And I never said DW was getting 5x times the viewers in the US.

I simple said that in order to compare US to UK ratings you have to factor into the population size difference (I use a 4.5 size difference).

So a show that gets 3m viewers in the US would need to get about 666 000 or so viewers to have a comparative audiance figure. Minor cultural differences aside.

For example a show like NCIS gets about 600 000 on the FX channel which airs it first in the UK. But that's a satelite channel, and you have to have the right subscription package in order to get it.

To put it in comparrison with the top Satelite Channel Sky 1, a quick check on the BARB ratings site (the UK equivelant of Nielson ratings) the last 3 weeks the higest rating was 917 000. So it would appear it is performing well vs the available audiance.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

In the new TV ecosystem, the biggest obstacle will be simply getting awareness among the teeming, squabbling options that will proliferate beyond anyone's ability to comprehend. There will be many space opera shows (among other niche genres) available via streaming, and few will have any built-in awareness, certainly not at Trek's level.

I disagree. A show that will cost four to five million dollars (or more) an episode simply won't have a place in the new landscape. The only way Star Trek fits into the TV landscape going forward is if it's animated. They can keep costs under control by using generic actors playing iconic roles.

If you think CBS will allow Trek, a marquee title that has long been family friendly, to be turned into nuBSG you're crazy.

When did I say CBS was going to turn Star Trek into nuBSG? If you think CBS is concerned with some fanboy idea of the purity of Star Trek, you're the crazy one. I'm sure they don't even think about Star Trek. If making it nuBSG = big bucks, they'd do it in a heartbeat.

What Star Trek becomes will depend largely on where it airs. If it's on TNT, it will probably be close to broadcast style (think Falling Skies). If it's on HBO, it will be crafted for that style (think Game of Thrones). If it's animated, it will be on the Cartoon Network, and will have to appeal to 8 year old kids. If we're lucky, it will be along the lines of The Clone Wars, and have some adult appeal as well.

The commonality there is: Star Trek will be crafted to appeal to the audience where it's airing. Until we know who is showing it, we'll have absolutely no idea what it's going to turn out like. The Clone Wars, Falling Skies and Game of Thrones are three very dissimilar approaches, but each of them is crafted carefully to the tastes of the audiences where it is shown. All shows follow that basic rule, and Star Trek is not going to be an exception.

But if Game of Thrones can survive on TV, so can Star Trek. I don't see why you can't make a space opera that looks every bit good as a full-blown fantasy extravaganza.

CBS is slowly ending the CSI franchise and NCIS will probably be next. There is going to be room for new shows. Maybe Star Trek. We'll see.

Not on CBS - doesn't fit their audience at all. But CBS Studios could make Star Trek for other outlets (Showtime?) Or, they could partner with Netflix to create a series that is distributed by Netflix. That would probably be a compromise between the premium cable approach (Netflix sees itself as a Showtime/HBO competitor) and a broadcast approach (I doubt Netflix's audience is as sophisticated as premium cable.) It would end up more like Falling Skies than Game of Thrones.

Yes but was sort of viewing was Enterprise getting towards the end 3m? Compare that to DW which gathers 7-8m per episode. Factoring in differences in population size that would equate to what 30-40m viewers in US terms.

No American series gets anything like 30-40M viewers. The TV audience is far too fragmented. It's getting so that 10M viewers is a big audience.

Fortunately, there are ways of making money other than advertising. Some kind of subscription - basic cable, premium cable, Netflix - is going to be needed to make up the difference between Star Trek's nichey appeal and its big budget needs.

 

[Ryan8bit]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

I simple said that in order to compare US to UK ratings you have to factor into the population size difference (I use a 4.5 size difference).

So a show that gets 3m viewers in the US would need to get about 666 000 or so viewers to have a comparative audiance figure. Minor cultural differences aside.

I think the cultural differences are a lot larger than you might think. You can't simply use the difference between the population as a guide because there are so many other factors involved. Like Temis says, very few shows here even get 10m, so you can't just come up with a straight ratio like that.

But if Game of Thrones can survive on TV, so can Star Trek. I don't see why you can't make a space opera that looks every bit good as a full-blown fantasy extravaganza.

It would have to be a radically different Star Trek. The HBO dramas all seem to fit a certain mold. They all have gratuitous nudity, excessive violence, and adult language and themes. Star Trek would have to bend quite a bit to fit that way (probably for the worse), and I doubt the owners of it would want it to be that way. I don't ever see it being on one of the premium channels.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

What Star Trek becomes will depend largely on where it airs. If it's on TNT, it will probably be close to broadcast style (think Falling Skies). If it's on HBO, it will be crafted for that style (think Game of Thrones). If it's animated, it will be on the Cartoon Network, and will have to appeal to 8 year old kids.

I don't believe that it's a given that a new animated Trek series will be on Cartoon Network. It could just as easily wind up on Toonzai, the CW's Saturday morning action cartoon block (CBS is still co-owner of the network).

 

[R. Star]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

HBO would be the perfect outlet for a mirror universe set Star Trek series. Lot's of sex and violence that doesn't have to be censored.

 

[Knight Templar]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

HBO would be the perfect outlet for a mirror universe set Star Trek series. Lot's of sex and violence that doesn't have to be censored.

Which fans would abandon in droves in the long run.

 

[R. Star]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

HBO would be the perfect outlet for a mirror universe set Star Trek series. Lot's of sex and violence that doesn't have to be censored.

Which fans would abandon in droves in the long run.

Kinda like the reboot movies?

Still it is mildly amusing how elitist Trekkies can be about a steadily fading genre.

 

[Knight Templar]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

HBO would be the perfect outlet for a mirror universe set Star Trek series. Lot's of sex and violence that doesn't have to be censored.

Which fans would abandon in droves in the long run.

Kinda like the reboot movies?

Still it is mildly amusing how elitist Trekkies can be about a steadily fading genre.

The 2009 movie was going to be successful no matter what was put up on the screen. There had not been any kind of Star Trek movie in years and there was had been no series on the air for years either.

 

[MacLeod]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

HBO would be the perfect outlet for a mirror universe set Star Trek series. Lot's of sex and violence that doesn't have to be censored.

Which fans would abandon in droves in the long run.

Kinda like the reboot movies?

Still it is mildly amusing how elitist Trekkies can be about a steadily fading genre.

The Sci-Fi genre is in decline, I must have missed that. A large portion of the top films in takings fall under the sci-fi genre.

It might be true to say that it is in decline on US TV, but that is a different statement.

 

[BillJ]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

Kinda like the reboot movies?

I have my problems with the new film, but I didn't notice any HBO style sex or violence in it...

 

[R. Star]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

Which fans would abandon in droves in the long run.

Kinda like the reboot movies?

Still it is mildly amusing how elitist Trekkies can be about a steadily fading genre.

The 2009 movie was going to be successful no matter what was put up on the screen. There had not been any kind of Star Trek movie in years and there was had been no series on the air for years either.

And even then in 2009 alone there were a half dozen movies that did better in the box office.

This 2013 movie, I expect isn't going to do as well(maybe I'll be wrong there again and my expectations for it get blown away). We may get a 3rd movie from it, but expecting a six movie run like the original crew had would be bending reality, especially in today's movie market.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

I think the cultural differences are a lot larger than you might think.

Comparing American and British TV, I'm not sure it's a cultural difference so much as a business one. I know that American TV is wildly balkanized now, which means the two routes to success are: very mass market (police procedurals, sitcoms, reality TV) or niche tastes (which encompasses everything from prestige dramas on cable to sleazy shows about rednecks living in swamps).The niche tastes support themselves through subscriptions (premium cable) or cheapness (rednecks in swamps).

I can only assume that British TV isn't like that. Maybe not like that yet. The proportion of viewers who watch just a single show is too high for that balkanization to have set in. Even "mass market" shows in America aren't actually very mass anymore. A huge show will get 20M viewers - six percent of the population. When everything is well under ten percent, it's senseless to talk about any mass market at all.

The 2009 movie was going to be successful no matter what was put up on the screen. There had not been any kind of Star Trek movie in years and there was had been no series on the air for years either.

It wasn't that long ago (just after ENT was cancelled) that people were saying with equal confidence that Star Trek needed to go away for ten years, or fifty, because "everyone" was sick and tired of it.

That wasn't true, just as it's not true that Star Trek was a slam dunk. It could very easily have been a huge flop. Just look at all the big-budget movies flopping all over the place, despite big names and big Hollywood marketing clout. Star Trek is not immune to the difficulties of success in show biz. And if it is, why isn't it back on TV, sure-fire success that it is?

And even then in 2009 alone there were a half dozen movies that did better in the box office.

Which puts it in the top ten, in other words, a sparkling success.

HBO would be the perfect outlet for a mirror universe set Star Trek series.

Since CBS owns Showtime, it would never do a show for rival HBO. And something that sleazy and dumb would not work on premium cable, either, which sells subscriptions based partly on prestige. The snob factor is a big hurdle to getting Star Trek on Showtime.

 

[horatio83]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

While the BBC has gone through some of the same shitty transformations the rest of the world world has in the last thirty years it has nonetheless retained some of its glory. You cannot get shows like Who or Sherlock on private TV.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

For-profit TV has created plenty of great shows. In fact, all of the shows I like were created this way. I won't bother to list them all because anyone who's been paying the least bit of attention could list them just as easily.

 

[horatio83]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

The simple explanation beats the complicated one. Who and Sherlock are as good as they are because they are made by the BBC, not because of some elaborate trans-Atlantic differences in television preferences. Once your aggregate millions of people in countries so similar to each other like the US and UK these tiny differences between averages can hardly explain the success and popularity of these two shows.

 

[MacLeod]

Re: This is why there will be no new TV Trek for the forseeable future

One difference might be, there ae only two main channells in the UK

BBC1 & ITV

True you also have BBC2, CH4 and Five. As the other main stations.

After that you go to the satelite channels like Sky One.

Even many of the freeview/satalite channels are contrlled by the BBC or ITV, ie. BBC3-4 and ITV2-4. Yes you have channels like FX and CBS Action/Drama etc..

But a lot of the content is reruns. Even on channels like BBC3.

So maybe UK TV is as fractured as US TV, shows like DW get 40% audiance share.