New Star Trek?

New Star Trek? by Pope Torak

Are we going to get a new Star Trek television series soon?

Well, one of the big factors to take into account when answering this question is who actually owns Star Trek. And, there are currently two companies who own the rights to Star Trek.

Two companies? Isn’t it just one show?

Well, yes, it was originally just one show: Star Trek. Back in the mid-1960s, this show started out being produced by a company called DesiLu Productions. DesiLu was set up in 1950 by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz to produce their sitcom ‘I Love Lucy’, but by the mid-1960s, it was solely owned and run by Lucille Ball after Ball’s and Arnaz’s divorce a few years earlier. So, it was Lucille Ball who said “yes” to Gene Roddenberry’s original vision, and DesiLu which produced the original Star Trek pilot episodes in 1964/5 and the first season of Star Trek in 1966/7. You’ll even see this logo at the end of the first season episodes. ‘Star Trek’ was started by profits from ‘I Love Lucy’!

Interestingly, Lucille Ball originally thought that this “star trek” idea was going to be a USO tour of Hollywood stars to American military installations. However, even though she was confused at first, she supported the idea of an adult science fiction show once it was explained properly to her.

Fascinating, to coin a phrase. But you said Desilu produced only the first season: what happened after that?

Well, when Ball was considering the idea for ‘Star Trek’, one of her executives told her, “If we do these [Star Trek and Mission: Impossible] and are unfortunate enough to sell them as series, we're going to have to sell the company and go bankrupt.” Unfortunately for her, Ed Holly turned out to be right. These series were expensive to produce, and DesiLu Productions didn’t have enough money to produce them. Lucille Ball ended up having to sell her production company during the following year. In February 1967, she announced she was selling DesiLu Productions to Gulf & Western Corporation. The sale went through in July that year.

Gulf & Western was nothing more than a holding company for a man who started out by buying a car parts business in 1958. During the 1960s, this holding company bought businesses as diverse as: a sugar-making company in the Dominican Republic; a finance company; some mining companies; the clothing company which owned the Miss Universe pageant; – oh, and Paramount Pictures, the movie studio.

Gulf & Western had bought Paramount Pictures in 1966. Now, in 1967, it bought DesiLu Productions, and proceeded to rebrand this company as a division of Paramount Pictures called Paramount Television. You’ll notice that second-season episodes of Star Trek start out being produced by DesiLu, but later episodes are produced by Paramount Television. Paramount Television remained the owner of Star Trek for a couple of decades.

Yeah, I recognise Paramount. That’s the company that owns Star Trek. Everyone knows that. But that’s just one company. Where does the second company come into it?

We need to talk about the movies. All those big Star Trek movies produced in the 1970s and 1980s. Because, while Paramount Television owned Star Trek on television, Gulf & Western got Paramount Pictures to make the Star Trek movies when the time came. It was only natural: they were two divisions of the same company, and Paramount Pictures had more experience at making movies. So, from 1979 onwards, we have two Star Trek properties – Star Trek on television and Star Trek in movies – owned by two separate but closely related companies.

For example, when ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ started on television in 1987, it was owned by Paramount Television, while ‘Star Trek: The Final Frontier’ was released into cinemas in 1989 by Paramount Pictures. Happy sibling companies working happily side by side, happily sharing the Star Trek love.

In fact, Paramount had been doing so well (partly because of Star Trek) that, when the founder of Gulf & Western died in 1983, his successor decided to focus Gulf & Western as primarily an entertainment and communications company. During the latter half of the 1980s, the holding company sold off unrelated businesses like the sugar company, the cigar company, the car parts manufacturers, the clothing labels, and so on. They even sold off a games company called Sega. Finally, the company was renamed as Paramount Communications.

So, by 1989, Paramount Communications owned both Paramount Pictures and Paramount Television, and all of Star Trek. They also owned a publishing house called Simon & Schuster, which they’d bought in 1975, and which had the sole rights to publish Star Trek books.

Sounds good so far. It’s still basically just one company running Star Trek: Paramount. What’s the problem?

The problem is that Viacom took over / merged with Paramount Communications in 1994.

Viacom (Visual and Audio Communications) was a spin-off company of CBS Television. It was originally the company which handled syndication for CBS in the 1950s and ’60s, but had to be sold off in 1971 due to laws introduced in the USA the prior year which said that television companies weren’t allowed to own any of the shows they broadcast (the idea was to stop them monopolising the television industry). These were the “Financial Interest and Syndication Rules”. Therefore, Viacom had to go its own separate way from its parent company.

Viacom and Paramount Communications had been talking about merging since the late 1980s. In 1994, Viacom bought 50.1% of Paramount Communications and became the ultimate owner of Paramount Pictures, Paramount Television, Simon & Schuster – and everything Star Trek, which was an extremely valuable part of Paramount.

That still doesn’t sound like a problem. Star Trek just moved from Paramount to Viacom. Where’s this second company you keep hinting at?

It’s coming!

Viacom complicated things. For one thing, after the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules were repealed in 1993, it merged back with its former parent company, CBS Corporation in 1999. Ironically, it now owned the company that used to own it (don’t we just love corporate finagling?).

Then, in 2005, Viacom started having problems – financial and personal. Stock prices were stagnating, executives were arguing, and something had to be done. That “something” was to split the company. And, this is where it gets complicated.

The original Viacom renamed itself CBS Corporation. Among other things, this company retained ownership of CBS Broadcasting (the television network), Simon & Schuster Publishing – and the old Paramount Television, which was now renamed CBS Television Studios.

At the same time, a brand-new company, confusingly called “Viacom”, was created – and this company got Paramount Pictures (among other things).

For the first time ever, Star Trek was now split between two companies. The television rights are owned by CBS Television Studios, which is owned by CBS Corporation, while the movie rights are owned by Paramount Pictures, which is owned by Viacom. Simon & Schuster is still owned by the same company that owns CBS Television Studios. It’s also worth noting that www.StarTrek.com, the official Star Trek website, is owned by CBS Television Studios.

So, the majority of Star Trek – television, books, website – is owned by CBS Television Studios, but the movies are now owned by a totally separate company.

Oh. But that doesn’t seem like a big problem. The movies and TV shows have been owned by the same separate companies since the 1970s, you said. Why is it a problem now?

The problem is that now the two companies which own the movies and TV shows are parts of separate corporate conglomerates, not the same corporation. They’re competitors now, not sibling companies.

Here’s a little story which might shed some light on the current situation.

When Paramount Pictures was setting up the deal with J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot production company to produce the first reboot movie (‘Star Trek’, 2009), Abrams had grand plans for a multimedia merchandising mania. He was going to make comic books and games and models and action figures and everything. This was going to be big.

However, CBS Television Studios was still putting out merchandise featuring the original Star Trek actors: Shatner, Nimoy, and so on. And, this merchandise would compete with the new merchandise based on the new actors, and dilute the market. So, Abrams approached CBS with the absolutely sensible and logical (to him) proposal that CBS stop producing merchandise based on the old actors, so that his merchandise featuring the new actors wouldn’t have competition.

CBS refused. The negotiations broke down.

We can see from this that Paramount and CBS are not friends, they’re competitors who happen to share rights to a profitable franchise through a quirk of corporate history.

Okay, so they’re competitors. But couldn’t they just collaborate and make a new series?

Firstly, they don’t need to collaborate. Well, one of them doesn’t need to.

Paramount Pictures would definitely have to get permission from CBS to make a TV series (because CBS owns the television rights), and pay licence fees to CBS. They even have to pay licence fees to CBS for the movies they’re making – because the characters and premise that the movies are based on come from a TV series that CBS owns.

However, CBS could make a new Star Trek television series any time it wants, without having to consult Paramount at all – unless it decides to set the new TV series in the new reboot universe, aspects of which are owned by Paramount.

However:

Paramount Pictures is currently focussed on making the third reboot Star Trek movie, due out probably for the franchise’s 50th anniversary in 2016. This will be the third of the three movies that Paramount set out to do in this reboot series, and the third of three movies that the lead actors are contracted to do.

CBS is currently remastering the existing television series to high-definition, and selling the HD Blu-ray versions of these. They’ve been working on ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ since 2012, and have finished this project in 2014. After that, there’s still ‘Deep Space Nine’ and ‘Voyager’ to remaster if they want (‘Enterprise’ was originally made in HD, and the remastering of the original series was completed back in 2009).

But... what about my new series?

It’s gonna be a long wait.

Paramount won’t even consider making a TV series until after releasing their third movie in 2016/7 – and would have to pay fees to CBS to be allowed to do it. Also, Paramount Pictures doesn’t make TV series – it makes movies.

CBS has no reason to consider a new TV series while it can continue to make HD Blu-ray versions of the existing ones for the next few years if it wants.

There are other TV companies out there – why can’t one of them do it?

It’s possible that a third party might want to make a new Star Trek series – some other broadcast television network or cable television company or online content provider (like CBS Broadcasting or HBO or Netflix). But, they’ll have to deal with CBS Television Studios to make a TV series, and deal with Paramount Pictures and CBS if they want to make a TV series in the reboot universe. It might happen, but you shouldn’t hold your breath.

So... no new series?

Probably not. Sorry.

So, you’d better enjoy the old series and the new movies – that’s all we’re likely to get for quite a few years to come.

I do not own or even wrote this great article but I was granted permission by the author to post this to my blog for my wonderful readers :) Thanks my friend for allowing me to share your great work c: