This is the sixth entry in a surprisingly long series of posts about Star Trek’s future and its fandom called Crisis of Infinite Star Treks.
No worrisome things today, just more information on the new Star Trek series, set to arrive at CBS’s new “All Access” channel in January 2017.
Over at a site called Trek Core they’ve summarized a speech CBS president Les Moonves gave to CBS investors recently at a conference. (For those interested, they have the link to the full speech).
My main takeaway was that they were pretty sure the numbers would be there to support scripted programming like Star Trek. They’re looking to this as a good way to do international distribution too, profits from the international market being an every-growing facet of Hollywood equations.
I don’t mind that, because Trek does strive to be universal — okay, at least pervasive in the Alpha Quadrant.
Anyway, it’s good to know because it seems a short time ago, before scripted dramas clearly made a comeback, studios and networks were all about reality television and how to maximize dollars earned. Scripted narratives were nasty, cumbersome expensive things.
If they’re confident in the money earned from distribution, they may feel comfortable giving decent funding to the series, so there won’t be a situation like there was with the Ferengi when they first appeared on Star Trek: The Next Generation.
“No, we don’t have the budget.”
Hey, interesting considering yesterday’s post about profit vs. purpose, huh?