9. Corporate Support
There are three kinds of support that CBS and any other corporation involved in a Trek show can give. The first is financial and publicity support. Not only do they need to give the show a large budget, but they need to actually advertise the show, especially if its only on a streaming service like Netflix or Hulu. While word of mouth is great for getting people to watch a show after others have given it a shot, its not so effective at telling people shows actually exist. The second is not messing around with the show while its on the air. How many times have we, the television viewing audience, seen shows get jerked around through a number of timeslots before they wound up cancelled? Things like that make it hard for a show to build and maintain an audience, a death knell for shows that depend on Nielsen ratings to stay on the air. While it seems unlikely that something like that would happen with Star Trek, especially since Abrams films have revitalized interest in the franchise, its still a possibility that should be avoided (or if they have to shift time slots, at least advertise it well ahead of time). The third way the corporations involved in Trek can help is by not making
suggestions like this:TrekCore: UPN launched with Voyager back in 1995, and it obviously carried Enterprise. Did that affect the show's structure and development? There has always been a lot of speculation on the network's intentions - they produced commercials for the show that tended to focus on the sexualized Decon scenes. Do you cover that in the documentaries?Roger Lay, Jr.: Yeah, I cover it that's dealt with in the Seasons Two and Three documentary. We focus on launching it in season one, but in upcoming documentaries we focus on the fact that here was this network where the show didn't belong. This was a network that didn't really want a Star Trek show; they wanted more of a sexy or urban' kind of thing, like all the other shows they were nurturing. John Wentworth talks a lot about that. He's got a great story which you'll probably see in the Season Two or three documentary where, at one point, one executive in a meeting comes up to Rick and goes, "I have an idea. You guys have a restaurant on the Enterprise, right? Rick and Brannon are like, "Well, we have a mess hall, kind of like a cafeteria" He says, "Well, here's the thing every week, at the restaurant, the hottest young bands are gonna play. You know, we're gonna get a different hot, young band every week, they'll play in the restaurant."TrekCore: Oh, my god.Roger Lay, Jr.: They were like, "We're in outer space. How are these bands going to get there?" The guy's like, "Well, you can figure that out! Cause then, at the end of the episodes, we have the card for the hot new album that's coming out. We do that on all our other shows; trust us. This is good." That was a moment where Rick and everyone started to realize that it was a losing battle.