When Star Trek was cancelled in 1969, there was no reason to think that this little science fiction show would ever come back. But the show's failures actually helped drive its new success in the 1970s.
Co-hosts Bob Turner and Kelly Casto look at the syndication juggernaut that was Star Trek in the 1970s.
Star Trek had not been profitable during its NBC run. In fact, when it was cancelled, its production costs had pushed it to be over $4 million in the red. That's over $30 million in today's dollars!
The show was considered a dead property and Paramount desperately wanted to find a way to recoup some of those costs. So the studio decided to move the show into syndication. This was an interesting decision at the time because conventional wisdom stated that a show needed to have at least 100 episodes to be successful.
But Paramount's need to make some kind of profit from Star Trek was great so they decided to move forward with just the 79 episodes. The studio did not expect that the show would ever make a profit in syndication. Execs just hoped they would be able to make some money to reduce the show's deficit.
Syndication gave Star Trek a new lease on life. Kaiser Broadcasting, the first TV station group to purchase the show, used it as counter programming, scheduling it against the evening news shows by their competition. Soon other stations around the country picked up on this idea.
As a result, Star Trek was able to connect with a new audience of older children, teens and college students. This group was not interested in watching the news, but was eager to see the adventures of the crew of the Enterprise!
With the show being broadcast everyday, it became part of their daily lives and something they looked forward to seeing.
Almost imediately, the show began to perform well.
A March 1969 advertisement by Paramount touted Star Trek as, "A Space Breakthrough on the audience response barrier," saying it was being seen in over 65 countries.
A similar ad sent in August stated some numbers from when Star Trek aired on NBC. The the show was had a 30 share or higher, or another way to put it is that it brought in 30% of the audience watching TV. The show averaged a 39.5 share for all the 61 markets where the show was being broadcast.
In February 1970, Paramount ran another ad in Broadcast Magazine quoting the following performance numbers for Star Trek in syndication:
This ad wrapped with the following call-to-action: "For out-of-this world Star Trek numbers in your corner of the universe, call the Paramount television office nearest you."
As the decade wore on, the show's popularity grew. An article in 1976 stated that a Star Trek episode shown during the day on Chicago's WGN was getting 374,000 viewers for reruns of reruns!
As Star Trek gained steam in syndication, the opinion of the show by Paramount changed. By the mid-1975, when Paramount was starting to look at bringing it back, execs at the studio were concerned that a new version of Trek might damage the interest in the original It was performing so well, that studio execs quietly referred to it as "The 79 Jewels" because of the millions it brought into the studio.
It should be no surprise that the show performed well in the 1970s. It was a decade of bad news: Vietnam, Watergate, gas lines, the energy crisis. But in the background was Star Trek, reminding us all that there would be a brighter future ahead.
Seeing its positive view at a time when there was so much negativity in the real world is a major reason why Star Trek exploded in the 1970s.
The success that Trek had in reruns and the money that Paramount made from it, ensured that the property would return. The only question was when.
