Star Trek’s Golden Era Viewership Decline… Franchise Fatigue?

In the 1990s, the Star Trek franchise was at an all-time high. Despite being a syndicated show that few predicted would be successful, The Next Generation was achieving viewership and ad revenue paralleling major network primetime shows. It was widely acclaimed by both fans and critics, being the only Star Trek series to be Emmy®-nominated for Outstanding Drama Series. Its success led to the creation of three more spinoffs: Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise; and four feature films released during the same period. From 1993-1999, except for a brief period at the end of 1994, Star Trek had two series running concurrently.

It was the golden era of Star Trek – and yet – viewership was on a downward trajectory. Although it’s important to note that both Voyager and Enterprise were UPN’s top-rated shows during their entire run. And there lies part of the problem, which is the focus of this segment. The feature films were also on the decline, with Star Trek: Nemesis being the worst-performing feature film of the franchise – even to this day, of the theatrical releases.

Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise never could duplicate The Next Generation’s success and ratings gradually declined over the seasons leading to Star Trek’s cancellation in 2005 and an uncertain future. But why? Many favored these newer series more than The Next Generation. These series have been extremely popular on streaming platforms, which proves they do have an audience – even today, decades later.

So what happened? Why did viewership drop during this golden age? Some cite franchise fatigue – Trek content overload, siphoning viewers – is that what it was?

Franchise fatigue infers lack of originality and freshness – pulling too much from the same creative well. If that were the case, why do so many assert these spinoffs as their favorite in the entire franchise? People don’t associate their favorite content with such a definition. Deep Space Nine, in particular, is widely praised, and arguably the best overall series – and I say that as someone who doesn’t count DS9 as my personal favorite.

That’s not to say franchise fatigue didn’t play any role. It very likely did to some extent. The franchise celebrated its 30th anniversary in 1996 – inevitably yielding five live action series, an animated series, and 10 feature films by the early 2000s with a lot of crossover in the production and creative staff. That’s more than 700 episodes of television, not accounting for the feature films, which makes it even more impressive that people still held newly released content in general high regard.

Citing franchise fatigue is the lazy explanation. There’s far more that went into it than that.

Why The Next Generation Was Successful

While the original series launched the franchise and deserves praise, The Next Generation was the most successful Star Trek incarnation. To better understand why viewership declined in subsequent years, we must understand why The Next Generation was able to achieve so much success to begin with. Retrospectively, it may be surprising to learn that The Next Generation’s potential success was doubted initially. That dubious success may have been a blessing in disguise.

Despite being the continuation of a popular media franchise in an era when sequels were all the rage, networks perceived The Next Generation with as much risk as any other potential series. From their perspective at the time, this was justified. Television spinoffs rarely succeed. There was doubt whether an entirely new series with a different cast could replicate the same loyal following as the original. Besides, Star Trek failed as a network primetime show before, and Star Trek was expensive to produce compared to the multi-cam sitcoms popular at the time. Fans were equally dubious.

Paramount shopped around Star Trek: The Next Generation to the major networks but was disappointed by the responses. Paramount sought a full series pickup out of the gate, but the big three networks treated Star Trek the same as any other prospective series. ABC and NBC were only willing to commit to a test pilot. CBS offered the best option… a miniseries with the possibility of a full pickup.

After failing to secure a full series commitment from a major network, Paramount made the bold decision to offer The Next Generation as first-run syndication, sold to individual stations market-by-market. This meant new episodes would premiere on stations of varying affiliations and at varying schedules, often in timeslots that didn’t compete with major network primetime programming. Star Trek already proved it could succeed in syndication, finding an audience with syndicated repeats of the original series, but this was still a huge gamble. The concept of offering an expensive scripted television show as first-run syndication was unheard of. Even today, it’s a rarity. Most first-run syndication content is cheaply produced game shows and talk shows.

Leveraging Assets: Bundling TOS+TNG

Paramount cleverly leveraged its original series asset by forcing stations to carry The Next Generation as a condition to broadcasting reruns of the popular original. Stations had to commit to airing both series. It also helped that Paramount offered The Next Generation as barter, meaning there was no licensing cost to the stations, limiting financial risk if the show didn’t perform.

While it lost the prestige that came from being associated with a major network, The Next Generation gained independence and flexibility. Its success wasn’t dependent on a specific network’s scheduling and promotion, which failed the original Star Trek. Many stations placed The Next Generation in dayparts outside of Prime Time – most commonly in a dayparts known as Early Fringe or Prime Access as counter programming to news or other syndication. This meant that The Next Generation wouldn’t be competing against primetime programming, even though it eventually proved it could hold its own.

Paramount’s risky strategy proved successful. 210 stations covering 90% of U.S. markets committed to airing The Next Generation, some even pre-empting network content to air the feature-length pilot “Encounter at Farpoint.” Ratings for its first season, a key performance indicator for broadcast programming, were on-par with network programs despite inconsistent scheduling throughout the country. Paramount proved it didn’t need a broadcast network to back Star Trek.

Paramount earned more revenue per episode during the first season than it would have had a network distributed it. The Next Generation’s viewership and revenue grew in subsequent years, coinciding with its growing prestige. An LA Times article from 1994 said that The Next Generation earned Paramount $511 million in revenue and $293 million in profit during its 7-year run. That’s only slightly behind the global box office revenue of the original six feature films during their 12-year run. A 30-second commercial averaged more than $100,000 – peaking to $700,000 for the highly anticipated series finale. That’s nearly Super Bowl revenue, which topped $1 million per commercial for the first time that same year. Impressive revenue for a syndicated science fiction television show that no network wanted to gamble on.

Deep Space Nine: Repeating Success?

Finding success in first-run syndication, there was little doubt in continuing that release strategy with Deep Space Nine when it premiered in January 1993 during NextGen’s sixth season.

With an 18.8 Nielsen rating, Deep Space Nine’s series premiere achieved the all-time highest Nielsen rating in modern Star Trek history – not even the highly-praised NextGen series finale the following year quite bested it. Some episodes of the original series did achieve higher ratings, but that was with far fewer options across only three broadcast networks with cable still in its infancy without widespread adoption.

Despite this promising launch, Deep Space Nine couldn’t replicate NextGen’s success as a whole. But why? Some say it’s because Deep Space Nine was too dark for Star Trek and didn’t appropriately reflect the franchise with its increased serialization and plot emphases on religion, politics, and war. Some criticize its stationary premise, saying it removed the lack of adventurous exploration. Some cite the slower pace of the earlier seasons – the result of focusing on character more than action and adventure. While those elements may have been turnoffs for a select few, many praised them and cite them as examples of why DS9 is the best Trek series.

In reality, Deep Space Nine’s potential success was inhibited by less favorable conditions than The Next Generation benefited from.

Deep Space Nine wasn’t contractually bundled with another popular series as The Next Generation was with the original series, and stations doubted the success of a spinoff to another spinoff. Upon premiere, Deep Space Nine was only available in about 60% of U.S. markets, compared to 90% for The Next Generation, and it was disadvantaged from poor schedule placement in many markets.

I can personally attest to DS9’s unfortunate schedule placement, and it’s the reason I didn’t get into the series until after its initial run. In my local market, DS9 aired after Saturday morning cartoons on the local FOX affiliate for a bit, then switched to overnight on the local NBC station in the slot following Saturday Night Live.

Not only that, Deep Space Nine was not allowed to stand on its own. It overlapped The Next Generation for two seasons, in a sense competing against its established (and popular) sibling; doing so in fewer markets and in poorer timeslots. Had it replaced The Next Generation instead of competing against it, Deep Space Nine might have found stronger success. Then Voyager overlapped DS9 for the remaining seasons.

Despite its drop in viewership compared to The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine’s viewership was stronger than Voyager’s, which premiered in January 1995 to even less favorable conditions.

Voyager: Return to Network

The Next Generation shifted from television to the big screen in 1994, paving the way for Star Trek: Voyager to premiere in January 1995. Voyager would not directly replace The Next Generation on television lineups, however. Instead of first-run syndication, Voyager would return the franchise to network television for the first time since the original series and subsequent animated series. Paramount broke the formula that proved successful for Star Trek… syndication.

Voyager’s viewership was even worse than Deep Space Nine, caused in a big way by its placement on UPN as opposed to syndication – even though it was syndicated in some markets.

Nearly twenty years after Paramount almost anchored a new broadcast network with Star Trek, it used the premiere of Star Trek: Voyager to launch the United Paramount Network (UPN), serving as its flagship series. Voyager was UPN’s most watched series during its entire run – but it was the most watched series on the lowest rated network. UPN had numerous limitations that handicapped Voyager and prevented it from being as successful as it could have been.

UPN was a brand-new broadcast network, launching the exact same month as another brand-new broadcast network – The WB – both of which struggling to steal market share from the four established broadcast networks – at a time when original scripted television programming was diversifying outside of broadcast into cable and satellite. Competition was stiff for audiences and advertising revenue.

While neither network achieved great success, and eventually merged to form The CW, The WB proved to be a superior network to UPN, so much so that some UPN affiliates later switched to The WB. The WB had a more defined strategy – going after a niche younger audience, as opposed to UPN almost taking a “try everything and see what sticks” approach, often taking the rejects from other networks, with most shows failing. Indeed, Voyager was the only original UPN program to survive the network’s inaugural season.

UPN’s biggest disadvantage was its limited availability, especially in small and medium sized markets, unlike The WB, which had nearly nationwide coverage through cable retransmission agreements in markets where it didn’t have a local station. UPN slowly expanded its availability through secondary affiliations and syndication agreements with third party stations across the country, but this only marginally helped. Local stations – including UPN-affiliated stations – frequently pre-empted UPN programming for other content that generated better viewership, including sports, or relegated UPN programming to poor timeslots, often in overnights.

I can personally attest to Voyager’s limited availability, which didn’t become available in my local market until the summer between its third and fourth seasons. It did at least have a better timeslot than counterpart DS9, airing Saturdays at the same time as The Next Generation reruns did weekdays on the same station – at that time on my local ABC affiliate before eventually switching to the FOX affiliate.

At the network level, UPN only featured original programming on two nights upon launch, Mondays and Tuesdays. The main drawback of this is drawing an audience from other channels on only those two nights, forcing them to change the channel, limiting the ability to cross-promote shows. When UPN added Wednesday original programming, Voyager moved to anchor the freshman primetime block.

Despite being handicapped by UPN’s numerous limitations, Voyager premiered to a strong 21.3 million viewers, which isn’t all that bad on a fledgling network with limited availability compared to the incredibly popular The Next Generation’s finale of 30 million that was available in almost every household.

Even so, Voyager’s debut Nielsen rating of 13.0 fell short of Deep Space Nine’s 18.8 rating premiere. It wasn’t even all that much higher than Deep Space Nine’s Season Three premiere of 9.3 that same season. Deep Space Nine viewership ratings would overtake Voyager by the fifth week, with Voyager’s “The Cloud,” and continue to best Voyager’s ratings.

Voyager suffered by being attached to UPN. Had it been fully syndicated like its two predecessors, it may have achieved greater success. One could argue that Voyager failed to find an audience because of the weakness of its first two seasons, broadly speaking, but that was true of both The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine as well, so it’s hard to justify a poor start to long-term viewership.

For both Voyager and Deep Space Nine, their series premier was the highest rated episode of their respective run. Audience retention from the series premiere to the first standalone episode was equal between the two series… both dropping 30%; and retention for the first season averages were almost equal, with Voyager decreasing 42% and Deep Space Nine 41% from the series premieres.

Clearly, one show didn’t do any better than the other at retaining viewers from the premiere. The only difference was that Voyager’s sample size was smaller to begin with. Both suffered from lower availability compared to NextGen, with inconsistent and often poor schedule placement across the country.

Enterprise: Ratings Rebound?

Enterprise replaced Voyager on the UPN lineup in 2001, initially airing on the same night but an hour earlier. It was the first time in history that a Trek series directly replaced its predecessor in a lineup.

Enterprise’s ratings began with a slight improvement over the ratings witnessed during Voyager’s final years. Its series premiere drew in 12.5 million viewers and subsequent episodes were yielding around 7-8 million viewers initially, almost double the 4-5 million viewers Voyager was averaging during its final season. Even Voyager’s series finale only garnered 8.8 million viewers – only slight above Enterprise’s per-episode averages early in its first season.

While that ratings rebound might sound promising, Enterprise’s premiere of 12.5 million viewers was way down from Voyager’s premiere of 21.3 million. It was a rise from Voyager’s final season, but a significant decrease from Voyager’s premiere. And as we previously learned, it’s all downhill from the series premiere. The Next Generation is the only Trek series to increase its viewership from its premiere.

Enterprise did have stronger audience retention from its series premiere to its first standalone episode, shedding only 19% of the premiere audience. But the overall season drop was slightly higher, with viewership eroding later in the season. By the second season, its viewership was lower than Voyager’s lowest viewership. Voyager’s lowest first-run viewership was its fourth season episode “Waking Moments,” achieving 3.7 million viewers. Enterprise dipped below that during its second season, getting close with “Vanishing Point” and finally breaking that low with “Judgement” – and that wasn’t the floor. By the fourth and final season, which many assert to be Enterprise’s best season content-wise, Enterprise was averaging less than 3 million viewers per episode. Even at that… it was still UPN’s highest rated show, and that speaks volumes to the impact UPN had on Star Trek’s declining viewership.

Conclusion

I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Star Trek’s two worst performing series of its golden era were attached to UPN. They were the top-rated shows of the lowest rated network – the biggest fishes in the smallest pond. Network broadcast in general hasn’t been an effective delivery vehicle for Star Trek. The only time Star Trek was ever cancelled, as opposed to being allowed to run its course, was when it aired in network primetime.

Recent Star Trek series have shifted to streaming platforms. While Star Trek: Discovery later premiered in 2017 on a major broadcast network, it was only as a launching pad for CBS All Access subscriptions (now Paramount+), where Discovery would reside. While its premiere fueled CBS All Access signups, Discovery premiered to only 1.7 million viewers – on a major network available in almost every U.S. household. Granted, the nature of viewing had changed dramatically with live broadcast viewership sliding in general. Put into perspective, even the lowest viewership of Enterprise drew 2.5 million viewers.