Are You A “Star Trek” Fan? If So, Then You’ve Probably Noticed The Generation Gap – YouTube
so there you are having a drink with a couple friends and discussing last night’s episode of star trek when right out of nowhere the lady next to you slams her drink down and yells that’s not star trek and now the real fun begins join me after the break as i present a logical explanation as to why so many star trek fans can’t agree about their favorite show [Music] now if you’re like me you’ve probably left comments on youtube videos and been surprised by the vehemence in some of the responses to you from star trek fans who don’t like your star trek in today’s world of ad-free television
streaming it is remarkably easier to forget that broadcast television was is and will forever be about advertising dollars the most lucrative segment of the american general public is the male age group 18 to 34. these are the people who are most likely to spend money as a direct result of seeing an ad on tv or something in a movie so whenever new content is produced for broadcast that content’s main target audience must be the male 18 to 34 demographic if it can’t pull in good numbers in that area it’s going to fail now this is how shows like the wwe’s monday night raw have been able to successfully stay on weeknight tv for over 30 years and with a full-time schedule it does not include repeats and very few preemptions it does this by continually reinventing itself to match the current 18 to 34
group and that’s why you have people who argue about who was the best wrestler hulk hogan ric flair steve austin goldberg the rock the undertaker now there are fans as the years went by that hate other wrestlers they hate hulk hogan they hate john cena nobody really hates the undertaker but you get where i’m going with this right there’s a pattern to this the original star trek ran from 1966 until 1969 so in order to discuss why different fans like different shows we need to take a look at exactly who the show was positioned for when it was being created and broadcast star trek was written to appeal to people born between 1932 and 1951 that meant that when it went off the air in 1969 its targeted ad audience was 50 the silent generation
and fifty percent baby boomers now four years later star trek came back but this time as a saturday morning cartoon series now jane rydenberry and company used the cartoon as a vehicle to continue to make the same themes and stories as the original series using the same writers executive producer dc fontana would say for years afterwards that the cartoon actually was years four and five of the original five-year mission now as such the animated series like the original was written to appeal to people born between 1932 and 1951 but airing as a saturday morning cartoon the network targeted the cartoon at children born between 1960 and 1965 and children did discover this cartoon
some of them found the cartoon liked the cartoon didn’t even know there was a tv series as a result when it went off the air its resulting audience was 85 boomer and 15 generation x now gene reinberry did learn one actual important thing here though he found out that you could actually produce trek in such a way that it would perform well in the targeted age groups and still continue to draw the original boomer audiences as well now this would become a critical foundation for star trek’s fandom for the next two decades now 14 years would pass and the world changed we had moved far away from the vietnam war double-digit inflation and well into the economic boom of the 1980s in 1987 star trek returned again as a weekly television series this time featuring a completely new cast and set in a new
timeline as the series began a completely new distribution method was used selling it straight into local syndication markets that had been the lifeblood of star trek for almost two decades the targeted audience for this outing were people born between 1953 and 1976 when star trek the next generation ended its historic seven year run in 1994 the targeted ad audience on the way out was 47 boomer and 53 gen x for the first time the boomer audience was actually shrinking star trek had truly found its next generation ironically this is a 1989 tv commercial which shows how advertisers were dealing with the shift from boomers to generation x and how they used william shatner of all people to illustrate
[Music] [Music] now with the unprecedented success of the next generation and i do mean unprecedented it not only did well in the 18 to 34 demographic when it was airing it dominated the 18 to 34 demographic when it was aired so paramount decided to do something they had never considered before they launched a second tv show just as the next generation had hit its highest ratings ever this truck was different it featured a slightly larger cast and would show a much darker soap opera like atmosphere that was aimed at generation x whose tv habits showed that they gravitated towards
more inter-character conflict and for the very first time it would show characters somewhat like schrodinger’s cat they were neither good nor bad until you opened it up to take a close look at the motivation at any given point finally about midway through its run they tweaked it again based off audience reactions driven mainly by generation x who by this time had become the single largest group of star trek fans in the advertising demographic unlike their boomer predecessors they liked their characters much more three-dimensional and conflicted at this point however a significant number of older fans began to lament deep space nine just wasn’t star trek in fact it was simply pretending to be star trek now unfortunately this perception dogged at the series as time went on and the show never really got the credit it deserved until much later when it was
so there you are having a drink with a couple friends and discussing last night’s episode of star trek when right out of nowhere the lady next to you slams her drink down and yells that’s not star trek and now the real fun begins join me after the break as i present a logical explanation as to why so many star trek fans can’t agree about their favorite show [Music] now if you’re like me you’ve probably left comments on youtube videos and been surprised by the vehemence in some of the responses to you from star trek fans who don’t like your star trek in today’s world of ad-free television
streaming it is remarkably easier to forget that broadcast television was is and will forever be about advertising dollars the most lucrative segment of the american general public is the male age group 18 to 34. these are the people who are most likely to spend money as a direct result of seeing an ad on tv or something in a movie so whenever new content is produced for broadcast that content’s main target audience must be the male 18 to 34 demographic if it can’t pull in good numbers in that area it’s going to fail now this is how shows like the wwe’s monday night raw have been able to successfully stay on weeknight tv for over 30 years and with a full-time schedule it does not include repeats and very few preemptions it does this by continually reinventing itself to match the current 18 to 34
group and that’s why you have people who argue about who was the best wrestler hulk hogan ric flair steve austin goldberg the rock the undertaker now there are fans as the years went by that hate other wrestlers they hate hulk hogan they hate john cena nobody really hates the undertaker but you get where i’m going with this right there’s a pattern to this the original star trek ran from 1966 until 1969 so in order to discuss why different fans like different shows we need to take a look at exactly who the show was positioned for when it was being created and broadcast star trek was written to appeal to people born between 1932 and 1951 that meant that when it went off the air in 1969 its targeted ad audience was 50 the silent generation
and fifty percent baby boomers now four years later star trek came back but this time as a saturday morning cartoon series now jane rydenberry and company used the cartoon as a vehicle to continue to make the same themes and stories as the original series using the same writers executive producer dc fontana would say for years afterwards that the cartoon actually was years four and five of the original five-year mission now as such the animated series like the original was written to appeal to people born between 1932 and 1951 but airing as a saturday morning cartoon the network targeted the cartoon at children born between 1960 and 1965 and children did discover this cartoon
some of them found the cartoon liked the cartoon didn’t even know there was a tv series as a result when it went off the air its resulting audience was 85 boomer and 15 generation x now gene reinberry did learn one actual important thing here though he found out that you could actually produce trek in such a way that it would perform well in the targeted age groups and still continue to draw the original boomer audiences as well now this would become a critical foundation for star trek’s fandom for the next two decades now 14 years would pass and the world changed we had moved far away from the vietnam war double-digit inflation and well into the economic boom of the 1980s in 1987 star trek returned again as a weekly television series this time featuring a completely new cast and set in a new
timeline as the series began a completely new distribution method was used selling it straight into local syndication markets that had been the lifeblood of star trek for almost two decades the targeted audience for this outing were people born between 1953 and 1976 when star trek the next generation ended its historic seven year run in 1994 the targeted ad audience on the way out was 47 boomer and 53 gen x for the first time the boomer audience was actually shrinking star trek had truly found its next generation ironically this is a 1989 tv commercial which shows how advertisers were dealing with the shift from boomers to generation x and how they used william shatner of all people to illustrate
[Music] [Music] now with the unprecedented success of the next generation and i do mean unprecedented it not only did well in the 18 to 34 demographic when it was airing it dominated the 18 to 34 demographic when it was aired so paramount decided to do something they had never considered before they launched a second tv show just as the next generation had hit its highest ratings ever this truck was different it featured a slightly larger cast and would show a much darker soap opera like atmosphere that was aimed at generation x whose tv habits showed that they gravitated towards
more inter-character conflict and for the very first time it would show characters somewhat like schrodinger’s cat they were neither good nor bad until you opened it up to take a close look at the motivation at any given point finally about midway through its run they tweaked it again based off audience reactions driven mainly by generation x who by this time had become the single largest group of star trek fans in the advertising demographic unlike their boomer predecessors they liked their characters much more three-dimensional and conflicted at this point however a significant number of older fans began to lament deep space nine just wasn’t star trek in fact it was simply pretending to be star trek now unfortunately this perception dogged at the series as time went on and the show never really got the credit it deserved until much later when it was