Paramount Television Service
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| Type | Unrealized broadcast television network |
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| Country | United States |
| Availability | Never launched |
| Founded | by Barry Diller |
| Owner | Paramount Pictures/Gulf+Western |
| Key people | Charles Bluhdorn Barry Diller Martin Davis Richard Frank Michael Eisner Mel Harris |
| Launch date | Scheduled for April-May 1978 |
| Callsigns | PMTS |
The Paramount Television Service (or PMTS for short) was the name of a proposed but ultimately, unrealized "fourth television network" from the major American film studio, Paramount Pictures (then a unit of Gulf+Western). It was a forerunner for what would become UPN (the United Paramount Network), which launched 17 years after plans for the Paramount Television Service fizzled.
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[edit] History
[edit] Background
In 1974, Barry Diller started his tenure as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Paramount Pictures Corporation. With Diller at the helm, the studio produced hit television programs such as Laverne & Shirley (1976), Taxi (1978), and Cheers (1982). With his television background, Diller kept pitching an idea of his to the board: a fourth commercial network.[1]
[edit] The plan
Set to launch in April or May 1978[2][3], its programming would have initially consisted of only one night a week. Thirty "Movies of the Week" would have followed Star Trek: Phase II on Saturday nights. The network would've technically, been an ad hoc syndicated package, similar to Universal Studios and Paramount's Operation Prime Time.
- See also: 1977-78 United States network television schedule, 1978-79 United States network television schedule, Independent station (North America), and List of Paramount Pictures films
[edit] The plans fizzle out
Despite Barry Diller's best efforts, the Paramount board, and studio chief Charles Bluhdorn, wouldn't bite. Bluhdorn worried that PMTS would lose too much money.[4] Bluhdorn's successor, Martin Davis[5] was also reluctant. Ultimately, Star Trek: Phase II was transformed into Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). Diller then took his fourth network idea with him when he moved to 20th Century Fox[6] in 1984, where the new proprietor, Rupert Murdoch[7], was a more interested listener.
- See also: Fox Broadcasting Company
[edit] Beyond the Paramount Television Service
In the immediate years following the cancellation of the proposed network, Paramount would contribute some programs to Operation Prime Time, like the mini-series A Woman Called Golda, and the weekly pop music program, Solid Gold. (Paramount Television didn't use its own television logo, in these cases; a different, darker logo--originally intended to be Paramount Television Service's station ident--was seen instead. This logo would later be reworked as the second production logo of Paramount Home Entertainment in 1979.)
Paramount, and its eventual parent Viacom, didn't forget about the possibility of their own television network. Independent stations, even more than network affiliates, were feeling the growing pressure of audience erosion to cable television in the 1980s and 1990s, and there were unaffiliated commercial stations in most of the major markets, at least, even after the foundation of FOX in 1986.
Meanwhile, Paramount, long successful in syndication with repeats of Star Trek, found itself with several impressively popular first-run syndicated series[8] by the turn of the 1990s, in Entertainment Tonight, The Arsenio Hall Show, Friday the 13th: The Series, War of the Worlds and, perhaps most importantly of all, the two new Star Trek franchises, Star Trek: The Next Generation[9] and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
[edit] See also
- Star_Trek:_The_Motion_Picture#Origins
- Star Trek: Phase II
- Paramount Television
- Paramount Television Network
- UPN
[edit] References
- ^ "The men leading the Paramount Television Service," as a sales brochure for the venture said, became some of the most influential players in the entertainment industry. They included Barry Diller, then chairman of Paramount Pictures; Michael Eisner, the studio's president; Richard Frank, its vice president, later president of the Walt Disney Studios; and Mel Harris, currently co-president and chief operating officer of Sony Pictures.
- ^ In 1977, Paramount announced that the service, dubbed PTVS, would launch in May 1978 with a single night of programming: an original movie and the series "Star Trek: Phase 2."
- ^ Four years later, in May of 1977, Paramount began work on a film based on Star Trek. Within a month, the film had been cancelled and a new television series was in production. Paramount was intent on forming a new, "fourth" television network that would launch in April of 1978. Instead, on March 28th, 1978, Paramount officially announced -- again -- that Star Trek would be hitting the big screen. This time, the announcement bore fruit: Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released on December 7th, 1979.
- ^ To Diller's chagrin, Paramount pulled the plug six months before the venture was to make its debut. Studio chief Charles Bluhdorn worried PTVS would lose too much money, though the $40-million projection is less than 5 percent of the losses incurred by UPN thus far.
- ^ Diller, Eisner and their team kept trying to revive the network, only to be thwarted by the late Martin Davis, who replaced Bluhdorn in 1983. "It took Martin Davis until '93 to say, 'Go do it,'" recalls Lucie Salhany, a former president of Paramount's syndication division, the. Fox network and UPN, who currently operates her own media consulting firm. "There was always a dream at Paramount to have another network,!, and it was handed down from generation to generation. In '84 we tried to do it again."
- ^ In fact, Paramount had "meeting after meeting," as Salhany recalls, with Tribune Co., the TV station group owner presently aligned with the WB. Frustrated, Diller left to become chairman of Fox, which spent $1.5 billion to acquire the six Metromedia TV stations, providing the foundation for the Fox network.
- ^ Diller quit his job in 1984 over a dispute with Gulf & Western's new head, Martin S. Davis, and went to work for Twentieth Century-FOX. After the studio was acquired by Australian newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch in 1985, Diller embarked on a plan to launch a fourth television network to compete with the Big Three. The nucleus of the network consisted of Metromedia Television, a group of seven big-city television stations reaching 23% of the population, which Murdoch purchased from John Kluge in 1986 for $2 billion. Lining up an amalgam of local UHF and VHF stations, FOX Broadcasting started out cautiously in 1987 with only two nights of prime-time programming, but by 1990 it had expanded its schedule to five nights. Diller had succeeded against all odds by developing low cost "reality" programming such as Cops and America's Most Wanted and alternative fare such as In Living Color, Married...with Children, and The Simpsons, aimed at the youth audience, ages 18-34.
- ^ She moved to Paramount Domestic Television in Los Angeles as president in 1985 and supervised the production of Entertainment Tonight, The Arsenio Hall Show, Hard Copy, and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
- ^ Fox executives, on the other hand, was extremely interested in getting its hands on a new Star Trek program to help bolster its new, fourth network. But eventually, even Fox was unable to come to terms with Paramount. Fox wanted the series ready for March of 1987 to coincide with the launch of the Fox Television Network; Paramount felt September of 1987 was the earliest it could have the show ready for airing. Paramount wanted a twenty-six episode commitment; Fox was only willing to commit to thirteen. Additionally, Paramount had become concerned that the continued success of the original Star Trek in syndication and on the big screen would be hurt if a new series with the original characters was launched.
[edit] External links
- Paramount Television - imdb.com
- OPT/Paramount Television Service - Commercial
- Paramount Television Service (Edit) - Google Video
- After 5 years, the WB and UPN still head in different directions
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