In a nutshell: RCA owned NBC. And NBC paid Desilu to produce Star Trek. The iconic science-fiction TV show was expensive to make, and often ran over on its production budget. Meanwhile, its Nielsen ratings were nothing to write home about. That's a recipe for getting your show canceled after one season. But, even with middling ratings and a bloated budget, Star Trek looked extraordinary on color televisions. And RCA was very much in the business of selling color televisions. So you can imagine that parent company RCA might have given NBC a nudge to renew its deal with Desilu after Star Trek's first season. There were other factors, of course. But it's nice to have also those bright gold, blue and red shirts popping off the TV screen when you're trying to convince someone to plop down $400 or $500 for a color TV in 1967. (That's between $3,000 and $4,000 today.)
Further reading:
- Star Trek Fact Check: Star Trek and Color Television Households
- The Trek BBS: The reason for the bright colors in TOS???
- Fanlore: History of Star Trek Fan Campaigns
Other Star Trek-related posts
- 1975 Power Records recording with a trio of Star Trek tales
- Unfortunate apparel of 1980: The official Star Trek duty jacket
- Advertisements for a pair of 1980s Star Trek games
- Telegram: Sandra & Leonard Nimoy plead with JFK for a safer planet
- The Nimoy Award for 1967 goes to Miss Nancyann Hiera!
- From 1982: William Shatner peddles Commodore's VIC-20
- Illustration: "Revolving Poker Rack" from Pacific Game Company
- Very authentic Star Trek postcard for Annika in Sweden
- Some WKBS-48 nostalgia
- Papergreat's 3,000th post, with a special celebrity guest
- Stay-at-home shelfie #43
- Snapshot & memories: Me in a Star Trek shirt
- Not just any old Star Trek paperback
1. I don't know what magazine, but there's an article about the politics of the Middle East on the other side. The page dimensions are 10½ inches by 13½ inches. So it could be Life.
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