Why was st tng cancelled

Stewart is in the midst of filming the very last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation -the series signs off after seven seasons, with a two-hour finale the week of May and the most beloved TV baldy since Telly Savalas is clearly in need of a stress pill.

Of course, some backstage strain is inevitable whenever a hit series comes to the end of its run. But on the Next Generation set in late March, you could practically cut the tension with a phaser beam. Another cause for crankiness: Nobody here seems to have a clue why the show is being canceled. Some of us kept hoping there would be an eleventh-hour reprieve, that Paramount would realize how much money the show has made for them and change their minds.

Next Generation has been a warp-propelled profit machine from the start-and is still the highest-rated syndicated drama in the history of television, with 15 to 20 million viewers a week.

DeMille himself churned out pictures on the lot. Cancel Next Generation now? At the height of its success? Most illogical. Why would people go to movie theaters to see Next Generation if new episodes were available on TV every week? In fact, some cast members seem positively blase about it. According to TNG 's executive producer Rick Berman when EW interviewed him in , "the decision to end Next Generation after a seven-season run was made at least two years and two Paramount regimes ago".

Paramount's rationale for ending TNG was driven by the increasing budget for the series and the studio's desire to keep the Star Trek movie franchise going. The decision was thus made to end TNG as a series and relaunch it as a feature film franchise.

As Paramount's executive producer of domestic television Joel Berman told EW in "The bottom line is that a successful feature-film franchise can be more profitable than a TV series. Since TNG' s producers were aware the series would end in season 7 and get relaunched as a movie, they were able to plan a finale that would end the show on their own terms. TNG 's series finale, "All Good Things", is hailed as one of the show's best episodes and was watched by 30 million viewers.

The cast was surprised to learn that Paramount was ending the series early, despite the tentative Season 8 plans, with many of the actors intending to continue their roles on television before the cancelation announcement. While the series remained popular and profitable, Paramount theorized that the franchise could be more profitable as a feature film series. Four days after wrapping production on the series finale, the main cast began principal photography on Star Trek Generations , which premiered six months after The Next Generation 's finale aired.

The Next Generation cast would assemble for four feature films total, eventually ending with 's Star Trek: Nemesis. Similarly, Paramount was already in the midst of filling the void left by The Next Generation by expanding its next wave of Star Trek programming. And as The Next Generation was deep in production for its seventh and final season, Paramount began development on the new television series Star Trek: Voyager to help launch its new network UPN.

Voyager premiered in January , less than a year after The Next Generation wrapped its seven-season run, continuing Paramount's vision of having two television series running concurrently while new feature films starring The Next Generation cast were being produced.