Paramount Pictures/History with Star Trek/Creating an overall Star Trek franchise/Becoming "The Franchise"

By the time the television series went into production, the studio's stance and attitude towards Star Trek had radically changed from the one it had back in 1967. Studio Executive Brandon Tartikoff had already stated by the time The Next Generation went into its fifth season, "When you look at the books, you saw that Star Trek: The Next Generation was a twenty-five-million-dollar-goody, every year. That's the profit it would generate for Paramount." (Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Continuing Mission, p. 155) Stephen Poe observed two years later for himself how much the studio's stance and attitude had changed, when he resided at the studio on an extended stay in order to chronicle the genesis of the fourth live action Star Trek series, Voyager. Poe noticed that studio employees, executives included, were almost unanimously and reverently referring to their Star Trek property as "The Franchise" due to its reliable and consistent revenue stream, having been from the mid-1980s through the 1990s Paramount's most profitable property, much to the envy of industry competitors. It was by no means a coincidence that Warner Bros' Babylon 5, concurrently premiering around the same time as Deep Space Nine, resembled Paramount's by then well-oiled marketing of Star Trek in more than one respect. Yet, while the Babylon 5 franchise enjoyed a considerable measure of success while its original series was produced and aired, it eventually fell apart after the failure of its spin-off series and movies, with the result that Babylon 5 had nowhere near the longevity the Star Trek franchise enjoyed. Excepting Star Wars, other science fiction franchises, very popular at the time of their production, like Battlestar Galactica, Farscape, , or Firefly have fared little better, if at all.Even more obscure became SeaQuest DSV of Universal Studios – which, most ironically and like United Artists, had also declined to become part of the Star Wars franchise in the mid-1970s – on which Voyager production staffer Ben Betts had worked and who has confirmed, "They definitely wanted to have something like Star Trek. They wouldn't say that aloud, but that was what they were going for. They were trying to find Star Trek under water. Everything was there, except for the stories. They didn't have enough of a human element so they'd get caught up in the technology… kind of fall back on the technology to bail everybody out by the end of the episode. It was plain as day to people working on the show. Everything was right. They were spending the money to make the graphics look good, the CGI [note: produced by Amblin Imaging, especially established for seaQuest, and later working on the CGI of the first two seasons of Voyager] looked great, the sets were well lit, they had a pretty good cast… but it didn't work. It still wasn't Star Trek. (A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager, p. 54)Yet, there actually has been one non-American, even older, science fiction/fantasy franchise that has emulated to a large extent the popularity and longevity of Star Trek, the BBC-produced Doctor Who franchise. However, due to its distinct "Britishness", the appeal of Doctor Who has remained somewhat limited to the United Kingdom and its Commonwealth, contrary to Star Treks worldwide appeal. (A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager, pp. 50-51)
Reporter Mark A. Altman disclosed that the entire franchise – which is otherwise loath to report the other revenue streams themselves, apart from the box office takes – had already passed the US$1 billion mark in total studio revenues by 1993 (Cinefantastique, Vol 24 #3/4, p. 16), which was upped to US$2 billion gross in Entertainment Weeklys Special Star Trek Issue of 18 January 1995. In his 1998 book A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager (p. 55), Stephen Poe cited a Los Angeles Times article, that claimed nearly US$2 billion franchise revenues in retail sales alone. While the gross box office takes of the Star Trek franchise, US$1.9 billion as of 2015, are relatively well known, the gross revenues from the other franchise elements remain shrouded in mystery (the 1995 Entertainment Weekly US$2 billion statement, implied a rough fifty-fifty split at that time). In December 1998 the Los Angeles Times reported a US$3.5 billion aggregate consumer merchandise turnover, which did not include the box office takes and their derivative home media formats sales, constituting a considerable upward adjustment from the US$1.3 billion franchise total gross they reported four years earlier in May 1994. Richard Arnold has later on reported a US$10 billion total turnover in July 2016, which like the 1994 Los Angeles Times figure, constituted a franchise total up until then, thus also including box office takes and home media format sales, and thus implying a roughly 80/20 split between all merchandise and box office takes – was just released at the time of Arnold's report, its total box office take therefore not yet known. 
Despite the reluctance of the franchise to divulge more detailed figures itself, but with revenues undoubtedly running in the billions over the decades, Star Trek has become one of the most successful media franchises in history. Yet, it is the financial success of the younger Star Wars franchise, a franchise rival right from the start, and sporting far fewer movie or television productions, that is truly staggering, dwarfing that of Star Trek. (see: main article)