Paramount Pictures/History with Star Trek/Syndicating TOS/Resurgence

Earliest known trade journal Star Trek studio syndication advertisments	
 	
Broadcasting, 24 March 1969 	Broadcasting, 4 August 1969
 	
Broadcasting, 2 February 1970 	Broadcasting, 16 February 1970
Yet, very shortly after the studio had made Roddenberry the offer, Paramount found that its hot potato was quickly turning into a hot property due to its huge and unexpected success in syndication in the early 1970s. In effect, the very first time Paramount sold syndication rights was already in 1969 while the third season was still being aired in its original run on NBC. The buyer, Kaiser Broadcasting (which operated a small chain of local television stations along the West and East Coast), immediately started to broadcast Star Trek after NBC had canceled the series on a daily basis and, much to their delight, observed a steep rise in viewership and ratings, the latter identified in Star Trek lore as the reason why the Original Series was canceled by NBC in the first place. (Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, 1997, pp. 417-418) The phenomenon was not lost on other local television stations, and thus the spectacular resurgence of Star Trek in syndication started. It was around that time that Paramount discovered that Roddenberry was selling Star Trek merchandise through Lincoln Enterprises, which was formally an illegal endeavor, as he simply did not own the brand. Yet, both parties struck a deal, which allowed Roddenberry to continue in return of a percentage of the sales, as Paramount also started to realize that their Star Trek property was not a bad one to have after all. Not yet having a well oiled Star Trek marketing machine of their own, Lincoln Enterprises suited the needs of the studio well in raising the awareness of their increasingly profitable Star Trek brand. By early 1987, when a new television series, , went into pre-production, Variety magazine of 2 December 1991 was able to report that the Original Series had by then netted the studio already over US$1 million dollar per episode in domestic syndication fees alone, thus excluding the by then substantial sales revenues abroad, as well as those stemming from home media format, and affiliated merchandise sales. Considering the average production cost of US$190,000 per episode, this turned out to be a more than healthy return on investment, especially since Paramount had not borne the costs of the normally most expensive first season of a production that was essentially thrown into the deal. Any Desilu book losses in regard to the Star Trek production would have been accounted for in the purchase price paid by Paramount. Susan Sackett, Roddenberry's personal assistant, had dryly noted that it was NBC which had borne most (but not all) of the production costs (also explaining why there had been NBC financial experts present in the first place at the due diligence audit back in 1967), not Paramount. (, issue 43, p. 14)
Now a less pleasant side of doing business in Hollywood came to the fore in full force, as it became concurrently known that the studio had shortchanged at least one of its other stakeholders, Roddenberry, who was still legally entitled a full one third of the net profits (in exchange for surrendering any and all other legal title to the series, save for his "Created By" credit, according to James Van Hise). Roddenberry was by 1981 perpetually led to believe by the studio that the Original Series was still deeply in the red by as much as US$1 million – or US$500,000 by 1982, again according to Van Hise (The Man Who Created Star Trek: Gene Roddenberry, p. 58) – as supposedly "proven" by doctored account statements handed over to him. Roddenberry instructed his attorney, Leonard Maizlish, to start legal proceedings in order to be given access to Paramount's records, seemingly to no avail initially. "The greatest science fiction in show biz is in the accounting", Roddenberry declared chagrined, referring to the infamous "Hollywood accounting" industry phenomenon. (, issue 43, p. 14) Roddenberry had reasons to be suspicious, as it seemed unlikely that the by 1987 reported net syndication profit of US$78 million dollar was only realized in the intervening six years. While it was at the time unknown what the outcome of the legal proceedings would be, it should be noted that it was around this time that Roddenberry entered into his below-mentioned financially advantageous movie deal with the studio. It was conceivable that Roddenberry and the studio settled their Original Series accounts on that occasion, as Roddenberry became a wealthy man from then on. That this was indeed the case came to light in 1994 when it was revealed that the studio disbursed US$5.3 million in profit distribution to Roddenberry between June 1984 and July 1987.