Paramount Pictures/History with Star Trek/Demise of franchise/prime universe/Changes hands

Though not directly related, a further aggravating circumstance for Star Trek was, that in January 2006, the former Viacom was split into two separate, independent companies: CBS Corporation and a new Viacom. The split resulted in an extensive "Studio Shuffle" with all the unsavory studio politics surrounding it, not unlike the one that had befallen the studio back in 1991 when The Undiscovered Country was in production, with executives fired, hired, promoted, demoted, reassigned, and not few of them hostile to Star Trek as has been, but ending up in places where it mattered to Star Trek nevertheless, most conspicuously Leslie Moonves, a reputed hater "of all things Sci-Fi" – Star Trek included. Moonves, in his previous position as head of Paramount Television in favor of the earlier by Hart thwarted 2003 in-house cancellation decision, had actually been the executive who personally ordained the ultimate cancellation of Enterprise in February 2005, therefore in turn effectively thwarting the efforts of his now subordinate Garry Hart to keep the show alive, and thus ending Star Trek prime as well for the time being. Less than a year later Moonves ended UPN as well. (In Conversation: Writing Star Trek: Enterprise; ) Within a year, all executives known, or even rumored, to have been Star Trek-"friendly", were either let go or reassigned to other positions within the conglomerate – only forced to leave as well after the split became effective in January 2006; these included in addition to Garry Hart among others, Sherry Lansing (ironically Moonves' superior until 2004, when the latter was promoted to co-CEO of old Viacom), Kerry McCluggage and, ultimately, Rick Berman (who, unlike every other Star Trek production staffer, had studio tenure) as well.
CBS Corporation was given ownership of Paramount Television, which until then had always been a dependent division of Paramount Pictures, and was renamed "CBS Paramount Television", eventually known as "CBS Television Studios", and most recently CBS Studios, incidentally terminating UPN in the process. It was therefore from now on CBS that exercised ownership of the Star Trek franchise and television series, while Paramount Pictures, now part of the new Viacom, retained the rights to the Star Trek films through a license from CBS Television Studios, which remained the sole entity holding the copyrights to the Star Trek franchise. For the movies this meant that, with the exception of the direct box-office takes, the subsequent home media sales and the sale of television rights – though an undisclosed, but likely hefty percentage of these still have to be paid as license fees – all other forms of revenues, most notably those of related merchandise, revert directly to CBS, not Paramount. An undesirable side-effect the split has caused, was the aggravation of the already controversial "Hollywood accounting" phenomenon.
Yet, for all the repercussions it has entailed for the franchise in practice, it must again be noted and reminded that, while the franchise has formally changed hands – that is, on paper at least – , actual end ownership has remained unchanged factually, as both new entities are still owned and fully controlled by National Amusements, the family owned holding group of "" Sumner Redstone (who not only continued to serve as CEO of new Viacom, but also as that of CBS Corporation – alongside Moonves – until 2016, when he was forced to step back due to age in favor of his daughter Shari) as it has always been ever since his former Viacom acquired the remnants of Gulf+Western back in 1994, until then the property of the Charles Bluhdorn family.