Next year’s ‘Star Trek’ reboot may have naked aliens and swearing, CBS digital chief says
CBS Interactive CEO Jim Lanzone says the online-only show can boldly go where broadcast can’t.
CBS is still making TV the old-fashioned way, and that’s where it says most of its audience is: 90 percent of viewers either watch TV live or on the DVRs plugged into their TVs.
But so far, the broadcast network has convinced more than a million people to pay $6 a month for CBS All Access, CBS Interactive CEO Jim Lanzone said on the latest episode of Recode Media with Peter Kafka. And it’s planning to use that digital platform to carry some of its big upcoming shows, including a “The Good Wife” spinoff and a reboot of “Star Trek.”
“Sci-fi is not something that has traditionally done really well on broadcast,” Lanzone said. “It’s not impossible, for the future, if somebody figures it out. But historically, a show like ‘Star Trek’ wouldn’t necessarily be a broadcast show, at this point.”
The first episodes of both of those shows will debut in broadcast, before the rest of the series move online. And once they go digital, they won’t have to play by the FCC’s broadcast rules — i.e., nudity! And cursing!
“The showrunners were like ‘Oh yeah, we could do that,’” Lanzone recalled. “Of course, the response is, ‘As long as it serves the story.’ But yeah!”
“Naked aliens, and humans?” Kafka asked.
“Theoretically.”
“And swearing?”
“Whatever future swearing, 300 years in the future, would be.”
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This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
