In 1974, Barry Diller started his tenure as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Paramount Pictures Corporation.

[6] Paramount Pictures purchased the Hughes Television Network including its satellite time in planning for PTVS[7] in 1976.

Planned too was a series derived from Paramount's version of The War of The Worlds (1953) as "backup" for Phase II; a pilot presentation was completed by the film's producer George Pal.

[12][13] At the time, Star Trek was being broadcast on 137 stations in the United States in syndication, and it was expected that the new television as an effort for the station could become the fourth national network in the United States;[14] Diller and his assistant Michael Eisner had hired Jeffrey Katzenberg to manage Star Trek into production with a television film due to launch the new series at a cost of $3.2 million – which would have been the most expensive television movie ever made.

[6] Meanwhile, Paramount, long successful in syndication with repeats of Star Trek,[citation needed] with several impressively popular first-run syndicated series[19] by the turn of the 1990s, in Entertainment Tonight, Hard Copy, Webster (which moved from ABC for its last two seasons), The Arsenio Hall Show, Friday the 13th: The Series, War of the Worlds (unrelated to the 1970s attempt) and Star Trek: The Next Generation.