NBC canceled *Star Trek* at the end of the third season in June 1969. The last original episode aired on June 3, 1969. The cancellation was not surprising given the ratings trajectory and the scheduling; what no one at NBC anticipated was what would happen to the show after cancellation.
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## The Sale of Desilu: Ball Leaves Before the Payoff
The story of *Star Trek* at Desilu ends with a sale before anyone could see what the studio had been building.
In 1967, Lucille Ball negotiated the sale of Desilu Productions to Gulf + Western, the conglomerate that had recently acquired Paramount Pictures. The sale was finalized and announced in July 1967. Ball sold her shares for $17 million. The studio was subsequently absorbed into Paramount Television and ceased to exist as an independent entity.
The timing was significant in ways that became apparent only later. When Ball sold Desilu in 1967, *Star Trek* was in its second season on NBC. The show had not yet demonstrated the syndication value that would eventually make it one of the most valuable properties in television history. The reruns had not yet begun. The fan base, while real, had not yet grown to the size it would reach in the 1970s. The films were not yet conceivable.
From a purely financial standpoint, Ball sold Desilu at precisely the wrong time for maximizing the return on the investment the studio had made in *Star Trek*. Had she held on through 1968 and the show’s cancellation, the studio would have owned a 79-episode library that entered syndication in 1969 and proceeded to air in over 200 markets worldwide — generating the revenue from reruns and international sales that is the ultimate payoff for the deficit financing that production companies absorb during a show’s initial run.