The challenge in the 1960s was that *I Love Lucy* was over. Ball was still producing and starring in *The Lucy Show* (1962–1968), which was successful. But *The Lucy Show* was not *I Love Lucy*; it did not have the same cultural saturation or the same syndication value. The studio needed new hit series to build its content library for the next decade.
The economics of television production in the mid-1960s created a structural problem for independent producers like Desilu. Networks paid a set fee per episode of programming — a license fee that represented roughly 80 percent of production cost. The remaining 20 percent — the “deficit” — was absorbed by the production company. This arrangement was intended to encourage quality production while giving networks control over their budgets. Its actual effect was to systematically underfund production and push the financial risk onto the studios.
For a production company with a large film library that generated steady income — like a major studio — the deficit could be absorbed as a cost of doing business, offset by the income from other assets. For Desilu, which had a physical plant but limited film library income, the deficit financing required by any substantial commitment to new series production was a genuine financial strain.
This was the economic environment into which Gene Roddenberry’s science fiction pitch arrived in 1964.
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## Gene Roddenberry Before Star Trek
Gene Roddenberry is remembered primarily as the creator of *Star Trek*, but the arc that brought him to that creation was anything but direct, and understanding the route he took illuminates both the content of the show he eventually made and the specific way it was sold.