If MST3K were to ever come back to air on TV, it would require some format changes. I loved MST3K, but I have to admit that 2-hours of a Saturday was a lot to commit to a show. I think that it would require partnering with one of the big media giants who already hold the rights to a bunch of things, like NBC/Universal who has thousands of craphole movies and billions of hours of terrible TV to pull from. Tell the media giant that MST3K will make the worst, crappiest movies dryrotting in their archives instant gold, and then release it direct to DVD. Or if they did an on-air version, cut a 2-hour movie to one hour, only showing the most riffable parts. No one really ever cared about the plot of the obscure, plotless movies anyway - it was all about the riffs.
Please do not misunderstand me - I mean no disrespect to RiffTrax et al despite any strong rhetoric I may have used in the past.
However, there were some incredibly lame, horribly crappy, low budget, stupid movies out there that were a lot of fun to riff, and because they will never be on DVD, we may never see them riffed. For example, my favorite MST3K of all time is Space Mutiny. I dont know how a movie could be any more horrible, between the acting, writing, unapologetic overuse of Battlestar Galactica stock footage, and all the scifi cliche that could be crammed into one horrible movie - all making the riffs even more hilarious. As bad as Hollywood-produced movies on DVD are now, they will never be this bad.
So, RiffTrax covers the higher budget, newer movies that may not even be all that bad. MST3K covers the obscure crap rotting in archives that weve never heard of.