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Damn you JMS!

Eh, we sell things all the time to ourselves. Matter of fact, probably about 90% or more of our purchases are within the Mother Conglomerate
 
Sure, it happens all of the time in a great many industries.

However, when you are purposely selling internally at a loss ... just so that you can hide the money that is being made from the contractor(s) who actually created the product ...... I would still contend that the behavior is unethical (though not illegal).

The fairer way to treat the profit participation deals for writers etc. would be to keep track of profits based on the entire parent conglomerate. Of course, the corporations would never want to because they don't want to pay out profit sharing to people just because they earned it. (And I do realize that would be another accounting nightmare.)
 
JoeDeM has previously spelled out in great detail how these situations come to pass - basically it comes down to WB being a collection of smaller "competing" companies rather than one big family working for mutual benefit.

If US corporate law works the same way as UK does, even transactions between subsidiary companies of the same parent have to cross-sell their services under commercial terms in order not to have the Revenue (tax people) jumping up and down).

One client of a previous employer of mine was a large construction company, one of whose subsids was a Plant Hire company. However, the building/construction arm always hired its plant from elsewhere as the sister company had made a policy decision not to undercut the competitions prices just because the two were related ... and both companies made decent profits.

From what JdeM has said previously the WB empire is related by name only in many ways.

The studio that owns B5 (and on which JMS' profits are made) is one company, whereas WHV (who made the DVDs) is effectively another separate company. WB sub-contracts the making and marketing of the DVDs to WHV who then pay a licence fee to WB and the costs of the making and marketing. Any profit that they make is then legitimately theirs and not WB (the studio), so doesn't count towards JMS' profits figures.

Likewise, Dell/Del Rey with the B5 novels and the other companies that made merchandise etc.

I don't believe that anyone would be "purposely selling internally at a loss" just to "hide" the money. However, they will certainly be building in as many expenses as they can in order to keep the profit levels down - this may even include things like ongoing storage fees for the original film prints of the show (even though they didn't look after than very well).

Big conglomerates are strange beasts by all accounts, and I don't get the impression that WB are any stranger than the norm.

JMS seems resigned to the profit situation being the way it is because he knows that is the way it is in Hollywood. I am sure I recall reading several tales of naive young actors taking low fees for movies with a promise of a percentage of the profits, only for the movies to do huge box office, but still be "in the red" according to the studio, and therefore not liable to make any further payment to said actors.
 
JMS's latest post regarding the script books. Also some bad news/maybe good news about the quote book:
Title: Re: ATTN JMS: What happened to the Quote Book??
Author: jmsatb5@aol.com
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2005 08:36:00 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: <1129624522.344654.183860@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>


Wendy of NJ wrote:
>
> So Joe, what happened to the quote book?
>
> -Wendy

The book was going to come out from Simon and Shuster under Byron
Preiss' ibooks imprint...but just as things were being finalized, Byron
was killed in a car accident, and the whole reason I'd placed that (and
the other books of mine) with ibooks was because of Byron being there.
So when he was gone, there was no reason to keep it there, and I'm not
sure what the future for ibooks is going to be without him there to
oversee it.

We are, however, considering bringing it out via the same venue as the
B5 script books, should that initial publication work out as planned.

And speaking of...the babylon5scripts.com site is scheduled to go live
at the end of the month. I've finished writing the last bits --
captions for some of the behind-the-scene photos I took back then,
including the first makeup tests of G'Kar, Londo and Delenn, candid
shots of the cast and crew, the first time we assembled everyone...it's
quite a cool look back, and stuff nobody's ever seen.

But the main thing, again, is the publication of the scripts. It's
been an exhaustive process, gathering up all the script files, cleaning
them up, and writing introductions for all of the episodes. (The
intros are now averaging about 40-50 pages each per volume...so that by
the end, there will be enough new content in the intros to make a whole
book all by itself.) It's a real chance, with the passage of time, to
talk about stuff I could never talk about before, and other stuff I can
now discuss in more detail than could be possible in an article or a
convention appearance.

So keep an eye out...the site goes live in about ten days....

jms

Jan
 
I know how you feel, Londos6. I checked and JMS announced the project back in May 2002. Let's hope all goes well with the script books so we can look forward to this again.

Jan
 
CURSES CURSES I just realized that my namesake Shaal Mayan won't be in the script book as JMS did not write that episode I believe it was written by D C Fontana.CURSES CURSES.You know what this forum needs is a shouting icon and one seems to get sick type icon.
 
Order placed. Now I will just sit here and wait. Wait, wait and wait. In about 10 days, I'll hopefully get my hands on the first book... Now that day will be indeed a great one!
 
I just am not quite the rabid B5 fan most of you folk are. :eek:

Would some of you "spoil" the script info for the cheaper of us? :)
 

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