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IS THIS THE END OF THE B5 UNIVERSE?

D

**DONOTDELETE**

Guest
Hello B5 fans

my name is jason and i live in Australia.

I have watched and loved Babylon 5 over the years and found it very hard to swallow the end of B5. Then when i learned of Crusade it all began again the B5 universe was back. I have watached all 13 episodes on video and and when i went to find more i am finding that it has not been made.

The long ranger movie has not aired in Australia yet and i hope it does.

How can JMS allow the universe he created to be left in such a shambles. for at this rate the Draak win, we must have closure.

I read something on the bslr.com page that JMS had Said -
"I set out to tell the story I wanted to tell, and I told it. If something else in the B5 universe comes along, terrific, I'm there...but if not, that's okay too. It's like Zack said in Sleeping in Light, which was meant as a sorta coda to the production of the show...everything we set out to do, we did, and nobody can ever take that away."

This is true they have told an amazing story, but it is far from finished and if JMS and the B5/Crusade?long Ranger crew give up here then why did we bother to give them all thoses years of lives watching a show that does not end.

There are million of b5 fans over the world and we are all waiting for you JMS to please finish what you have started.

Please give the fans what they want forget the networks. If they are worried about the ratings they got at superbowl time then show it again on a normal day are the fans will prove the true ratings.

from reading all other B5/Crusade forums there is enough of us if we keep making noise someone will listen and Crusade will return.

From Jason
Love live the B5 universe
 
No i believe he was talking about B5lotr more so than B5 as a hole.

JMS stated ages ago that he had 5 - 7 run offs of B5 we have only seen 2. He still has B5 stories in his head its just up to him when and if he wants to do them /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif
 
<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by jaspland2002:
<font color=yellow>forget the networks.</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>And how is supposed to produce it then? With sockpuppets?<font color=yellow><blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>from reading all other B5/Crusade forums there is enough of us if we keep making noise someone will listen and Crusade will return. </font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>You do relize that you'd need several hundred thousand fans actively making noise before anyone would take even the slightest notice.
 
I have one thing to add to the rest of the responses. While it is nice that fans around the world like the show when it comes to getting a series made the reality of the situation is if your not in America you don't matter. For a series to be made a network is required. Networks only care about people who can watch their shows on their networks and make money for them. So while international markets can help with movies and home entertainment products(DVDs) they just are not a factor when television is concerned.
 
<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Doctor Gonzo:
<font color=yellow>I have one thing to add to the rest of the responses. While it is nice that fans around the world like the show when it comes to getting a series made the reality of the situation is if your not in America you don't matter. For a series to be made a network is required. Networks only care about people who can watch their shows on their networks and make money for them. So while international markets can help with movies and home entertainment products(DVDs) they just are not a factor when television is concerned.</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>

Ain't that the truth of it! Not born in the Good Ol' US of A then you may as well not exist! damn short sighted if you ask me but then hey, what do the overseas fans know
 
<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by superbob:
<font color=yellow>Ain't that the truth of it! Not born in the Good Ol' US of A then you may as well not exist! damn short sighted if you ask me but then hey, what do the overseas fans know</font color=yellow><hr></blockquote>I didn't think it had to do with their respect for over sees fans. I thought it had to do with their profit. If Sci-Fi had gone for a Rangers series, they would only receive the profit from airing it in the US. The oversees market is someone else's business. WB's I guess. And whichever station goes for it over there.

What I find weird is that the movie didn't air in Canada, where it was shot. But again, it was made for the USA so they would want to have the exclusive rights to it for awhile I'd think. /ubbthreads/images/icons/rolleyes.gif

We need an international sci-fi channel! B5 would find more support that way, I'm sure.
 
International markets do matter. Would you think that Warner does not ask the question: "how much long-term profit are we going to make with this?" Long-term profit from selling airing rights, VHS and DVD... is a factor which <font color=yellow>is</font color=yellow> considered. It determines how much income the studio can expect, and how much expenses it is willing to cover for the network.
 
Warner Brothers is a single company but it does not always work well together when divisions are concerned. The division of WB that makes tv shows concern is over dealings with networks. Networks are only concerned about their audience. So no, even to the part of WB that controls if a B5 tv series gets made foreign markets don't really matter. For the network it just makes sense business wise while for WB it means they aren't the best businessmen(or women) but are only concerned with what they have control over and how they are perceived by their higher ups, understandably so.
 
The key is "Warner" here. Sci-Fi channel doesn't care how much oversees people want to watch Rangers. Neither do they care about DVD sales.

Warner can care all it wants to, but without a network to initially broadcast it on, it just can't get the project off the ground.

Unless it can find another network that DOES want a Rangers series. I think the consensus of opinion is, even if a miracle occured and this happened, we couldn't get the original cast back.

So it isn't Warner's profit I was talking about, it was Sci-Fi's. Hope that clears it up.
 
Well I for one would love to see LoTR so why don't they aleast make a tidy little profit and put it on video/dvd and sell it to the rest of us if they don't want to sell the right to tv network overseas...
 
Hapatia had the right of it:
"The key is "Warner" here"
It's true, we've all had this discussion before but what it boils down to is WB has to exert it's influence bring in to focus the potential money making power with the overseas market.
The countries that I have seen represented on this forum are not just one or two:
Norway, Sweden, England, Scotland, Australia, South africa. Just to name a few!
 
<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Hapatia had the right of it: "The key is 'Warner' here" <hr></blockquote>

You misunderstood hypatia's post. The operative line was:

<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>Warner can care all it wants to, but without a network to initially broadcast it on, it just can't get the project off the ground.<hr></blockquote> (emphasis added)

For network read "American network". WB does not do international co-productions, or produce shows primarily for the international market. It produces shows for the American market, and makes its profit from its initial network deal or deficit finances (when it has to) in the hope of making up the difference with American reruns. The overseas income is gravy. It is not part of the initial calculations, or is so only peripherally. Ditto ancillary products like home video and merchandise.

This isn't xenophobia, it is realism. You have to realize that the American market is about the size of the entire European market plus the U.K. put together. It is hard enough producing shows that are going to attract enough people, while not offending too many, over here without worrying about people in fifty other countries.

So if there is no American network to buy, Warner Bros. has nothing to sell. Period. It doesn't matter how much interest there is in the show in Denmark, Australia or Estonia. It doesn't even matter how much interest there is in the show over here. If no network believes that interest will translate into enough ratings points to make a series (or a TV movie, or a mini-series) worthwhile for them, they aren't going to order it, and Warner Bros. isn't going to make it. I don't see the point of harrassing the studio about this.

Regards,

Joe
 
Actually, I don't know anything about "the business" of American television that I did not learn at this site! I don't want to give the wrong impression here. It is just that in the past couple of months this is what I've gathered from people like Joe DM and Savant B5 as well as others I'm sure.

They certainly sound like they know what they are talking about, and it is truly depressing. I seem to recall that B5 did better in the UK than it did here in the US. So it's a darned shame that the world market just gets ignored, but it does seem to be the case.

Just out of curiosity, if a foreign network did decide it would like to buy rights to the Rangers from WB, I would assume that they could, right? But the problem would be probably a lower bid for the rights, the writers, and the actors. So there might be a market but few involved would be interested in relocating to another country at half the expected salary.

Anyhow, I might be way off here. And I certainly don't want to spur a letter writing campaign to foreign networks! It just seems to me that you never hear of this happening, and I mean EVER. (Show A was cancelled but then sold to the UK or Germany or something.) So there must be a reason.

What still gives me hope for the long-term B5 story universe is the soon-to-be Red Dwarf movie. How long has Red Dwarf been off the air? Yet it seems to be popular enough to get the go-ahead for making a movie. Perhaps in time, after the dust settles, a new interest in B5 might form.

But it is a darned shame that there is no "International Network" out there.
 
Companies which do examine where their money comes from... are likely to outcompete ones which don't. It's a sane business strategy to examine where your money comes from. Unless sufficient proof should surface, I am not inclined to think that Warner Bros has managed to survive by doing the opposite.

Only when it comes to DVD sales might some movie studios stick their head in the sand... and fail to realize how much R1 sales actually go to other regions. They created the region code system after all, so they might be inclined to believe that it works. /ubbthreads/images/icons/wink.gif

But in most matters, sanity should prevail.
Because of competition.
 
The foreign markets not being a concern is because of competition. WB's tv division is concerned about what will make money for them. What makes money for them is shows being broadcast on American networks.

DVDs and foreign reruns only matter if an American network likes the show enough to produce several seasons.
 
And how much the network likes it... depends on how much Warner asks them to pay. By that logic, if the DVD disks of the same (or closely related) story are doing excellently, I in the position of a decision-maker would be willing to flex the price for a network.
 
Uh, no.

The people making the decisions have little to do with DVDs, which generally don't get made for series that get cancelled. DVDs don't come into play. That are not taken into consideration. DVDs are not a factor until a show is already successful.
 
<blockquote><font class="small">Quote:</font><hr>The people making the decisions have little to do with DVDs<hr></blockquote>

This isn't necessarily the case. One of the reasons that Warner Bros. television has stayed away from Warner Home Video is that - until the failed VHS/LD attempt with B5 - no live-action WB television show had ever been released on home video - in any form. So this wasn't a revenue stream that anyone had reason to consider.

DVD has radically altered the "TV shows on home video" picture. After decades in which hardly any shows (apart from kiddie animation and cult hits like The Twilight Zone and Star Trek) sold on home video, series on DVD are selling like hot cakes. Warner Bros. recently cancelled its "Best of Friends" sets in favor of releasing the entire first season. If that does well you can expect more TV product from the studio. (In fact, I expect a fair amount more by year's end.)

Now, if a big part of the reason that Sci-Fi passed on Rangers was Warner Bros.'s asking price and if the asking price was too high because WB didn't want to deficit-finance the show (meaning they wanted Sci-Fi to pay the whole roughly $1.2 or .3 million production cost) - well then seeing a future revenue stream for a series beyond cable TV reruns could make Warner reconsider. Especially if fans prove willing to buy cancelled and incomplete series - shows that could never be sold into syndication because there aren't enough episodes of them around. (Several such are under consideration for DVD release even as we speak.)

So really big DVD sales might make Warner Bros. a little less risk-averse about deficit financing something like Rangers, which in turn might make Sci-Fi reconsider sometime next year. (After one or two of their new shows has crashed and burned in the ratings.)

I point out that this is a very slim ray of hope, and I wouldn't get too excited about it. And I remind everyone that if it wasn't the money that killed the Rangers deal, the B5 DVD sales aren't going to change a thing.

But it is possible that in this case they could have some effect. One more reason to buy start saving your pennies for those season one discs. As if you needed another reason. /ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif

Regards,

Joe
 
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