A Money/Business Question

[Mondo Londo]

Once upon a time, there was Warner Brothers.

Then, there was Time/Warner.

Now, we have AOL Time/Warner.

This is a huge multimedia corporation. While I realize the different elements are run separately, I wonder:

How does/can all this extra size affect B5LR? For better or worse?

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"What's up, Drakh?"

Michael Garibaldi

 

[bakana]

With a little bit of luck, they will continue the prior policy of Benign Neglect.

JMS said that was the one thing Warner did Perfectly. They almost Never meddled with his scripts.



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Yes, I like cats too.
Shall we exchange Recipes?

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

It probably won't affect it at all. Viacom, which is a tightly integrated company, as is its subsidary Paramount. Same with Newscorp and Fox. Warner Bros. - which is itself a conglomorate - operates like a collection of loosely allied feifdoms, the kind that fight wars amongst themselves from time to time. The merger with Time Inc. and Ted Turner did nothing to change any of this.

In the short run, I don't think the merger of Time-Warner and AOL is going to have any effect at all on the so-called structure of Warner Bros., either. One of the big problems with getting B5 released on home video in this country was JMS's inability to get Warner Bros. Domestic Television, Warner Technical Services and Warner Home Video on the same page - or even talking to one another, much less to him.

When the laserdiscs were being prepared WHV told Garret Lee of Image Entertainment (who knew that LD fans wanted widescreen) that the show didn't exist in a widescreen version and never had. Any widescreen transfers were only cropped 1.33:1 frames. They never asked anybody about this, they just assumed that a TV show was shot 1.33:1, period. Meanwhile Warner Technical Services had already produced widescreen masters for European broadcast and home video. (PAL only, so they wouldn't have done Image any good, but they proved that the show was widescreen.)

I suspect it will be years before the new TW-AOL management gets around to cleaning out the rat's nest that is Warner Bros. If ever. (Hell, Time Inc. wasn't able to straighten Warner Bros. out in all the years since the merger, why should we expect AOL to do any better?)

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net

 

[Jomar]

Will Warner Bros. be involved in a Rangers series or is it financed and produced entirely by SciFi Network?

I just wondered if WB held the rights to B5.

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[**DONOTDELETE**]

[edit] Well... Joe seems to have answered the question more than sufficiently while I was reading other topics. Thanks.

[/edit]

Warner certainly holds some (actually I think most) rights when it comes to distributing/licensing Babylon 5. About their involvement with Rangers I am uncertain.

[This message has been edited by Lennier (edited August 20, 2001).]

 

[Jomar]

Since it seems to be generally accepted that the name of the series is Babylon 5: Legend of the Rangers, this would certainly put it in the category of Warner Bros. rights.

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[Quagmire]

It could be named anything and would be property of Warners if set in the B5 universe.

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Bus

"Yeah, we could start our own game where people throw ducks at balloons and nothing's the way it seems."-Homer

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>It could be named anything and would be property of Warners if set in the B5 universe.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Exactly. Because they own the original series they own everything and anything derived from it: prequels, sequels, spin-offs, movies, etc., just the same way that Paramount owns Star Trek and all related properties.

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Babylon 5 is owned, lock, stock and Star Fury, by Warner Bros. They also own all sequels, spin-offs and derivative works based on the series.

If Rangers becomes a series, Sci-Fi will pay an agreed fee to run each episode "X" number of times. As the originating network they will also have a certain amount of say in the production and casting (as all first-run networks do) but they won't own the final product.

Although this is changing (as FCC rules changes allow studios to own networks and networks to produce more of their own programming) it is still largely the case that filmed television shows are the product and property of the Hollywood studios and that networks merely pay to carry them.

Regards,

Joe

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Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net