"The Skinny" (TNT vs B5)
Michael J Wise
"Seen elsewhere", reproduced by permission of someone who prefers to be
known as "Corwin", and submitted with the blessings of at least two
luminaries in this group, I provide the following for your edification
and amusement.
Aloha mai Nai`a!
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Q: "Would someone please explain to me why TNT was not supportive of B5? (I
know the story behind Crusade). Why did they start acting so bad so fast and
not even act in their own best interests if they could have sold the series
earlier? Anyway, I am confused."
A: There were a couple of problems with TNT. First of all, there are two
"TNT"s, TNT Production in Los Angeles, and TNT corporate in Atlanta. Even
within corporate there are different departments that don't always act in
concert.
TNT has been trying to become a "real" network for some time, pushing
original programming (mostly wrestling and TV movies) and eventually
branching out into series. As the fourth season was winding down a few
people in Production in L.A. and marketing in Atlanta, who were fans of the
show, convinced TNT to pick up the reruns of "B5" as a way of broadening
their audience. Not long after that TNT decided that picking up the fifth
season would be a good way of getting their toes into the series production
waters by doing an established show with a built-in audience.
TNT really did lay on a marketing blitz, I'll give them that. I still have
some of the original promotional materials including a gorgeous full-color
poster of the ad that ran in "TV Guide" the week before "In the Beginning"
premiered and some "B5" postcards with photos of the cast.
Then a couple of things happened. Programming discovered that "B5" wasn't
exactly broadening their audience. People who watched the show were not
necessarily sticking around for whatever TNT aired next. Worse, people who
had watched the show that aired before "B5" were changing channels when
the SF series began. For a while these defections were off-setting each
other. Enough people were coming back for wrestling or whatever to make up
for the departing "B5" fans. But that couldn't hold forever, and it was a
disturbing sign. The frequent preemptions of S5 for things like basketball
weren't helping either, since they meant the "B5" audience was ignoring TNT
entirely on those nights, or missing the show when basketball made it run
late.
I don't know if there was a major reorganization in the marketing department
or just some personnel changes, but a few months into "B5"s run my
occasional contact in marketing was no longer there. At about that time I
noticed a distinct drop-off in the on-air promos, and the scheduling of the
reruns seemed to become worse.
My contact in Atlanta was one of the original group of "B5" fans who had
brought the show to the network. So "B5" had lost one key ally on the East
Coast.
By this time "Crusade" was already in production, and from here on it
becomes impossible to separate the problems with "Crusade" from TNT's
problem with "B5". They were too interconnected.
TNT Production in L.A. was in charge of the series initially, through the
first five episodes. TNT Atlanta became involved when they called to ask how
the first five shows looked and L.A. replied honestly that they hadn't taken
time to look at them because they had been busy with TV movies and besides
they knew what good work Babylonian Productions did.
Atlanta demanded to see the episodes, and they were appalled by what they
saw. Too much intellectual stuff, too much drama, not enough "action" (read
sex & violence.) You all know the story from there, at least as far as
"Crusade" is concerned.
So now TNT L.A. was largely cut out of the loop and the Atlanta people
decided they had to be more "hands-on" with the network's first real
original drama series. "B5"s second set of allies at TNT, the L.A.
production people were out of the picture.
About this same time the reruns were in their second or third go-round and
the ratings were dropping off. This is common for any show in daily reruns,
but it was happening faster with each cycle of "B5" than with most shows.
Think about it. You see 110 straight stand-alone "Seinfeld" episodes, and by
the time they cycle back around to episode one you've forgotten most of the
jokes and can watch it again.
Now imagine going from "SiL" right back into "Midnight" and watching the
whole series all over. It would be like reading the last line of "Return of
the King" and immediately opening "The Fellowship of the Ring" again. Most
people don't do that. (On further reflection, people *might* do that with
"B5", in part because they can then see all the foreshadowing in the early
episodes that they missed the first time. But they wouldn't go right into a
third cycle, so the point still holds.) They may come back for the next
rerun cycle in about six months, but they aren't going to do more than two
back-to-back.
(Shows like "Hill Street Blues" and "Wiseguy", which also had arcs that
continued across multiple episodes, have a similar problem in reruns.
Unless they are heavily promoted and constantly attract new viewers in each
rerun cycle they tend to "burn out" quickly in the syndication market. I'm
willing to be they aren't on the air in most of the places where we all
watch TV, but even they do return every couple of years.
Whoever gets "B5" next is going to have to know enough to promote it the
right way, to bring in new viewers at the beginning of each cycle.)
Once the "Crusade" debacle happened, TNT was "stuck" with "B5" by terms of
its contract. If it just cancelled the show for low ratings, the rights
would revert to Warner Bros. and TNT would be out whatever money it spent.
If it kept the show and it got lousy ratings TNT couldn't charge much in the
way of advertising dollars and it would still lose money. So why did they
keep it?
They almost didn't. When Warner Bros. tried to take "Crusade" to the Sci Fi
Channel, SFC also wanted the "B5" reruns, which only makes sense. TNT could
not stop Warner Bros. from moving "Crusade" They could demand payment for
the 13 episodes they had help finance, and they did. But TNT also had a
hole card - exclusive rights to the "B5" reruns through early 2001. They
offered to sell those rights to SFC but asked for an extremely high price.
(I don't pretend to know the particulars, but one person familiar with the
situation used the words "ransom note" in describing TNT's proposal.) By
doing so they may have effectively killed any "Crusade" deal right there and
then. And they've held onto the rights for a full year (in the face of
increasingly dreadful ratings) in an attempt to make sure that "Crusade"
stayed dead.
JMS said that SFC couldn't make the budget numbers work for "Crusade." I
have heard, but don't know first hand, that "B5" was part of the problem.
TNT's asking price for the reruns, combined with the production costs on
"Crusade", made it impossible for SFC to go ahead with the deal. According
to this version of events "Crusade" by itself may have been a possibility on
SFC. (But in addition TNT still had the rights to the unaired "Crusade"
episodes themselves and again was reportedly asking a very high price for
them, so that alone may have been a deal killer.)
The bottom line appears to be that the folks who helped kill "Crusade" at
TNT did not want JMS taking it to another network and making a success out
of it. That would have made them look bad. They also didn't want JMS looking
like the winner. He had really pissed a lot of people off throughout the
production of "Crusade" - even more so in his public comments since the
second production shut-down. Frankly they wanted to kill the show and saw
"B5" as one of the weapons to do it with..
So TNT aired the 13 episode "limited series" of "Crusade" and still had
broadcast rights to "B5" Even the hardcore fans weren't watching by this
time, because they'd seen all the episodes a couple of times, they all hated
TNT, and the show kept airing less and less frequently in worse time slots.
But again, if TNT cancelled the show the rights would revert to WB, WB could
take "Crusade" and "B5" elsewhere as a package and JMS would win. So they
kept "B5", stuck it in a timeslot where nobody is watching but where they
don't get good ratings anyway and prevented anybody else from doing anything
with the show.
This was so obviously the case that everyone has been assuming that TNT
would never give up its rights to the show before they lapsed next February.
(I had gotten wind of the WB/SFC talks a couple of weeks ago, but everyone I
talked to assumed the show couldn't air until next March, and everyone
agreed - for once <g> - to keep quiet about it for fear of a premature leak
screwing up the deal.)
But now there is less than a year to run on the TNT exclusive. TNT must have
heard about SFC's negotiations with WB. (Hell, I did and I'm not even in
the business.) If TNT held out for big money for the last few months of its
contract, SFC could decide to start the show as a mid-season replacement in
March, without paying TNT a dime, rather than premiering it in September .
Since TNT couldn't hold onto the show forever, and since WB had a definite
buyer, it now made sense for TNT to unload the program while they could
still make a few bucks off it.
Cirdan has said elsewhere that they essentially let the show go for free.
This is certainly possible, and at this point he probably has better sources
at TNT than I do. All of mine are "B5" fans and tend to keep a low profile
these days.
At this point TNT has to be losing money on it at 7 AM Saturday, and the
whole point of their effort became moot the minute SFC agreed to buy the
show, regardless of when exactly SFC was going to start airing it.
Certainly they came down considerably from their previous asking price, both
because there was less time to run on the contract and because SFC could
afford to wait if they didn't like TNT's deal.
And that, from what I've been able to piece together, is what happened with
"B5" and TNT in a nutshell. The network brass never understood the show, and
in fairness to them, it may not have been a good match for their core
audience. A few "B5" fans managed to get the network to take a chance on the
show, but they were pushed aside after awhile and the whole thing
degenerated into a pissing contest between JMS and TNT over "Crusade"
For the record, I think that JMS was in the right on this one. I've seen
plenty of "two sides to every story" posts, but it helps to remember that
sometimes one of the sides is full of sh*t. JMS has been called a hard-a**
and "not a team player." Well, he IS a hard-a**, and I can say that
sincerely as one who has had his ears pinned back by the gentleman for a
post here and there. But he has this annoying habit of being right. And
this "non-team player" cooperated with the last minute changes TNT demanded
after episode 5, and put the whole production shut-down in the best possible
light in all his public posts. He was very diplomatic about the infamous
"TNT memo" incident at the time it happened. If there are any bad guys here
they wear three-piece suits and work in Atlanta. They bought a show they
didn't understand, over-rode their own production people - whom they pay to
advise them on creative issues that are over their heads - and tried to turn
it into something else entirely. When that failed they didn't pick
themselves up, dust themselves off, and move on having learned from the
experience, like adults. They didn't shake hands with JMS and wish him best
of luck over at Sci-Fi, knowing that they couldn't do anything with the show
themselves and that they would probably save money and headaches by getting
rid of it. No, they threw a tantrum like a little kid caught stealing
third, took their ball home and ended the game. Then they tried to make
sure that nobody ELSE ever got a chance to play.
"B5" essentially became a hostage in all this. TNT didn't really want it,
but they wouldn't give JMS the satisfaction of getting it back.
Now the hostage has been released, and we'll have to see what happens.
Faith manages,
Mac Breck
Mac
"Michael J Wise" <mjw...@kapu.net> wrote in message
news:Pine.MAC.4.10.100040...@kapu.net...
>
> "Seen elsewhere", reproduced by permission of someone who prefers to be
> known as "Corwin", and submitted with the blessings of at least two
> luminaries in this group, I provide the following for your edification
> and amusement.
>
> Aloha mai Nai`a!
> --
> "Please have your Internet License http://kapu.net/~mjwise/
> and Usenet Registration handy..."
>
big snip to save space
Pål Are Nordal
it though.
Michael J Wise's secret informant wrote:
> TNT has been trying to become a "real" network for some time, pushing
> original programming (mostly wrestling and TV movies) and eventually
> branching out into series. As the fourth season was winding down a few
> people in Production in L.A. and marketing in Atlanta, who were fans of the
> show, convinced TNT to pick up the reruns of "B5" as a way of broadening
> their audience. Not long after that TNT decided that picking up the fifth
> season would be a good way of getting their toes into the series production
> waters by doing an established show with a built-in audience.
Excellent post... just one nit - TNT bought the re-run rights in 1995.
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/find/Usenet/jms95-11-usenet/44.html
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Pål Are Nordal
a_b...@bigfoot.com
Tammy Smith
Thank you, Michael, for posting that. It confirms what I thought had
happened with the Crusade situation. JMS may be a blunt, in-your-face
type of person, but he has always talked directly to us here & has
listened to our opinions. When has TNT ever done this? It's pretty
obvious that they knew nothing about B5 or its' fans, because if they
had known about us, they would've left JMS alone & let him tell the
Crusade story his way. But instead, they interfere & throw childish
tantrums (& try to get revenge like immature people will do) when JMS
decides not to do things their way. I can tell you this much--I have no
desire to ever watch TNT again if this is the way they act!
Tammy
James Bell
I haven't watched a thing on TNT since the last episode of Crusade. I will
be watching more SFC now, though.
Jim
Mena Ryan
>
> Since my answer didn't appear, I will write another one.
>
> Thank you, Michael, for posting that. It confirms what I thought had
> happened with the Crusade situation. JMS may be a blunt, in-your-face
> type of person, but he has always talked directly to us here & has
> listened to our opinions. When has TNT ever done this? It's pretty
> obvious that they knew nothing about B5 or its' fans, because if they
> had known about us, they would've left JMS alone & let him tell the
> Crusade story his way. But instead, they interfere & throw childish
> tantrums (& try to get revenge like immature people will do) when JMS
> decides not to do things their way. I can tell you this much--I have no
> desire to ever watch TNT again if this is the way they act!
>
Well, I don't think that anyone at TNT watches their own shows either!
A couple weeks ago, I distictly heard the announcer (of "Ranger Linear"
fame) talking about "Diffinbocker" (I'm hoping that that is read as he
said it-it looks like it to me) the wolf from "Due South". He must know
how to pronounce The Rock (isn't that one of the people from WCW?)
though...
Mena
Pelzo63
>The Rock (isn't that one of the people from WCW?)
no, you've never heard of any of the people from WCW. wcw is in a massive
ratings slide, and ahs been for the last year. the reason, their only talkent
is over 50 years old, and anyone younger(incluing their reigning champion!)
is/has switching/switched to their rival league, wwf. (and confusing the 2 is
akin to saying "spock, isn't he that guy from babylon 5?") :-)
wcw is on TNT, and TBS, and syndication on saturday's...wwf is on USA, UPN, and
syndicated saturdays(and is affiliated with the XFL coming next spring on NBC)
note: wcw is tnt's only successful tv series, ever, and yet some people think
that tnt "knows best" because they make some good movies, despite jms making
more successul tv series, in just about as many years.
note 2: wcw has been referred to as "wheel chair wrestling" due to the age of
it's participants.
note 3: i used to enjoy wcw.
---Chris AOL/AIM--pelzo63
http://members.aol.com/pelzo63/welcome.html
just when you thought an air disaster movie couldn't get more cheesy
Susan Phillips
No. Dieffenbaker is the name of the wolf in "Due South", which is what that
announcer referred to.
Sue
>how to pronounce The Rock (isn't that one of the people from WCW?)
>though...
>
>Mena
>
"How can you be anal-retentive if you don't have an anus?"
Bartleby, "Dogma"
Andy Hock
>
> It's pretty
> had known about us, they would've left JMS alone & let him tell the
> Crusade story his way.
Believe me, I'm not trying to defend TNT, as I believe most of their
judgment was pretty lousy. However, in all fairness, I don't think
TNT ever wanted to do Crusade for B5 fans. They wanted to do it for
mass audiences, and they assumed that the fans would watch anyway.
Andy Hock
A. Safron
> known as "Corwin", and submitted with the blessings of at least two
> luminaries in this group, I provide the following for your edification
> and amusement.
>
> Aloha mai Nai`a!
> --
(I
> know the story behind Crusade). Why did they start acting so bad so fast
and
> not even act in their own best interests if they could have sold the
series
> earlier? Anyway, I am confused."
>
> A: There were a couple of problems with TNT. First of all, there are two
> "TNT"s, TNT Production in Los Angeles, and TNT corporate in Atlanta. Even
> within corporate there are different departments that don't always act in
> concert.
>
> Then a couple of things happened. Programming discovered that "B5" wasn't
> exactly broadening their audience. People who watched the show were not
In Chicago, B5 started on a UHF station that also ran Star Trek: The Next
Generation for 8 years and The Highlander. Channel 50 ran Sci-Fi movies
that no one on the network or UHF channels would run. They built their
reputation and viewer numbers on the fact that there were enough Science
Fiction
and Fantasy freaks in Chi-town to keep them running.
>big snip<
> Atlanta demanded to see the episodes, and they were appalled by what they
> saw. Too much intellectual stuff, too much drama, not enough "action"
(read
> sex & violence.) You all know the story from there, at least as far as
> "Crusade" is concerned.
Sex. Violence. The "easy" watch.
>
>real big snip<
> The bottom line appears to be that the folks who helped kill "Crusade" at
> TNT did not want JMS taking it to another network and making a success out
> of it. That would have made them look bad. They also didn't want JMS
looking
> like the winner. . . Frankly they wanted to kill the show and saw
> "B5" as one of the weapons to do it with..
If they were so in love with violence, why didn't they personally kill
all copies of Crusade with axes? Dressed in chain mail and 11th century
garb, they could have started a whole new show under the title of
"Crusade: The Holy War for Dumbed-down Television."
>
> For the record, I think that JMS was in the right on this one. I've seen
> plenty of "two sides to every story" posts, but it helps to remember that
> sometimes one of the sides is full of sh*t. JMS has been called a
hard-a**
> and "not a team player." Well, he IS a hard-a**. . .
I usually do not go public with the fact I am astrologer, since the
science community is leary of such things, but yes, JMS's
natal chart does show him to a hard whatever. His major energies
are lightening intuition, eccentricity and brilliance. He is probably
light years ahead of most of the people he worked with at TNT.
His productions have quality and stand on their own, not having to
resort to the crutches of sex/violence to move them along.
I have learned more about writing from interviews with JMS than
I have in several year's worth of Writer's Digest magazine.
>another snip<
>They (TNT) bought a show they
> didn't understand, over-rode their own production people - whom they pay
to
> advise them on creative issues that are over their heads - and tried to
turn
> it into something else entirely. When that failed they didn't pick
> themselves up, dust themselves off, and move on having learned from the
> experience, like adults. They didn't shake hands with JMS and wish him
best
> of luck over at Sci-Fi, knowing that they couldn't do anything with the
show
> themselves and that they would probably save money and headaches by
getting
> rid of it. No, they threw a tantrum like a little kid caught stealing
> third, took their ball home and ended the game. Then they tried to make
> sure that nobody ELSE ever got a chance to play.
>
Which sounds like there are children, walking around in suits and ties,
making
decisions about what we can or cannot watch. I
can only hope that the Internet and WWW someday fulfills its ultimate
purpose
and everyone has their say, everyone has the TV/music/entertainment/ they
enjoy..
>
> Faith manages,
>
Well, doesn't it ever? I still believe it was an act of God/Goddess that B5
was created and actually made it to the eyes of the public. A large and
dedicated public. Bring on the reruns. I could watch it again.
-Ann Safron
Pål Are Nordal
> Believe me, I'm not trying to defend TNT, as I believe most of their
> judgment was pretty lousy. However, in all fairness, I don't think
> TNT ever wanted to do Crusade for B5 fans. They wanted to do it for
> mass audiences, and they assumed that the fans would watch anyway.
Too bad they didn't have the guts to say so they bought the series. I'm
sure Crusade could have found another home if they turned it down.