Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Back when it was on, my favorite TV series was Joe Straczynski's Babylon 5 SF effort. It was produced specifically for the syndication market. It was a planned five season story arc, and as each season ended, there was nail biting about whether it would get renewed. (Straczynski had to move things around to tie up main story lines in season 4, when it appeared season 5 would not occur. It did in fact get bought and aired, but was much weaker than the preceding seasons. I wondered after the fact how it might have looked had episodes been shown where originally planned in the sequence.)
Part of the problem affecting B5 was the shrinking syndication market. The intended customers were independent stations not affiliated with a major network, but new networks were forming, like Fox, and the number of independents was shrinking. Stations affiliated with networks gave preference to network offerings in prime time, and getting those offerings was why they affiliated.
I'm not sure what the syndication market looks like now, but it's certainly a different place than it was.
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Dennis
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Wow, that's weird. (not a rant). A few days ago, I'd sent an email to one of the (Irish) programmers who maintain our production website. I forget the context now, but I'd ended the email with "Ex-term-i-nate! Exterminate!," and to my shock and horror, he had NO idea what the hell I was on about. Somewhat boggled, I asked him how he could consider himself a Nerd, to learn that lo, he'd never seen Dr. Who. (Really???)
I told him that he was destroying his reputation and Nerd credentials. We had a back-forth, and he'd asked for Nerd-certified SF shows, and the first thing out of my mouth (fingertips) was Bab5, which I loved. It's not something that (these days) comes up in conversation daily, or even monthly or yearly, so it's odd to see it mentioned here, within spitting distance of my own discussion about it.
I remember a guy...for the life of me, now, can't remember his name, but his sig block was "G'Kar is Too Cool for TV," for years. Makes me smile to think of it.
Hitch