"Do you really believe that the First Run Syndication business as it
now stands would be as big as it currently is if ST:TNG had flopped (and
do you honestly believe that Warner would have given PTEN a second
thought, let alone Babylon 5, if TNG hadn't been such a success in First
Run Syndication?" Phillip Sral

A fair question which deserves a fair response. For starters, the
syndie business is *not* "as big" as described in your message. So the
premise is incorrect on the face of it. The majority of new syndicated
drama series introduced in the last couple of years have flopped and have
either already been canceled, or are shortly awaiting same. The only
shows that have shown success at all have been the various Star Trek
incarnations, Baywatch, and now B5. Virtually everything else has
crashed and burned in syndication.

Second, B5 is not part of first run syndication. It is part of the
consortium formed jointly by Warners and a station group which was then
targeted to become a network. (The new official Warners network will
likely supplant and replace PTEN in a few years, after the contracts run
out. How that will affect B5 is anyone's guess.)

The movement into such new networks has nothing to do with the
success OR failure of shows like and including Star Trek. There's this
little thing called the new "fin/syn rules," which recently got changed
drastically. As of the ruling a couple of years ago, networks can now
own more of the product they put on the air. Virtually all of it, in
fact. What does this mean? That CBS can broadcast mainly shows made by
in-house CBS outfits, rather than contracting with, say, Warners or
Universal or other studios.

This frankly scared the hell out of the studios, whose major business
is making TV. So everyone started running around looking for ways to
create venues independent of the networks...i.e., *new* networks, owned
wholly or partly by the studios themselves, who could then create their
OWN monopoly. (Ain't big business wonderful?) Paramount, Universal,
Warner Bros, (and Fox already there)...they're ALL getting into it. That
was the single dominant reason why PTEN was formed. Sheer survival. Same
with the Warners net, Paramount net, all the others.

Networks need programming. All kinds programming. Dozens of shows
were pitched to the PTEN executive committee, including B5. They chose
this out of the rest of the pack *even though they were nervous about the
perception that the market wouldn't sustain more than one such show*.
They picked it for the simple reason that they liked it, and they
believed in what we were going to try and do with the show. Two of our
biggest boosters were the people behind the whole operation, Dick
Robertson and Evan Thompson, who formed PTEN and from the start, really
understood what we wanted to do with B5.

ST was really either a) irrelevant to the process, or b) a hinderance
to the process. I *know* you want to believe otherwise, and I do
understand why, and I wish I could reinforce that because it doesn't
change anything for us one way or another...but it simply didn't happen
that way.

jms