This is kind of an alert, more of a heads-up, I suppose....

I have now had something on the order of half a dozen reports from people
who have either been told, or heard indirectly, that stations are being
pressured to drop B5 or they won't get Voyager. I suspect the reason for this
is fear; DS9 support was always soft; according to some of the demographics,
it looks like DS9 has been steadily losing viewers, albeit gradually...at
about the same rate that B5 has been *adding* viewers...leading to the clear
implication that they're going here from there.

If anybody out there knows about this, or has any first-hand info, or can
*find out*...please let me know in email. It has to be specific, with names
and dates, and we'll need a letter, possibly an affidavit. (Some viewers in
Rochester, NY were apparently told this flat-out by their local cable
company.)

The seriousness of this comes from the fact that there's a certain
threshold of markets required to maintain enough coverage to suit national
sponsors; if you drop beneath that threshold, they drop out, and you're in
serious yogurt. We're nowhere near that at the moment -- we'd have to lose 20-
30 stations for that to happen -- but we'd like to try and nip this in the
bud.

jms