Ron Chusid <74756.3150@compuserve.com> asks:
> Do you think Paramount's development of DS9, as opposed to airing
> B5, hurt you financially--would you have better distribution,
> ratings, and/or profits if not competing with DS9 for stations?

Well, I have a piece of the net of B5, which means that there
will never BE any profits to me from the show itself, except the
standard writers guild residuals and a little merchandising. (In TV
and often movies, the studios make sure that, on paper at least, no
show EVER shows a profit, so they never need to pay out anything.)

The two shows being side by side didn't help us, I think, only
hurt us. Yes, there was some press about two such shows at the same
time, but it's kind of like having lots of articles about how you were
partially eaten by a shark...all things considered, you'd rather have
avoided the situation in the first place. It hurt us because they
rushed their show out onto the air first, so that a lot of people
assumed *we* were copying *them* when in fact we'd been around for five
years preceding, trying to sell the show. It hurt us because some
stations felt they had to choose between us, and there were a number of
reporters who came to us with stories of stations being told by
Paramount that they had to choose between B5 and DS9, advertisers
being told that our show was going to be crappy with lousy EFX and that
they shouldn't buy commercials on our show, editors being told that if
they covered B5 that DS9 interviews would be withheld...the first two
years were just nonstop trench warfare by Paramount, which seemed
determined to drive us into the sea so that they'd have a monopoly on
this area. Finally, by year three, they seemed to grudgingly accept
that we were here, and we weren't going anywhere.

One producer working on another SF project with Paramount called
John Copeland after a meeting with one of the top execs at the studio,
to relay what happened when -- after having some problems with the EFX
on the project they were working on -- he suggested maybe using the
same EFX company that B5 used. The exec reportedly went on a five
minute rampage about B5, quite profane, saying "It took us 25 years to
build up this franchise, and those (expletives deleted) are screwing it
up! Nobody who works on that show will EVER work for Paramount."

So yeah, it's been tough...at the corporate level, even though I
know a number of people who are associated with both ST shows on a
creative level, and we get along fine. All the problems have emanated
from the corporate brass, not the creative people. We were at ground
zero for a long, long time...but we're still here, in spite of it all.

jms