Sci-Fi UK gets Crusade licence?

[Milkman]

I thought they already had it... but now they for sure do among a few other goodies. Good news here is "prime time". Im not in the UK of course.. but aways good to see B5 (and firefly) in prime time slots.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds30578.html

....Additional primetime offerings will include the space-operas Crusade (a Babylon 5 offshoot from Warner Bros) and Firefly....

Note: this news is old, but never saw it in the past.

[Joseph DeMartino]

1. Sci-Fi UK is not connected with the U.S. Sci-Fi Channel. The two entities split many years ago, with the then U.S. owners selling the name and logo to a U.K. corporation.

2. Even if that weren't true, TV shows licenses aren't eternal and aren't transferable between markets. A station or cable channel buys the right to rerun a show for a fixed period, and at the end of that period the license expires and has to be renewd. In the U.S. Sci-Fi's license to Crusade would have expired years ago, I'm sure. Nor would a U.S. Sci-Fi Channel license cover airing the show in the U.K. There would have had to be a separate deal even if the two channels were still corporate siblings, and a U.K. license dating back to the time the U.S. channel aired the show would have also expired by now.

3. Either way, Sci-Fi UK would have had to sign a new contract this year in order to acquire the right to show the series in the U.K. for three or five years or whatever the term is.

Question to the group: Did Crusade ever air in the U.K.? I really can't remember hearing one way or the other. If so, who ran it? Sci-Fi? Channel 4? Somebody else?

Regards,

Joe

[Milkman]

Thanks for the info. So many things seem much more complicated than they need to be.

As for did it air.. i don't know, kind of the reason for the post. I haven't seen it on the air in the US in a while... i miss being able to catch an episode on TV. Yes i have the DVD's but, i still like watching things when they air for some reason.

[Towelmaster]

Useless addition : I know that Crusade didn't air in The Netherlands. That might seem odd until you realize that dutch tv always waits for the second or even third season to come out. That way they can be reasonably sure that the series won't be cancelled after the first season, and they are certain that they have a backup-list of episodes to run.

[Joseph DeMartino]

I haven't seen it on the air in the US in a while...

Well a series like Crusade, with only 13 episodes, doesn't work very well in reruns on American TV - except on a specialty cable channel like Sci-Fi. Most TV stations want stable schedules and on-going sereis. Syndicated reruns are typically "stripped" - run Monday through Friday. That's five episodes a week. Crusade only had 13. So you have two-and-a-half weeks before you have to cycle back around the first episode and run the series again. And on each run the ratings are likely to drop, because not enough new viewers are going to find the show on earch run to make up for those who, just having seen it, don't want to watch it again and go elsewhere. How many weeks in its timeslot do you figure Crusade will run before the ratings are in toilet and the show gets pulled? Babylon 5, by contrast, has 110 episodes, 112 if you make The Gathering into a two-parter, as the U.S. Sci-Fi Channel did, you have about twenty-two weeks before you have to start over. The series takes a lot longer to "burn out".

So it isn't surprising that shows like Crusade, that only ran half a season, are rarely seen again. The only reason even Sci-Fi picked it up was because they already had B5 and it had done well for them in the ratings.

That's also why TV on DVD has turned out to be such a great thing for cancelled series. The studios can actually make money on shows that would be pure losses otherwise, because they had essentially zero value in the syndication market, which usually requires at least 100 episodes of a show. (And because most series cost more to produce than the network or first-run syndication license fees cover. The studios depend on reruns to turn a profit. [i]B5[/b] and Crusade were exceptions to this rule.)

Regards,

Joe

[moreorless]

Question to the group: Did Crusade ever air in the U.K.? I really can't remember hearing one way or the other. If so, who ran it? Sci-Fi? Channel 4? Somebody else?

Regards,

Joe

Crusade aired on channel 4 in the UK, not sure how many episodes though.

[Garibaldi's Hair]

Crusade actually aired first on Sky One in the UK IIIRC, generally in a late night slot. Subsequently, C4 also ran it at around 2:00am and it has only recently been on SFC - it was in the middle of its run when we first moved to Sky Digital in August 05, and I seem to recall it has also been run through previously in 2006 ... I certainly saw it advertised as being shown, although didn't catch an ep actualyl in progress.

[DeMonk]

If you are interested: Crusade aired in Belgium, BUT NOT BABYLON 5. We had to find out through DVD's. When I tried to find them: they were never available, you had to place a special order. Nowadays, they're EVERYWHERE!

[DGTWoodward]

Question to the group: Did Crusade ever air in the U.K.? I really can't remember hearing one way or the other. If so, who ran it? Sci-Fi? Channel 4? Somebody else?

Regards,

Joe

Yes, CRUSADE ran FIRST at least once on our SKY ONE satelite channel. I believe the first run through was prime-time Saturday nights. As it is SKY's policy - then and now - to endlessly repeat their shows ad infenitum, I lost track of it after that first run through. I don't recall if it ran on C4 but they certainly ran all 5 previous B5 seasons (despite messing up the last few season 5 episodes over a Christmas holiday)