MOMENTS OF TRANSITION: A WORD TO OUR FANS

Item the First:

As a fan myself, one of the things I wanted to do early on was to form a Babylon 5 fan club that would provide a quality service to the folks who came to play in the B5 universe. We would provide a high-quality web site where fans could gather, chat, exchange messages, read the latest breaking news, see behind-the-scenes photos from the latest production...provide not just one but two regular publications, Headlines News and the slick-paper Universe Today...provide high-quality merchandise that was exactly the same as the props used in the show (or better) at a cost only slightly more than we were paying to have it manufactured.... The only way to do all of this would have been to set a high dues figure for membership. But neither Doug nor I wanted to do that; we wanted to make the fan club accessible to the greatest number of people. So we set the membership fee far below the usual figure, and kept all of the prices as low as possible in order to serve the members. When the fan club didn't do all that we felt it could or should be doing in its first year, we made the decision, unasked, to extend the membership of several thousand of you free of charge. It was a hideous expense, but we felt it was the right thing to do. We knew that doing all of this would mean running the fan club at a deficit for several years. But with Crusade in the offing, we figured there would be plenty of time to eventually get the fan club into the black.

As most of you are aware by now, that has not exactly worked out to be the case.

Item the Second:

With Crusade ending its run, and with no new B5 projects in the works in the foreseeable future (I'd rather hold off on a B5 feature for a while), there frankly isn't much to report on in either Headline News or Universe Today. What there is to report -- other projects by various actors and creative staff from the series -- is best reported by the official B5 Magazine from Titan.

The result of all this -- facing continued deficits on the one hand, and with nothing really going on that would sustain a dedicated fan club -- put a difficult decision in front of us. We had two choices: raise prices for all the merchandise to be more competitive, and double the cost of memberships to actually cover the cost of the services provided (which they have never done)...or find a way to transform the nature of the organization itself without penalizing the membership.

As of the time you see this, no new memberships will be taken in the fan club, and we will be eliminating both internal publications. Those who have time remaining on their memberships will be credited the amount of money remaining (calculated in quarterly blocks) to any purchases they make via the Fan Club. (Translation: if you've been a member for 3 quarters of the one year you paid for, the amount of money covering the third quarter will be credited against purchases, on top of the member discount.)

For the foreseeable future, the FC will become primarily a point-of-sales entity. We will continue to provide unique high-quality merchandise at the lowest possible price, stuff you won't find anywhere else. We will also begin making the actual production scripts for some of our most memorable episodes available for purchase. We will have more time and resources to develop material for the collector that no one else is doing.

We know that this is a pain in the ass.

But it's the only approach that makes sense under the circumstances.

We hope that all of you know how important you have been to everyone at Babylonian Productions, and how much your participation and support has been valued by myself and Doug and the rest of us here. We have, in a sense, been caught in the snare of our own good intentions.

We hope now to undo the snare while keeping the good intentions in place.

Watch this space for further announcements in the coming weeks.

Cordially,

J. Michael Straczynski

(J. Michael Straczynski, "Moments of Transition", http://www.thestation.com/station/Default.htm.)