Y'know, maybe James Lowder, who's reading this thread, can provide insight into the strategies regarding Buck Rogers--since I saw him listed as one of the editors on that unofficial Buck Rogers site.
I was just starting in TSR's book division when the Buck fiction got underway. One of my early assignments was proofing parts of
Buck Rogers: The First 60 Years in the 25th Century, a very nice hardcover retrospective the company release in late 1988.
As I recall the process, upper management informed the various departments how many Buck products would be on the schedule in a given year and the managers reacted accordingly, trying to put together the best games and books to fill the spots. Approvals for all Buck products went through Flint Dille, who was out on the West Coast, though Lorraine Williams also reviewed everything. Flint generated ideas and suggested directions for the Buck product lines; he was much more active in this than the typical license owner. The licensing approval process--TSR was technically licensing Buck from the Dille Family Trust--was definitely "hands on," meaning a lot of changes were required (from Flint and Lorraine) as the products went through development.
As much as possible, top designers and artists were assigned the work. Everyone understood that Buck was important to management. Certainly some of the products were great. Jeff Grubb's Buck Rogers board game was a lot of fun. (I ran many demos of that game in my first few conventions as a TSR employee.) Some of the RPG material was top notch, too. And the company put a lot of effort into advertising the lines.
I wasn't working on the Buck fiction line formally, but everyone in the department got pulled into a Buck book at one stage or another. The initial idea was to showcase authors with solid SF reputations outside of shared worlds: Robert Sheckley, Jerry Oltion, Martin Caidin. However, TSR was still operating under really short deadlines for fiction at the time. (Most of the books before 1988 had been written by people within, or close to, the company; without everyday use of e-mail and computer files, that proximity shaved at least several weeks off a book's production time.) Couple really short deadlines with a very rigorous licensing review process, where a lot of changes are going to be requested by the IP owner, and problems are all but inevitable.
I can't speak to how this situation impacted the game products, but the short deadlines and intensive IP review process/owner involvement had a profound impact on the fiction. There are seven stories in the first Buck anthology,
Arrival. Two are written by Flint Dille, three are written by the named authors (with a lot of revision, in at least one case), and two--the ones by "Abigail Irvine" and "Ulrike O'Reilly"--were penned as very hasty group efforts by various people inside, or directly connected to, the book division, to replace stories from "name" authors who quit or were fired during the review process. If a third of your content is generated that way, you have a problem.
The Buck Rogers IP could be successful this time around. Enough time has passed that any new material will not be operating entirely in the shadow of the TV show; I've always felt the TV show's image hampered the TSR releases, since they took the property in a different direction. (
Battlestar Galactica has certainly shown that an IP with similar baggage can be revitalized, under the right direction.) The Internet has made more people aware of the older Buck material, too. We'll just have to see how things shape up with the new material.
Cheers,
Jim Lowder