While Beast Machines certainly wasn't as popular as Beast Wars, I wouldn't go so far to say that it nearly killed the Transformers franchise like G2 did. It might have if it had continued for another year or two -- the Transformers franchise was still chugging along under BM, probably riding on the coat-tails of BW's success... and that steam would have eventually run out and been unable to continue pushing BM along. I think Hasbro canned BM just in time and replaced it with RiD that certainly did hit the nitro for the franchise after the speed hump that was BM.