Jerry Doyle brings up a great point while discussing J. Michael Straczynski’s new Babylon 5 Follow-Up:

Doyle says that interest in a new series is driven by brisk sales of the Babylon 5 DVD sets, the first three seasons of which have already been released. “We shot the first season for somewhere around $950,000 an episode for 22 episodes,” explains Doyle. “That’s $19 million. They sell 350,000 DVDs at $70 or $80 and they’re making $21 million — boom! Done! If they want to do 20 years of Babylon 5, they recoup their entire production cost just one box set run of DVDs.”

If the box sets effectively pay for production, then everything else (airings, syndication, licensing) is all profit…or at least, it is additional leverage for increasing the paychecks (i.e. Claudia Christian might not have left) and the budget for sets and SFX.

If you like listening to Jerry Doyle’s opinions, he now has a syndicated talk show. You can find it in your area, or listen online for a small subscription price.