Re:Whither has SciFi gone?
Here was the eventual reply on the other forum:
[quote]The economics of television do not favor this model. Yes, selling a couple of hundred thousand copies of each B5 set makes the show a profitable item for Warner Bros., but the B5 episodes themselves were paid for long ago. The DVD sets only cost the couple of million that digitizing, authoring and mastering plus extras require. If WB had to pay almost 22 million additional dollars to produce the 22 episodes for each season, they’d be losing their collective shirt on the DVD sets. And B5 probably had the lowest cost per episode of any of the shows you’ve mentioned. Trying to produce an expensive SF series for DVD, with no broadcast revenue, no overseas sales, and no future residuals to off-set present costs is a good way to go broke in a hurry.
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If they make it, we will buy.
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Not in sufficient numbers to interest anyone in Hollywood – and that includes the actors whose contracts are based on broadcast residuals and who only make a tiny amount on home video releases. (This stuff is built into the SAG basic minimum agreement.) Then there’s the whole industry perception that “direct to video” is the lowest of the low, basically an admission of failure, a statement that you can’t cut it in the real world of TV and movies, and you’ve got a serious problem selling this to the actors and the writers, directors and everybody everybody else behind the camera. Direct-to-video has worked for sequels to Disney movies produced on the cheap and for porn – neither of which bears much similarity to SF television (Well, except maybe to Lexx. )
Regards,
Joe[/quote]