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Grab the calculator, stat! The $13 million per episode that NBC agreed to pay Warner Bros. in order to hold on to ER is the highest price ever paid for a TV series, leaving Seinfeld's current $5.5 million price tag in the morgue. Need a little numerical perspective? Here are a few things you could get for the cost of just one episode of ER.

-- Shawna Malcom

-- 34,667 visits to the ER at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City -- 30,952 years of membership in the American Medical Association -- Twenty-two 30-second commercials on ER -- Ten 30-second commercials during Super Bowl XXXII -- 26 episodes of the 1982-88 medical drama St. Elsewhere -- 75 episodes of the daytime soap General Hospital -- 361 real first-year medical residents (at an annual average salary of $36,000) -- Approximately 130 years of the surgeon general's annual salary


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Posted Jan 30, 1998 | Published in issue #416 Jan 30, 1998 | Order Article Reprints