Jeff*H
Premium
It's easy to understand everyone's frustrations after having spent lots of $$ faithfully supporting the first four seasons, but I also think Fox was between a rock and a hard place. It's been well documented here and elsewhere that the MTM DVD sets lost money for Fox, and it's very reasonable to assume that the 3 remaining seasons would have lost them even more money than before as there is always sales attrition between seasons. Thus, releasing the last few seasons individually as they had the others was not really an option if anyone at Fox Home Entertainment wanted to keep their job in a rough economy.
But they also wanted to find a way to make the fans happy and get them the remaining seasons. They could easily have said 'screw it' and saved themselves a bundle of headaches, but they apparently came up with a financial model that works: doing a complete set. This allows new collectors to get the entire series at once at an average of $20 a season or less after retail discounts. And the die-hard fans still can have a way to get all the episodes too, even though it will require a double-dip. As I pointed out in an earlier post, fans are really only having to spend around an extra $35 to get the set vs. if they had to pay to get the 3 remaining seasons individually.
I'm sure many fans of 'Taxi', 'Bob Newhart', 'Hill Street Blues', 'NYPD Blue', 'All in the Family', 'The Jeffersons' and countless other abandoned shows would be thrilled to have an opportunity like this.
It sucks that there wasn't a better way, but anyone at Fox who would put out something knowing it would lose money would have rocks in their head. Aside from digital downloads, I don't think they had any other viable model that could make money for this show.
But they also wanted to find a way to make the fans happy and get them the remaining seasons. They could easily have said 'screw it' and saved themselves a bundle of headaches, but they apparently came up with a financial model that works: doing a complete set. This allows new collectors to get the entire series at once at an average of $20 a season or less after retail discounts. And the die-hard fans still can have a way to get all the episodes too, even though it will require a double-dip. As I pointed out in an earlier post, fans are really only having to spend around an extra $35 to get the set vs. if they had to pay to get the 3 remaining seasons individually.
I'm sure many fans of 'Taxi', 'Bob Newhart', 'Hill Street Blues', 'NYPD Blue', 'All in the Family', 'The Jeffersons' and countless other abandoned shows would be thrilled to have an opportunity like this.
It sucks that there wasn't a better way, but anyone at Fox who would put out something knowing it would lose money would have rocks in their head. Aside from digital downloads, I don't think they had any other viable model that could make money for this show.