An open letter to Sony

I'm actually thinking of starting a petition to send to Sony, do you think it would be a good idea?

This is something along the lines

"Dear Sony Entertainment

Your company has one of the most impressive vaults for classic television. From the 50's through the 90's, you have hundreds, if not thousands of beloved television series gathering dust.

We are aware that you are the prime supporter of BluRay, but is it fair that we as TV-DVD consumers, have to suffer the most?

We are aware of the great shows you have completed over time, such as Good Times, Seinfeld, Sanford And Son, Soap, What's Happening, King Of Queens just to name a few. But for every King Of Queens, there are nine All In The Family's or The Jeffersons' that are sitting in DVD release limbo with no hints of a future release because the TV-DVD department has become marginalized and a far lesser priority than in 2005.

We also do not like the Minisode phenomenon you're trying to turn our old sitcom favorites into. Instead of releasing Facts Of Life episodes as bonus minisodes on DVD sets, how about releasing seasons 4-9?

Speaking of Facts Of Life, and Maude, and Diff'rent Strokes, and One Day At A Time... what is with your YouTube phobia? You are aware these shows still have fans, right? So what if Facts or Maude fans who are sick of waiting for another season announcement goes to YouTube to watch an episode that you have no intention of making for sale? Depriving fans of shows they want to see that simply cannot compete with Seinfeld in the sales department only drives fans to the tape trading market, and while you hate that concept, can you seriously blame fans who just want to watch an old sitcom again that you're not releasing and nobody is airing in reruns?

Speaking of Seinfeld, that show is a one of a kind success. You cannot seriously expect any other show in your vault to sell like that, so why penalize shows for only selling a fraction of it? Something like Silver Spoons or One Day At A Time doesn't even air in syndication anymore, while Seinfeld airs eight times a day in some markets. How can you expect those shows to sell Seinfeld numbers when Seinfeld has the exposure one hundred fold? Warner Bros. is just as guilty with punishing shows that aren't Friends. Shows like Seinfeld and Friends are one in a catalog, they're the exceptions, not the norm.

Please Sony, listen to the consumers. You have the rights to one of the best television vaults around, and the fans just want more. Come on, finish up The Jeffersons, All In The Family, Married With Children, Charlie's Angels and the sort... give us more Facts Of Life, Diff'rent Strokes and Mad About You... give a second chance to Maude, 227, One Day At A Time, Larry Sanders Show, Mary Hartman Mary Hartman and countless others.

Signed,
your consumers"

good?

Re: An open letter to Sony

Excellent-- no doubt about it, right on the bullseye!!!

Re: An open letter to Sony

My one suggestion would be to make the phrasing less accusatory ("what is with your YouTube phobia?" "You cannot seriously expect any other show in your vault to sell like that, so why penalize shows for only selling a fraction of it?"). But the message is something that I think everyone here can agree with.

After delaying it for several weeks, I finally finished off Not Just the Best of The Larry Sanders Show last night. I'd bought the first season as a blind buy and was incredibly impressed, and from the best-of, it appears that the series only got better with age. I really, really want to see it in its entirety.

Re: An open letter to Sony

well, maybe "YouTube phobia" isn't the best way to put it, but Sony has removed countless episodes of Maude, Facts and Strokes from the site. I know maybe it's "rights" issues, but considering Sony is showing no intention on releasing future seasons of any of those shows, what is it hurting? You don't see people watching Seinfeld episodes on YouTube, because the fans can buy the entire series of that show, and it's still in reruns daily.

I used to be against tape trading (and I still don't agree with it in terms of material that is commercially available), but I have to admit even I've become guilty of it because I've given up waiting on certain shows. Sony and Warner are two prime companies that are driving consumers to the tape trading market (even tho it's DVD trading now) because of shows we love but they're not making available for us. If Sony announced Facts Of Life season 4, I would buy it the day it comes out, but until then, I'll settle for second/third generation USA Network recordings from a decade ago because it's better than nothing.

Re: An open letter to Sony

You can edit together the USA and N@N versions of The Facts of Life to get almost complete versions. But the color would be widely off. On USA it looked pale and washed out. N@N must have gotten uncut versions from which to make their own cuts, and they looked far superior.

Adding insult to injury, hulu.com's page on FOL has only minisodes of George Clooney episodes. Columbia must have had a falling out with someone high up at Embassy when Coke bought that company from Norman Lear.

Speaking of Hulu, I saw that Sony has Season 3 of Archie Bunker's Place (which, if they waited to finish All in the Family to start on, would never come out). Some episodes actually run over 27 minutes, while the "Gloria Comes Home" hourlong show is presented as a syndicated two-parter, with the two parts timing out at 22 minutes each. They were getting better about the cutting thing, even presenting a 28 minute pilot on Silver Spoons. But they never addressed the slip-ups on various shows.

And then there's the logo thing. This BS dates back to the Coca-Cola era but it's more annoying now. With few exceptions, the era-appropriate Screen Gems, Columbia, Embassy, and TriStar logos have been covered up with the overexposed Sony Pictures TV logo. If they could leave Screen Gems' S From Hell on TV Land's prints of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, would it kill them to leave it on the DVDs? Can't they do what they did on 227 and Silver Spoons: put the new logo AFTER the old one, not INSTEAD of it?

They're now offering complete series sets of Soap and What's Happening. The former I will buy because between that and the Columbia House tapes I can get the truly complete series. I already bought the season sets of What's Happening and will not buy the complete series set unless the missing footage is restored (i.e. the recap of the Doobie Brothers episode and the missing tag scenes on some season 3 episodes). This is a transparent attempt to clear out inventory. No attempt to add extras on either. For What's Happening they missed the chance to interview half the cast, but there's another half still alive, probably with stories to tell. For Soap, Katherine Helmond, Robert Mandan and Robert Guillaume are getting up there in years too. And what about asking Billy Crystal about what was like playing a gay character 30 years ago, and his perspective now that gay characters are fairly commonplace on TV?

Re: An open letter to Sony

I know that people say that all the time (so much that people have started to accept it as fact) but how do you know that it's true? I'm not asking to be antagonistic- I'm asking because if someone at Sony with actual knowledge of sales expectations read that and knew that you were way off, it would weaken your letter/petition.

Re: An open letter to Sony

I remember that article from 2005-2006 that bluntly stated that for every 100 Seinfeld sets sold, only 8 Who's The Boss sets would be sold, therefore WTB got abandoned for performing that way, when I think considering how much more popular Seinfeld is and how much more often Seinfeld airs in syndication that for WTB to sell 8% of it is fairly respectable, because it's probably only about 8% as popular. But yet we've never seen another WTB set because it's sales are so pale next to the blockbuster Seinfeld numbers.

Re: An open letter to Sony

You honestly think that your open letter is going to sway them? If Sony releases a Season 1 set and it doesn't sell well, they are NOT going to release further seasons.

Maude, Archie Bunker's Place and most of the others you listed had done poor in sales and it's douobtful further seasons will ever be released. While they may be at some future point down the line.

As far as Sony's production line goes for television shows releases, it's no different than Fox Home Video. Sony Home Video has a 9-Month gap between releases of a television show. Fox Home Video has a 6-Month gap between their television show season releases.

Other studios have a 4-Month gap between releases. Get over it. Studios are motivated by profits. If they release a new television series on DVD and if that release doesn't sell, they are not going to release any further sets.

COmpanies don't usually follow the business model of selling a product when it's obviously not making money. WKRP has also fallen into this rut as I suspect other shows have from other studios.

Re: An open letter to Sony

Why, like "Friends," is it still in reruns when it's available on DVD? I would think that if "Seinfeld" or "Friends" fans had the entire package of either of those series on DVD, they wouldn't want to keep seeing the same episodes in possibly edited or commercial-filled reruns on satellite or cable. Now that I have the first two seasons' worth of "Lucy" on DVD, I think it'd be kind of awkward to see them on TV Land (that doesn't apply, yet, to the rest of the series).

Re: An open letter to Sony

I think the open letter is laudable, tho I'm afraid it won't do much to sway idiot Sony ever-fixated on their ``Seinfeld'' numbers and why nothing else will ever compare with that.

Re: An open letter to Sony

It seems the same way with Warner Bros. and "Friends," that "Friends" is over-the-top better than any other comedy, or any other series, that has ever been made. Sorry, WB, but I and certain others do not share that view.

Re: An open letter to Sony

Regarding Sony's Seinfeld, and WB's Friends.

Universal used the same argument for their top seller Miami Vice compared to Air Wolf(for every 100 Vice sales, Wolf would get about 10) and Uni continued to release seasons 2,and 3 of Air Wolf. Universal can be cool like that.

Lets face it, Sony, WB, and Fox have one thing in mind, and one thing only. Profit. If it performs slightly less than they anticipate, you can consider it a "dead" title. They don't care about fans, or a shows legacy. Sad but true

The best bet would be for a smaller studio to get the rights to release some of these shows we know will never see the light of day!

Re: An open letter to Sony

Because both of them still do fantastic in the ratings. Even though some 2-3 million people bought the first seasons of Friends and Seinfeld, that means that over 99% of the US population does not own them.

I know if it's late at night and I'm channel-surfing and I hit an episode of a show I love, I'll probably sit and watch it, even though I may have the DVD in the next room.

Re: An open letter to Sony

Thanks, David Levine, for clearing that up. That response, I think, explains to me very well why my brother Marc's wife Michelle still likes to see "Friends" reruns on TBS while owning at least the first season's worth of the same. The same with "Seinfeld"-- the true fans may own the entire package or at least one or two seasons' worth, but they're not averse to seeing the same episodes in channel-surfing, at least from your response. I myself am not a "Seinfeld" or "Friends" fan, but a lot of people are fans of either or both, and I'm willing to concede that. Different series appeal to different people.

Re: An open letter to Sony

That's good forward planning and good business strategy on Universal's part. If more people were purchasing "Miami Vice" than were purchasing "Airwolf", and yet "Airwolf" was still released, that shows that Universal understood the fanbases of both of those series and the tastes involved in both of them. Some may like "Miami Vice" more than "Airwolf," some vice versa, and still others may like them both. Considering fanbases and tastes, and building release plans around those fanbases and tastes, was one of the best things that Universal did. Neither Sony nor WB planned around or released according to fanbases and tastes, and that's why fans of lesser selling series from those studios are oftentimes disappointed.

Re: An open letter to Sony

If Sony knows that for every 1000 units of Seinfeld sold, they will roughly sell 80 units of Who's the Boss, it's useful as a tool for projecting sales of future sets ONLY if the variables impacting sales were similiar for each set (marketing, production costs, target demographics, product penetration on store shelves, etc.). Otherwise it is a poor comparison.

However, there is the issue of opportunity cost. If Sony is limited to the number of DVD sets they can produce in a business year (and most company divisions that I know of work on a budget each year, including mine which is in the movie/TV biz), and if they project that a first season of, say, 'What's Happening Now!' or a ninth season of 'Seinfeld' can make more money than a second season of 'Who's the Boss, it's a no-brainer, regardless of what fans would like to see.

Other companies (CBS/Paramount) obviously have bigger budgets to release a greater quantity of shows in a year. For whatever reason, Sony's Home Entertainment division does not.

Re: An open letter to Sony

While a lot of points have been made everyone has to face facts. If any one of these studios begin their release of a television series or if sales aren't up to standards for the studio releasing it that studio will NOT release any more for that title.

Let's face it, every company that exists isn't going to put their money behind something that isn't generating profits for it. While Universal does continue releasing season sets on shows that they have under their banner, they are more likely generating some profit. As long as they aren't losing money, they'll probably continue releasing those titles ...

Many of these shows that a lot of these studios have released with only one or two sets for that show are more than likely not generating enough revenue/profits to warrant releasing following sets.

Trust me, if Universal wasn't making money on their releases, that they wouldn't continue releasing the sets. Take a look at Simon and Simon. This is a prime example of Universal following the path also observed by Fox, Sony and the other studios.

Re: An open letter to Sony

didn't you post a major complaint to First Look a few months ago for releasing Cybill while abandoning Baywatch, even though I don't think you can possibly find two 90's shows with less in common and less of a shared fanbase?

The nine month strategy USED TO WORK. But you're forgetting that once BluRay hit, the whole TV-DVD dynamic changed for Sony in the past year. Barney Miller and Square Pegs are the only "classic tv" releases in the first five months of 2008, that's nowhere near enough. You say Sony takes 9 months between announcements for shows, so where are the next seasons of All In The Family and The Jeffersons? Both shows are classic and Sony is already midway into both runs, but it's been a year since we've seen a set of either show, with no announcement possible for either, so that nine month strategy is out the window because we should've seen or at least gotten an announcement for season 7 of both shows by now. You must remember this is 2008, the glory TV-DVD days of 2005 are long gone. Paramount is the only company around now that seems to be following some sort of uniform release format for shows. Sony, Warner, Fox, etc.... have all started massively abandoning their non-Seinfeld type shows.

Re: An open letter to Sony

As more companies like Sony put TV shows on the internet for free, supported by ad revenue, it will be interesting to see if this is a more profitable model for them. The click-thru rate will determine how much they can charge advertisers, and I predict that those shows that don't get many hits will eventually be abandoned, since they will be taking up precious bandwidth space that Sony can use for a different show. Ultimately the same fate that their TV-DVDs are suffering.

Re: An open letter to Sony

That doesn't mean that selling 8 copies of Who's The Boss for every 100 Seinfelds made a profit or enough money to keep them interested. Just going off of your post, that number seems to be used to give readers an idea of the sales numbers. Unless you work at Sony, you don't know their sales expectations or how they arrive at them so it's best to just avoid the whole subject because if you're wrong, it weakens the whole letter.

Re: An open letter to Sony

well, Seinfeld also had television commercials and the cast reuniting for an Oprah appearence, and the sets were loaded with extras, etc... Which I think all in all probably cost at least twelve times as much money as it did for Who's The Boss, which was an 80's sitcom that probably doesn't have that large of a draw outside of hardcore Alyssa Milano fans and people who grew up with the show in the 80's.

There is no reason why the two shows should even be compared. Shows like Seinfeld, Friends and The Simpsons shouldn't be viewed as the standard to hold all shows up to, but instead viewed as fluke shows. It's like Fox refusing to release movies on DVD that don't sell in the same league as Star Wars... Star Wars is an exception to the rule.

Re: An open letter to Sony

In regards to the All in the Family series, Sony releases one set per year:

All in the Family Season 6: February 13, 2007
All in the Family Season 5: January 3, 2006
All in the Family Season 4: April 12, 2005
All in the Family Season 3: July 20, 2004
All in the Family Season 2: February 4, 2003
All in the Family Season 1: March 26, 2002

Like I said, good luck trying to convince Sony. If you have a couple of billion dollars to pay Sony to release all of their sets with no regard for loss of profit ... go right ahead.

Oh, and by the way, Baywatch has a much larger fanbase than a mediocre series like Cybil has. What you describe the two series as, is like comparing the fanbase of Star Trek to Barner Miller. One far outweighs the other.

Re: An open letter to Sony

I couldn't care less whether or not the studios have a good business plan, whereas even a novice like me can see that they're being penny-wise and pound foolish. They need to at least take a chance on promotion and putting the basic care into the releases and come up with a release strategy not based on a one-size-fits-all mode.

The article Jay mentioned is interesting. There was another article from Variety that someone else mentioned in the "Maude" thread with a Sony spokesman saying something to the effect that fans should basically take first seasons and be happy with them. There was also another article several years ago with some other Sony spokesman saying "who needs more than one season of Sanford and Son?" And this was about what was apparently one of their better-selling shows.

Does anyone but Paramount spend a dime advertising any pre-1990s shows? Sony had the Facts of Life cast on the Today show mentioning their show is out on DVD. Sales were very good, so season 3 came out. Did they do any follow-up ads? Nope.

Valerie Bertinelli has a book out, but does it mention that One Day at a Time, the show that made her famous, is available on DVD? I couldn't find it. There was a coupon for Jenny Craig, though.

Paramount's TV library now lies with CBS Corporation, even though both they and Viacom are owned by National Amusements. CBS makes the DVDs and Paramount releases them. CBS appears to be a much leaner organization. They pay for remastering (Dynasty looked almost like HD), but they don't clear music rights (apparently they do in the UK, as Happy Days S2 in Region 2 has music not cleared for the US release). They are releasing seldom seen shows and they're apparently not losing their shirts.

Many of these studios' overheads are bloated. To remaster a TV episode at Warner Bros.' in-house telecine costs $5000 per episode. PER EPISODE. Universal is even worse. Now they are being sued by Jack Klugman who says they cheated him on "Quincy" profits. I sincerely hope he wins his suit.

And the music licensing regulation needs to be changed. It just does not work.

Sony's decisions with movie DVDs are often even more infuriating. I don't want to have to remind you all of that pan-and-scan DTS DVD about that musical about a little orphan girl again, or the pan-and-scan DVD of that movie about that little girl from the Roald Dahl book who does magic, or the WS/P&S combos being released as P&S only, or the fact that they finally do restored, chronological Three Stooges sets and do no advertising for it, and claim they sold only 12,000 copies. And they claim Lawrence of Arabia won't sell on Blu-Ray based on what Close Encounters of the Third Kind did, yet they release a less popular film from the same director!

Re: An open letter to Sony

Do you seriously believe that a studio going into its back catalogue and looking at how to release it properly would cost anywhere near a billion dollars?

Baywatch is nowhere in the same league as Star Trek. For Star Trek, Paramount went all out with the releases. Baywatch was farted out by a Mickey Mouse company like First Look and fans responded to the treatment accordingly.

Re: An open letter to Sony

Baywatch has always been a guilty pleasure show, nothing more, nothing less. People drooling over hot women running around in bikinis. Christine Baranski won an Emmy for her role on Cybill and the series also won Golden Globes and SAG awards. Baywatch never even had nominations. If you can complain that your favorite jigglefest show has been abandoned on DVD, I can complain that a huge company has all but abandoned the TV-DVD format in favor of BluRay, leaving dozens of beloved shows in the air, leaving fans to go the bootleg route as the only way to finish them.

Re: An open letter to Sony

Looking from the business side of things...

Let's say that Sony listens to the fans, and releases the next season of The Facts of Life. But sales end up being poor once again. Not only do they lose money, but also the people involved will lose their jobs. Remember, they have stockholders to answer to.

Re: An open letter to Sony

the first Facts Of Life set was apparently very successful, season 3 didn't have half the promotion the first set had. I'm sure it didn't do THAT bad anyways, the first set did very well and exceeded expectations.

What I dislike is that Sony gets mad at complete episodes of shows like Maude and Strokes and Facts on YouTube on seasons not made available. They want to shove this minisode crap down our throat over the 70's and 80's sitcoms (which IMO is making a mockery of the shows we grew up on, we don't like syndicated edits, why would we like 5 minute versions?), but yet they don't want the fans to watch episodes for free on YouTube that they won't bother putting on the shelf for the fans to buy or aren't necessarily seen widely in syndication anymore. If you want people to cease and desist having episodes of these shows on YouTube, then DO THE RIGHT THING and legally make them available to us instead of making us go the bootleg route.

Re: An open letter to Sony

The one thing that Sony isn't going to listen to is everyone pointing accusatory fingers at Sony or any other company and telling them to release the shows or stop complaining about them being on YouTube. You won't get any response.

Sure, it's frustrating that studios don't release these sets in a timely manner or as frequently as "WE" want them to but "WE" don't run these companies. The CEO's, the Board of Directors, the Stockholders, they are the driving forces behind these companies and studios and they all have people to answer to.

These studios are not going to back a losing horse. Also, with the way the economy is, of course there's going to be a slowdown in the production of new sets for your favourite television shows. There always are production slowdowns this time of the year. It's economics.

Just look at shows like Barner Miller and Seaquest and Sliders, all of which had more than 6 or 9 months between season releases. Television shows on DVD had started out as a lucrative business but as more and more shows flooded the market and studios concentrating their efforts on releasing DVD sets for shows that are currently in production, they are going to release the newer shows to use as a promotional tool for the new seasons/episodes.

Older shows are already completed and thus don't have a means of promoting the shows. There's a limited field there. Studios aren't in a rush to release older shows and oftentimes only release a small handful of completed shows during a certain timeframe.

Re: An open letter to Sony

Forget about swaying the DVD division of Sony. They won't care. But the corporate umbrella may care if they get letters saying that consumers won't be buying Sony TVs, DVD players, cameras and computers because of poor customer relations at one of their divisions.

Re: An open letter to Sony

Valerie is now making major dollars from Jenny Craig as their spokesmodel. Of course they're going to do a deal with her book. It only makes. But how much money can she be earning off the One Day at a Time DVD?

The UK version of Happy Days probably has the extra songs because they didn't have to pay the same rate that the US publishing houses wanted for those songs.

Sony has always been screwed up when it comes to DVDs. We must always remember how they lost MGM to Fox because they were so lame. And they don't seem to be trying to do harder to rid themselves of this reputation.