shows that surprised you when they failed on DVD?

Jay_B! · 02-20-2006, 01:20 PM

Night Court - it ran nine seasons and was part of the groundbreaking NBC Thursday schedule in the 1980's and has done fairly well on TV Land. I never expected it to sell as well as Cheers (which ran roughly the same seasons) but you'd think if Cheers was already up to season 8 on DVD, that Night Court would at least be moving up as well, instead of being grounded with season 1.

Mad About You - it had crossovers with both Seinfeld and Friends... yet where's the devoted fanbase for this show?

Charlie's Angels - Wonder Woman (which started around the same time and never got the ratings CA got) got its entire run out in a year, it's been 3 years and we're still waiting for season 3, and CA was a top 10 smash in it's prime and spawned two $100+ million grossing movies, yet season 3 is still being dangled like "it might come, it might not" carrot

Without A Trace - currently it's kicking ER's butt in the ratings on Thursdays at 10, but ER is actually progressing further on DVD, Warner has grounded Without A Trace at season 1

Everwood - it's a WB series and yet Warner is treating it like garbage on DVD when they usually are so great with shows on the (soon to be late) WB

others?

Paul Miller · 02-20-2006, 01:40 PM

Mad About You came out way too early into the TV Shows on DVD craze. It would have done much better if they had waited on it.

I think the biggest problem right now is that the companies putting out these releases are no longer getting these sets in the Sunday circulars so most people who don't frequent online sites have no idea when things are coming out.

Paul

ElijahS · 02-20-2006, 01:47 PM

Mad About You and Murphy Brown. I'll explain more later.

Jay_B! · 02-20-2006, 01:54 PM

I don't see why Sony is afraid to give MAY one more try on DVD, when seasons 1 and 2 came out, TV-DVD was relogated mostly to cult hits and blockbusters like Friends.... I think if Mary Tyler Moore can find life and an audience in todays TV-DVD environment, though they couldn't three years ago, same can go for Mad About You.

Hell, MAY has a Friends crossover in season 3 that they can really promote the hell out of.

JeffO · 02-20-2006, 02:05 PM

I'm stunned that Happy Days didn't do better. I would have predicted this to be one of the top 5 sellers of the 1970s shows.

Jeffo

**HTF Ads**

ElijahS · 02-20-2006, 02:21 PM

Quote:

Hell, MAY has a Friends crossover in season 3 that they can really promote the hell out of.

But that was Helen Hunt and Leila Kenzle appearing on an episode of Friends only. Unless you're counting the one night where a blackout started in Mad About You affected the storylines of Friends and the random fourth comedy on Must See TV Thursdays that season (Seinfeld chose not to participate).

Jay_B! · 02-20-2006, 02:31 PM

oh ok, you're right.

For some reason I could've sworn remembering Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow (as Phoebe, not Ursula) on a MAY episode too.

Joseph DeMartino · 02-20-2006, 03:56 PM

I think Mad About You is a classic case study of timeslot success that worked to secure ratings on broadcast TV but don't carry over into TV on DVD.

It was an OK show sandwiched between two better shows, and not up against great competition. So in the broadcast world it got very good ratings because it was inoffensive and it wasn't really worth clicking away from NBC for 30 minutes while it aired. Made nice background noise while people got a sandwich. The plots weren't so dense of the dialogue so sparkling that you had to pay really close attention for fear of missing something.

But when people have to spend money to own it, and it doesn't have a great lead in or follow up on disc, a lot fewer people were interested. TV on DVD defies the law of intertia as it applies to couch potatoes.

I think Night Court clearly suffered from the fact that the first releases were of the early seasons when hardly anyone had discovered the show and the ratings were lukewarm. The glory days of the series, the Night Court most people fondly remember, were roughly seasons three through seven or eight - basically the Markie Post years. I'm not surprised that the first couple of seasons underperformed or that the studio misread this as a lack of interest in the show.

Regards,

Joe

Mike*SC · 02-20-2006, 05:03 PM

I think Joe makes a good point. There are shows that people want to watch, and there are shows that people are willing to watch. The latter aren't likely to do too well on DVD, though they often did very respectably when they were initially broadcast. And there are a few shows that never did much in the ratings, but have rabid fans. And these can do just fine on DVD. Thus, a show like "Caroline in the City" had ratings many times that of "Arrested Development," but would likely sell fewer copies than "Arrested" if it were released on DVD.

(And to all you "Caroline" fans, I'm not picking on that show. I really never saw it. It was just an example that came to mind.)

Dean C · 02-20-2006, 06:12 PM

7th Heaven why did they fail on DVD?