An open letter to Sony - Page 2

MatthewA · 03-31-2008, 12:24 AM

Valerie probably won't make a dime from the DVDs even if everyone who ever watched the show bought it, because it is highly unlikely that Norman Lear, who was liberal with everything except money, would have foreseen DVD or any form of home video afterlife for TV shows in 1975 when they drew up the actors' contracts. Thus compensation for a non-existent medium would not have been included when she signed on.

It was four years between seasons 1 and 2 of Barney Miller. And they did such a lousy job with the first season that I have yet to purchase it.

And then there was Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. They left out a whole freaking plot point! These are not competent people who care about the product they put out.

If they can't sell a product that has a considerable customer base, they should be fired and never be allowed to obtain employment in this business again.

You want to talk Sony's mockery of their back catalog I've got three words for you: The Rerun Show. There's more to this than meets the eye, but what?

Jay_B! · 03-31-2008, 03:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark Talmadge

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.

Sony has been slow for almost an entire year. They were going fairly smoothly in early 2007 with Maude, ODAAT, Jeffersons, All In The Family, Jeannie, Mad About You, Bewitched and several other sets, and then suddenly around June, it pretty much came to an abrupt stop, and it has been slim pickings ever since. Even last Christmas, the only sets we received during that period were the final seasons of Seinfeld and King Of Queens (and the complete series sets), compared to 2-3 years ago when they would've had at least 6 or 7 releases in a short amount of time.

MatthewA · 03-31-2008, 03:47 AM

Perhaps that's part of the problem. All the studios saw potential, but they hoped to get the most bang for the least buck, and flooded the market. They threw dozens of shows to the wall to see which ones would stick.

Jay_B! · 03-31-2008, 04:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MatthewA

Perhaps that's part of the problem. All the studios saw potential, but they hoped to get the most bang for the least buck, and flooded the market. They threw dozens of shows to the wall to see which ones would stick.

that is true, but it seems like for the most part, Paramount has done a good job keeping up. Taxi's the only show I can think of that has really seemed to be "abandoned", and knowing them, I wouldn't put it past them to sneak season 4 on the radar sometime in the fall. I don't see why Paramount can stay on top of things for the most part and keep sets coming at a reasonable pace yet Warner, Sony, Fox, Universal and the like can't and won't. I guess Paramount "lucked out" in the sense that they don't have one bonafide blockbuster seller that towers over the rest of the catalog (ala Friends, Seinfeld, Family Guy, Simpsons, Sopranos, Sex And The City, Lost, etc....). I know of South Park and Chappelle's Show, but both of those sets come from the Comedy Central division (even the artwork for the SP sets never have CBS on it and are still in digipacks instead of switched to the amaray cases) instead of pure CBS/Paramount. If Paramount can stick with shows like Hawaii Five-O, Family Ties and others that haven't been standard tv fixtures in eons and can see the shows profitable enough to continue on with, I don't see why Sony or Warner or Fox can't with their second-tier shows? (first-tier for Sony would probably be Seinfeld, King Of Queens and maybe shows like Married With Children and Bewitched)

Mark Talmadge · 03-31-2008, 08:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thaellar

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.

Ain't going to work. Shareholders, CEO's and Board of Directors are only swayed by one thing, Profits. The only question they ask is "are we making money?" You're going to have a tough time convincing a lot of people to boycott a company such as Sony. It won't work.

As far as the TV Shows on DVD phenomenon goes, yeah, studios messed up. They released too much crap at one time and thought that consumers would buy into it. The problem is? The plan backfired. With the economic problems that the United States has been going through, consumers just didn't have the money to spend on DVD's especially with the cost of gas and food going up through the ceiling.

Even Sony has stopped releasing new sets because they want to see if the previous releases are selling. However, stores aren't stocking older sets and the only place you can order them is through online orders or by mail order. And, even that won't work because many stores such as Borders, Best Buy, Circuit City, Barnes and Noble have started listed many of these sets as being discontinued by their distributors.

Best Buy has been notorious for removing older sets from its online store and so has Borders, for that matter. Target.com gets its stock furnished by Amazon.com and so does Borders.com for that matter. Borders online ordering store for pickup in stores bordersstores.com often lists many sets as no longer available.

Everyone can continue to moan and complain about it, but the reality of it is that nobody is buying. It's also the fault of many here who moan and complain that they aren't getting what they want because everyone acts like crybabies and that doesn't work either.

Plus, give in to the fact that there are millions upon millions upon millions of consumers who don't like ordering online because they do not trust their credit cards or whatnot to online ordering. I'm one of them ... most will walk into the store and if that store doesn not stock that set, they'll walk out of the store. Forget asking to order the item because, with the exception or Barnes and Borders, of which they charge full retail, often won't order the product to restock in their store.

Bryan^H · 03-31-2008, 09:39 AM

So someone explain to me Sony's Fantasy Island season 2. Over a year after the season 1 release, the insert cards you get with other Sony tv dvds listed one of the "coming soon" releases was Fantasy Island season 2.

So, the first season must have done well, because they obviously planned the season 2 release, and then......nothing. That was almost 2 years ago.

Being a fan of that show, BS like this is just cruel, and wrong on many levels!

Corey3rd · 03-31-2008, 10:08 AM

Now that I'm watching the Love Boat DVDs, I need that chaser of Fantasy Island to get my ABC Saturday night buzz.

A lot of the Sony shows that I'm hoping to watch were shot on video so its not like Sony will make a killing issuing these shows on Blu-Ray - unless they'll just pack all the episodes on a single Blu-Ray disc in DV. This would probably be the best solution for Mary Hartman.

David Levine · 03-31-2008, 01:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Corey3rd

A lot of the Sony shows that I'm hoping to watch were shot on video so its not like Sony will make a killing issuing these shows on Blu-Ray - unless they'll just pack all the episodes on a single Blu-Ray disc in DV. This would probably be the best solution for Mary Hartman.

Except they wouldn't sell very many copies. IMO, the fan of Mary Hartman is (in general) not an early adopter of Blu-Ray.

MatthewA · 03-31-2008, 02:21 PM

Mark,

I don't begrudge your anger for First Look's deplorable releases of Baywatch. Do you have any serious suggestions to make on how to make a bad situation better?

Jay_B! · 03-31-2008, 05:16 PM

well, honestly... what I am curious about and nobody seems to know the answer is why Paramount seems to make profits off all of these "second-tier" programs from 20, 30, 40 years ago and see fit to release subsequent seasons in a timely manner, while Sony, Fox and Warner are so much more selective with what shows they continue releasing. Is Paramount really making that much more of a profit or do they just have more realistic expectations with their catalog instead of holding them to the Seinfeld/Friends gold standard?

TravisR · 03-31-2008, 05:32 PM

Nothing more than a guess but maybe Paramount is happy with 'less' profit than Sony or Warners. In other words, maybe Sony or Warners consider making $100 (not a real number) not worth the time and effort of their company but Paramount would consider that $100 worth the effort.

Or maybe each company has different costs associated with their DVD production so the amount they want to make is different for each company.

Jeff*H · 03-31-2008, 05:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jay_B!

well, honestly... what I am curious about and nobody seems to know the answer is why Paramount seems to make profits off all of these "second-tier" programs from 20, 30, 40 years ago and see fit to release subsequent seasons in a timely manner, while Sony, Fox and Warner are so much more selective with what shows they continue releasing.

I think any official confirmation will be hard to come by, but it's fair to say if they have relatively lower upfront costs (transfers, dvd production, packaging) and fewer opportunity costs then their sales projection models will yield a healthy profit margin with fewer sales than many of the other companies would ever accept. A number of the Paramount shows such as Hawaii Five-0 were already digitally remastered for syndication prior to their DVD release.

Plus, I believe someone pointed out in an earlier post that CBS DVD incurs lower transfer costs and also specializes in TV-DVD output (allowing for more frequent releases since it's the only thing they put out), it's their sole area of focus, with Paramount handling distribution. I'm not sure if this was ever confirmed or just speculation.