Thanks for the assist, guys; I appreciate everyone jumping to my defense! It's time I spoke up for myself, though.
Charles Y, I'm sorry if you took my post as rude. As anyone who knows me, which (as you can see) is most people here at this part of the HTF, I rarely go for rude.
Usually my problem is that I talk way too much (which I'm going to go ahead and do now, so hang on). Whenever I DO post a terse note like that, it's usually because I'm distracted elsewhere, giving me time constraints, so I can't write as much as I would like to. What distracted me then? Well, in the past two weeks, in addition to work issues (naturally), I've experienced my brother, niece and step-mom in Houston go through Hurricane Ike and helping them (as much as I can long-distance) recover from it, my wife's grandmother (a central figure in my life for the past 14+ years) have a stroke and pass away from it, spend all of this past weekend helping my best friends move into their first-ever house together, and help get my wife prepped for a job interview (tomorrow; wish her luck). Not making excuses here, nor looking for sympathy; I'm just explaining that there's a bunch that's been going on with me lately, which is the main reason why some of my posts here lately have been as short as that particular one was. And all of that started happening JUST after I was running the TSoD site solo for three weeks, because Gord was overseas on vacation during that time (his girlfriend is from the Ukraine, and they went there together). So I wasn't trying to be rude, and neither did I expect any member, such as you, who's been here since 2003 to not know me, not know that HTF and TSoD have "relations", and not understand that I was trying to help.
So, yes, Gord Lacey is the founder and webmaster of TSoD (TVShowsOnDVD.com); I am the site's only other employee, as the News Director. Gord and I met here on HTF, prior to him deciding to design the site. He originally asked me to be a beta tester for the site, and after I did that and helped him with the site in other ways, he made the relationship official after a while.
HTF owners Ron Epstein and Parker "Packy" Clack have always provided us at TSoD with tons of support, which we're eternally grateful for. By the same token, we promote HTF at our site as our official place for "message board" discussions about our stories. This "SD DVD - TV Shows and TV Movies" area that we're posting in right now is, indeed, the central message board for those discussions.
As far as any official position here at this site goes: I have none. I'm not a moderator at HTF; I have no authority here (nor do I want any, truth be told!).
re: "
That being said, I read your "article," more a news flash, and see the reasoning but disagree totally"
To be fair, I never called it an article; I described it as a story. I got the information about the strategy directly from the head of video at Time Life, who dealt with the actual Smothers Brothers in deciding how these should be released. I suspect that much of it boiled down to dollars and cents: the thought that the first release ought to be the strongest of them, and since the third and final season had the strongest content, it would be the right match to get strong DVD sales on the first release. The decision to not do season sets was partly due to material that was expensive to license (or else possibly not able to be licensed in a few cases). The Bros. made sure that the best segments were planned for the release, and Time Life made sure that the costs were covered as necessary to license the material needed to make sure all those segments would be included.
Did it work out for a good release? I haven't seen it yet, but I can tell you that my mother-in-law, whose copy arrived on the day of her mother's funeral, has enjoyed the release immensely, and it has helped distract her from her grief. She's one of the biggest fans of this show I've ever met, and is no pushover when it comes to being pleased by TV-DVDs.
As always, the decision whether to buy the release is up to you. I hope that whatever you decide brings you the most possible pleasure. Take it easy,
