Ron Ely's Tarzan?

Count me in as a fan of this show. Haven't seen it in at least 20 years, but my memories of it are still strong. I'd love to see this series released on dvd!

Gary "it only went two seasons, but they were two great seasons" O.

Having not seen it since the mid-70s, my memories of it are somewhat foggy, other than I recall enjoying it. I'd love to see it appear on dvd. I'm a sucker for adventure shows of such vintage. Jungle hi-jinx in particular. I suppose "Tarzan" would be more viable nowadays than its jungle kin, "Daktari" or "Cowboy in Africa." But, I'd welcome any of it. I've even bought Alpha's "Ramar" volumes.

Wow I was JUST thinking about the show the other day. But then again I was watching American Graffiti on TCM so that could explain the reason why.

(the first person that makes the connection between the two wins a smart pants awards)

I wouldn't mind having the movies by Mike Henry either.

We have a winna! Good one, Mark.


Wasn't there a character named in Cheetah in the Ron Ely series? I sometimes confuse Jai's character with someone or something named Cheetah.

I used to watch reruns of this on WGN years ago. I've got a couple on tape; those didn't seem to hold up very well but as a fan of the character I'd probably be interested in seeing some sort of DVD release.

I believe Fox owns the rights to this show, another one of many yet to be released from the Fox vaults. Whoever runs Fox Home Video's TV division should be fired- he's WAY behind Warner Bros., Paramount, and Universal in releasing vintage shows on DVD!

Besides Tarzan, where's

Dobie Gillis
Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea
Peyton Place
Land of the Giants
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
The Green Hornet
Batman (but there's a rights issue with Warners)
Judd for the Defense
Room 222
Mr. Belvedere - you get the point....

Umm...I think those are some pretty harsh words for Mr. Staddon, the man who has probably done more for TV-DVD than anyone else. You may wish to take back such harsh comments for someone that many on the forum have respect for.

Gord

duplicate post sorry

We also have to be realistic and understand the potential audience for some of this stuff (like ROOM 222) is very small.

Give the guy a break!

i'd love to see Room 222.
that title was recently mentioned in an article about a studio looking to increase their tv on dvd profile- i didn't remember it as being Fox, but i guess i was wrong.

oh, and i would really like to see Tarzan too.
i haven't seen it in over 25 yrs, but i remember liking it quite a bit (although Rons blonde locks were disconcerting for a while)

since Fox seems to have a pretty energetic deal going with Anchor Bay at the moment, maybe some of these 'odd man out' tv titles may have a shot yet...

Paul, that article was about Paramount.

Gord

i thought that was it Gord, but was Room 222 specifically mentioned by the studio, or was it another fan assuming it was under the domain of Paramount?

Thanks, Mark! I feel totally vindicated in my opinion of Fox's laziness in bringing its TV catalog to DVD compared to other studios. I mean, look at how long it's taken to announce the upcoming release of Year 2 of The Mary Tyler Moore Show!

It would be a dream come true to get Adventures in Paradise and Hong Kong in a decent print.

I'm sorry, but I totally disagree with you guys. I know you all prefer to see older shows, but there just isn't a huge demand for those titles. Fox, and every other company out there, is interested in making money off the DVDs. When MTM didn't sell as well as they expected then they were shy to release the other seasons, and probably shy to try some of the older shows they own. I haven't heard of half the shows on Mark's list, so I canbe counted out as a potential customer along with many others from my generation.

Calling for the firing of Peter Staddon because he's not releasing older shows isn't a good way to encourage them to start looking into their older catalog.

Here's a list that Mark provided along with the current unreleased ranking on my site:

Batman (10)
Time Tunnel (148)
Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea (187)
The Green Hornet (251)
Land of the Giants (258)
The Big Valley (260)

Dobie Gillis (513)
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (532)
Nanny and the Professor (571)
Daniel Boone (652)
Wanted Dead or Alive (819)
Room 222 (835)
Honey West (922)
Burke's Law (997)

Adventures in Paradise (1447)
Peyton Place (1520)
Julia (1733)
My Friend Flicka (1969)

Zane Gray Theatre (2214)
Broken Arrow (2341)
The Rogues (2590)
The Detectives (2664)
Judd for the Defense (2895)

Bracken's World (3218)
Hong Kong (3520)
Arnie (3569)
Felony Squad (3694)
Ensign O'Toole (3849)

Dick Powell Theatre (4078)
Bus Stop (4081)

Five Fingers (5419)

McKeever and the Colonel (6009)
Law and Mr. Jones (6267)
Target the Corrupters (6504)

Follow the Sun (not listed)
Saints and Sinners (not listed)
Tom Ewell Show (not listed)

So we know that Batman, and probably Green Hornet, are tied up with legal issues. Time Tunnel and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea are both under consideration, which only leaves Land of the Giants and the Big Valley as the only titles that haven't been discussed out of the top 500 shows listed on the site, and on Mark's list.

While I would never claim that this list is 100% accurate, it shows the level of interest in the shows on the site. Three shows haven't had any interest at all, since they aren't listed on the site, and no one has ever requested that they be added. So it appears there just isn't interest for a lot of these shows, so can you really blame Fox for not releasing them?

Oh, and before you all complain that the site doesn't represent the age group that wants these shows, we have a lot of older users on the site. Every age group is represented, along with an even split between males and females.

Gord

I think you're missing the point, Gord. My criticsm was about how slow Fox is compared to other studios in releasing classic TV shows on DVD. Look at the big push that Paramount is having with with everything from I Love Lucy and The Andy Griffith Show to The Brady Bunch and Happy Days. At Warner Bros., there's Gilligan's Island, Wonder Woman, The Dukes of Hazzard, and Night Court, with plans for Maverick and The Adventures of Superman for later this year. And I understand that one of Warners' oldest TV titles, 77 Sunset Strip is on schedule to be released sometime down the road.

And then there's Universal:

Kojak
The Munsters
Columbo
Dragnet '67
Night Gallery
Murder, She Wrote
Miami Vice
the upcoming Leave It To Beaver and more to follow.

The above studios have been quite busy going into its vaults for shows from the 50s- 80s. Fox is still doing this at a snail's pace compared to the other studios. I bet some of the recently released shows from other studios have had less votes than some of the Fox titles on your site! The other studios have put their faith in the marketplace in releasing many titles of varying popularity- from cult shows like The Avengers, V, Dark Shadows and Freaks & Geeks to big audience pleasers like The Munsters, Full House, MacGyver and Dallas.

Personally, I hope that Fox's release of Dynasty will let them consider the release of Peyton Place, a show that was the Desperate Housewives of 1964 and a classic waiting to be rediscovered. Maybe Fox should follow the lead of other studios, dig into its vaults for past favorites and test the waters a bit. I'll tell you one thing- if Paramount or Warner Bros. had the rights to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, they would've been more aggressive in publicity, and not waited several years between seasons!

As for your claims that there isn't that much a demand for classic TV- well, you've only based your opinions from those who vote on your site. What about those who like classic TV and have never heard of you're site? Please, do NOT sell the fans of classic TV short! It's like saying that in the world of DVD releases, only films made in the past decade count! Next you'll be telling us that the beautifully restored DVD versions of Gone With the Wind, Citizen Kane, and Casablanca don't count. Show some respect.......

I also have to put myself in the camp of those who give Fox in general a big thumbs down, and it isn't just their slowness on vintage TV releases that I've got a problem with, it's also their botching of several movie titles on DVD big time (like releasing the cut version of "One Million Years BC" rather than the longer LD version). Their handling of the MTM Show situation was a giant disgrace.

I didn't know that Fox now owns "Life of Riley." Hate hearing that, as it would probably decrease its dvd potential from infintesimal to impossible. It seems we have better luck when such properties are owned by smaller outfits than with these monster-size corporations. I guess I really should give up all hope of seeing certain shows again in my lifetime.

You're right. That's because those companies don't own anything else to make money off, so they release what they can license.

Charles, I understand what you're saying, but I don't see that Fox owns many POPULAR older shows, at least none that Mark listed. The majority of Fox's titles are newer, so that's what they concentrate on releasing. If the majority of their popular shows are newer then it's no surprise that's what they focus on. Then there's a company like Sony (formerly Columbia TriStar) which has released mostly pre-2000 shows because that's what the majority of their catalog is made of. If you can't list any popular old shows, then I still fail to understand how you can call for the firing of an executive. I think it would be better if you posted something like, "It's a shame Fox didn't own any popular older shows." It's much harder to predict sales of older shows than newer ones. Let's see how many of those older shows that have 1 season behind them are continued before you praise the companies that release them. Yes, it's taken a long time for MTM season 2 to come (and it's still not announced), but Fox put themselves out there before most studios were releasing older catalog titles.

Gord

Gord,

I understand much of what you are saying. I know FOX is in the business of making money first, and pleasing fans of some older shows isn't a priority if they think it isn't profitable for them. And for this very reason I'm of the same mind as Bert - my hopes have gone from "infinitesimal to impossible."

Having stated that, I would like to clarify one comment you made. You state that these shows are not "popular" based almost exclusively on the stats from your site. I believe the more precise comment from you should have been that those shows are not popular with the younger fan base that FOX is concentrating on. You can say your site (which is excellent and I visit almost daily) has a balanced age representation, but I find it hard to believe that the majority of voters on your site are not teens and twenty-somethings. If you can honestly tell me that there are an equal amount of people in their fifties and forties (or even thirties) as there are younger fans, then sobeit. But I really doubt that's the case. And yes, I know that younger age group buys more dvds. But my point is that it isn't fair to say those shows aren't popular just because you haven't heard of them or even because they aren't cracking your site's top 500.

I could be crass and start naming many "newer" shows that are absolute crap (excuse the word, but it fits) and yet get more votes on your site. Doesn't mean a thing to me, other than to demonstrate how much lower the standards of the average tv viewer is today than they were 30 or 40 years ago. But if I go any further on that point it will do nothing but start a flame war based on personal preferences, and I don't want to do that. The only thing that really irritates many of us "older show" fans is that we haven't been able to watch our favorites for years, but these new shows can be seen over and over again on tv yet they are released on dvd. It's really disheartening.

FOX had a poll a year or so ago and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" came in second. Yet many other lower ranked shows from that poll either have been released or are ready to be released. Why place shows on the poll if you really aren't going to take it seriously? You can say they did take it seriously, but if that's the case then why haven't we heard even a hint about "Voyage" or "Time Tunnel" (which also did well, I believe)?

Gary "I do agree with you that FOX doesn't have a lot of older shows in their possession, but they do have a few that would be considered classics and they don't seem to be giving them as much thought as other studios might" O.

Yes, a poll which allowed people to vote more than once, and which produced invalid data. Fox has all but admitted that the poll was poorly planned, and the publicity department didn't even know it was going on. I believe it was something the web people posted without much involvement from anyone else. I laughed when I saw it, since I knew whatever data they were hoping to obtain would be rendered useless by people voting more than once.

As I mentioned before both "Time Tunnel" and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" are in the works at Fox.

Since you asked about the stats on the site, here they are:
Female - 47.62%
Male - 52.38%

Ages:
10-18 - 10.99%
19-24 - 29.38%
25-34 - 28.27%
35-44 - 17.77%
45-54 - 10.22%
55-64 - 2.74 %
65+ - 0.63%

I think it's pretty evenly split between the under 30's and the over 30's if you take half of the 25-34 and apply them to both sides of the pie.

Anyway, I think I'm done with this conversation. The "why doesn't _____ studio release more classics" pops up every few months and the same people present the same reasons as to why things aren't being released, or why they should be released. The fact remains that the studios can make more money off the cancelled crap of a year ago than they'd make releasing quality classics (with some exceptions), so that's what they'll continue to do. It's costlier to release older material that has to be restored, and they'll sell fewer sets.

Gord

Gord,

I don't want to continue the discussion either. I have nothing against you, and I'm aware you just do the "reporting" on these stats. Hey, don't shoot the messenger. I get that. And nothing I will state in the rest of my post is in any way directed at you, so please don't take it personally.

First: The FOX Poll. Ok, it wasn't set up right and a few rabid fans were able to manipulate it so that the old crusty "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" ranked higher than the highly popular "Greg the Bunny". The forces that be at FOX recognized this horrible, insidious plot and fixed things. We now have "Greg the Bunny" complete on dvd, while allowing "Voyage" to wallow in the deep in of the pool. Thank God that mistake was averted. [sarcasm inserted].

Second: It's really true what they say about stats. You know, that you can make them say whatever you want them to say. You gave the impression that there's an even split amongst age groups. I see something different with those stats. First I see that the under 25 age bracket comprises 40% of the pie. Second, I see that the under 35 bracket comprises over 2/3 of the pie! And lastly, I see that the under 45 bracket comprises almost 90% of the pie. That's hugely one-sided to my way of thinking.

Third: I still take exception to you categorizing some great old shows as unpopular simply because they aren't getting heavy vote totals on your site. That's just not right. Whether FOX or anyone else wants to acknowledge it, many of the older series are classics and deserve better treatment. And other studios seem to be stepping up to the plate on this one, while FOX holds back - and if need be throw the fan base a line of bull, like when a question was asked at the last chat concerning the "Charlie Chan" series being released. Instead of getting an honest answer about the hotbed of PC junk they were embroiled in at that moment, they simply told us to release those wonderful films would cost them their proverbial shirts. Baloney!!!

Anyhow, I simply took exception to your characterization that those FOX shows were not popular. That's a relative term, and I don't think classic tv deserves to be shot down with carte blanche statements like that.

Take care,

Gary "btw, this is the first I've heard that FOX is looking into VOYAGE & TIME TUNNEL, so I hope your sources are right on it" O.