Re: 70s Mini-Series On DVD Question
The six or seven night mini-series was a phenomenon of American commercials television in the 70s and 80s. They stopped being made when the economics of TV changed. With the audience becoming more and more fractured by the rise of cable and additional broadcast networks the audience share and the advertising revenues needed to sustain such productions vanished. By the mid-90s a "mini-series" might be a 2 or 3 night affair, an extra-long TV movie.
Mini-series fell somewhere between episodic weekly series and made-for-TV movies, and were a great venue for adapting books without all the cutting needed to compress them into a two-hour theatrical time slot. ABC, inventor of the form, called the first mini-series "Novels for television." In later years the nighttime soaps, then shows like Babylon 5, Wiseguy, the later seasons of DS9, and newer series like Lost and Heroes showed that on-going stories could also work in a weekly series format.
Because the economics and history are totally different, it is a mistake to conflate the typically 10 to 13 part British series of roughly the same period with the American-style miniseries. 13 week "seasons" was simply the typical run of a British show, and because reruns and syndication revenue were not big issues in the UK at the time, a "one-off" 13 episode story that would never have a second season was not automatically rejected by the powers that be, as they would have been in the U.S. Over here nobody makes a TV show that runs only one season or only 13 episodes total on purpose. (Except PBS.) None of the business models in commercial TV reward you for doing so.
Similarly the short-seasons of cable networks like F/X and USA reflect an alternative to the 26-week, 22 to 24 episode, standard American television season based on the different busines models that those networks run on. But they are not really comparable to the mini-series per se either. For one thing, shows like The Shield, Resuce Me, Burn Notice and Monk are all intended to run for multiple seasons and to make money in an active syndication market.
BTW, this coming Tuesday, May 13 will see the release of one of the all-time best American mini-series, The Adams Chronicles. Anyone who enjoyed HBO's John Adams should also like this series, which traces the history of four generations of the family from Founding Father John, through diplomat and president John Quincy, businesman and diplomat Charles Francis and critic and literary artist Henry along with their own wives and children. The first three were leading politicians who represented America abroad at critical times (all three, father, son and grandson specifically represented America to Great Brtain, serving as Ambassador to the Court of St. James at critical times - Charles Francis during the Civil War) the last a journalist, historian and novelist.
The mini-series has not been seen since its original broadcasts and has never been released on home video. I'm looking forward to seeing it again.
Regards,
Joe
