What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

I guess, as everyone else apparently has, the studio is simply not satisfied with the sales of these shows.

Since you mentioned Mister Ed, I guess you'll be happy about this:

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Mis...Season-1/12146

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

There have been other threads on this here....
I will repeat what I said there...I think that some of the oldies sets seem very high priced (MY THREE SONS and LEAVE IT TO BEAVER come to mind)...It seems that the audience is certainly out there....I'm in my early 40's, and I know all of the oldies by heart and have purchased them all.

I know that I LOVE LUCY, BEWITCHED, and THE WALTONS have all sold well, and continued to be released....but as you point out, most of the old shows are just stuck.

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

I think one reason the sales aren't as high as they would like, is because consumers don't want to invest in a couple seasons, only to be left without the entire series.

This angered me with Party of Five (although it isn't a "classic" show in terms of timeline).

Diff'rent Strokes and Welcome Back, Kotter are two more shows that I would get in complete set format, but not individual seasons.

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

I don't think the general public avoids a TV on DVD release based on how many seasons have or have not been released. I've always found the very idea of that to be ridiculous. Why would you not want your favorite show on DVD just because they haven't put out all the seasons yet ? That's absurd. Collect the seasons that have come out and be glad to have them. The stupidest thing about not buying a show is that the more people who don't buy it the less likely any further seasons will come out. How come so many people don't get this ? You're just shooting yourself in the foot and contributing to the problem of low sales.

Ultimately, the answer to this tiresome question is ALWAYS the same. If you want to see future seasons of a show then BUY THE DAMN RELEASES WHEN THEY COME OUT. Do people really not get that at all ? If you aren't going to buy a show for whatever reason then that's your choice. But you don't get to complain when no further seasons come out. Because YOU are part of the problem.

Finally, could be please stop having multiple, endless threads covering this exact same topic ?

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

What I find interesting is that in the DVD era, these old shows have to prove themselves all over again or risk "cancellation" just as they did first run. Any series had to pull in decent ratings or risk cancellation each and every season. Some now classic series such as "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "Cheers" had terrible ratings their first season and came close to being axed before season two.

The same thing is happening in their second lives. "Dick Van Dyke" and "Cheers" finally made it complete on DVD, but it looks as if "Green Acres" got cancelled after its third season. We hope Shout Factory can come in and pick up a "cancelled" series, just as back in the old days, occasionally another network would pick up "Father Knows Best," "Hazel" and "Get Smart."

The more things change the more they remain the same.

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

There really is a market for nostalgia--IF you know how to tap that market properly. Some dvd publishers are better at it than others. Sony is not. But maybe their lack of recent success had more to do with the fact that a couple years ago, they were putting out too MANY classic shows all at once--they pushed the marketplace too far, perhaps. Now they have to suffer--by putting out hardly ANY shows.

Formats change. People are getting into BluRay now, and holding off on standard-def tv shows, thinking that they'll eventually be released on BR. Also, people are just downloading or netflixing everything--they're not buying to own and collect any more.

What I think should happen is that the industry needs to forget about season-by-season releases of the oldies. Season sets probably work well for tv shows that are still on the air...but if you're talking about an old series that ran for 5-20 years, then that's a LOT of effin' boxed sets to buy over an unspecified period of time. My hat is off to those who choose to collect, for example, Gunsmoke--I love you, but it's gonna take FOREVER to get them all.

So...the industry needs to get over these dumb season sets and just move on Complete Series sets. Those seem to sell well during the holiday season anyway. They make great gifts, the show gets collected INSTANTLY and without the anxiety of 'will I ever get all the seasons?'

I'm sick of season sets, personally. I mean, come on--I wanted Dynasty on dvd very badly, and I had to wait years for season two...and then they started breaking it into half-seasons. At their current rate of release, Dynasty will take about 11 years to dribble out on dvd...the show was only on for NINE years. Same problem with Melrose Place. And the Love Boat. And the list goes on and on. It's very uncomfortable to buy these things, not knowing if there'll ever be another release. The dvds are great, but if I buy ONE tv season release, that means I want THE...WHOLE...SHOW, not just one or two seasons...! I think most on this board feel the same way.

So: Paramount, Warners, Sony, Fox and the rest--think about Complete Series sets more often!

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

I'm tired of these threads, too. But I'm more tired of there being a reason they exist.

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

Yet everyone keeps forgetting, the economy has threatened the current business models of many of these studios and this has limited their output of releases.

Sony is even moving toward spinning off their movie studio as that they lost a lot of money in this last quarter. Their profits were down in every market.

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

I also heard rumors about a Paramount being sold, even merged with Columbia. We would see the torch lady on top of a mountain.

But these are just rumors being put forward by a single stockholder.

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

I'd also like for them to take up arms and release the last of "Hart to Hart," as I'm very disappointed that Sony quit.

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

I don't think many of the classic shows will ever make it to Blu-Ray, so DVD is perfectly fine for them.

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

Unfortunately, there isn't enough of a market for many shows and for certain genres. Sitcoms, science fiction and westerns do the best. Crime dramas are hit or miss. But other dramas, like lawyer shows (except for Perry Mason), doctor shows, etc., there doesn't seem to be an interest in putting them out. As someone who likes dramas way more than sitcoms, I'm not happy about this but I do understand it. These things are not going to sell, at least not in sufficient quantities for them to be profitable.

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

The thing that people who write things like this don't understand is that it costs money to digitize and master all those episodes, and more money to create the menus do all the other programming that goes into each disc. There is a mistaken belief that the only cost to the studios in releasing a show is producing, packaging and distributing the discs. In fact, disc replication is one of the cheapest items involved in the process. It is everything involved in producing the contents of the disc that cost the big bucks. And the fact that the bare episodes already exists does not diminish all the expenses incurred in putting those bare episodes onto a DVD master.

The studios didn't just arbitrarily "decide" to do season sets instead of complete series for no reason. In fact, they resisted even donig season sets. They wanted to gradually release series on 2-episode discs (the Paramount model with ST:TOS) or release "Best of" collections. (Which is how Warner Bros. first dipped a reluctant toe into the TV-on-DVD waters.) It wasn't until Fox succeeded with full-season sets of The X-Files (which most industry types regarded as a horrible risk and likely failure) that things began to change. And Fox was taking a chance: They were spending all the money up front to process all those episodes and then hoping there would be a big enough audience for the fairly pricey sets that resulted. ST:TOS S1 would cost more to purchase in the long run (at $15.00 per 2-episode disc), but since people were paying for it gradually, over time, it wasn't as noticeable.

Fox's gamble paid off, but as season sets became the norm, the studios noticed something: Sales for subsequent seasons tended to be about the same as sales for the first season. So if the first season of a show flopped, there was no reason to think the later seasons would do better. Therefore the prudent thing was to stop producing that show.


Exactly, and for most of the same reasons. And just as we "risk" having our time wasted if we start watching a show (because it may get cancelled after a short run) so we "risk" having a show orphaned on DVD.

But I don't hear too many people saying that the networks and studios should only air shows that they've agreed in advance to run for at least five years, and that are paid for up front and cannot be cancelled even if their ratings suck. Does anybody think that would be a rational way to run a network? Let's say a modest network show has an average per episode budget of $4 million. At 22 episodes per year that's $88 million a season and $440 million for a 5 year run. Would it make sense for ABC to spend $440 million this year for a show that they're stuck with for five years whose ratings may earn them only $3 million per episode in 5 months?

So why should a studio do the equivalent for a TV on DVD release? Why would they pay all the upfront costs (which can also run to millions of dollars per TV season) for 5 or 7 or 10 seasons of a show before seeing the first dime of profit or the first sales number from the first season? Don't forget, one of the advantages of the season-by-season approach is that it creates cash-flow, you can pay your production costs on subsequent seasons out of the money you're earning on the early ones. Pay for everything up front and you don't turn a profit until possibly years in the future. (Because most people are still going to collect one season of your show at a time, no matter how quickly you release it, because most of them can't afford to drop a couple of hundred dollars on a "full series set")

The only show that ever pulled off anything resembling this in the U.S. market was Star Trek in its various incarnations. And even then Paramount released each series one season at a time, about once each month. It is true that they basically did all the mastering up front, which is how they were able to meet that release schedule, but they recouped the costs very quickly by getting each series out in about six months (as opposed to the two plus years it took Warner Bros. to release Babylon 5.) But Trek has always been an exception in American television. It was one of the very few non-kids' shows that managed a complete series release in a retail VHS version (the others were Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits - even The X-Files only managed some "Best of" collections.) At a time when the rule was "TV doesn't sell on home video", Trek did. The Trek franchise is like a license to print money, and Trek fans will buy anything with a Starfleet "swoosh" on it. Paramount knew going in that they were going to make their money back. They weren't taking any risk at all.

And they're the only ones in the history of TV-on-DVD who have been in that position. Everybody else has to be prudent, and take a sensible and responsible approach to relasing TV material. Which does not including paying 90% of the cost of releasing a full season before you have any idea how it will sell. I'm sorry, but it just doesn't.

Regards,

Joe

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

True, and let's see if they can keep up and what they're going to do to fight it.

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

Not quite an oldie, but possibly a good sign for things to come: Ally McBeal S1 and Complete Series due on the same day.

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

I never did watch Ally McBeal when it was on. For the fans of the show, I am glad that a region 1 set is coming out. It has been available in region 2 for a few years.

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

Well, by using the term "favorite" show, I suppose most viewers would agree
with you, and buy it, even if the format wasn't to their liking, or if it had
cuts to the show that they weren't thrilled about. Most people will by their
"favorite" show.

But aren't we well past that point now in the market?
The folks who buy a lot of dvd's are buying shows that are far down their wish
list, or never even seen.

If studios want us to keep buying, at some point the customer has to be
getting what they want, right? This 'please, sir, may i have another' mentality
clearly isn't working, I think the studios would agree. They don't make any
money for canceling a release.

About 2 years ago I stopped buying shows that aren't likely to see the end
of the series, and the answer is very simple: there are more sets for sale
than I have time to watch. I can pick and choose which series i'm going
to buy next, and if it's only going to be 1/3 of the seasons, or maybe get
abandoned, I'm skipping the purchase, and i'll buy something else.

These days, I'm far more likely to buy the complete series if it's offered up front.

-g

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

Then Sony should not have bought Columbia or Tri-Star back in 1988. Now they are realizing that movies and TV are not VCR's, stereos, or video cameras, and that they don't have and cannot expect steady profits every quarter for a movie or TV show like they do with consumer electronics. Now Columbia/Tri-Star can get back into the hands of people who really give a shit about art, but can also balance it with commerce as well.

Re: What Happened To the Classic Shows on DVD?

What are you talking about? The economic problems in the United States didn't happen in 1988, they only happened in these past few years. In 1988, there weren't any real problems and since DVD hadn't even arrived as the premiere home video format, there wasn't much coming our way. Sony acquired Columbia and Tri-Star as a logical business interest and they have made money from those studios.

However, it's not just Sony that is suffering. You're forgetting that every business in corporate America is suffering right now because of the economy and that has affected DVD releases, blu ray releases and even TV Shows on DVD's.