Of all the possibilities, this is not the most likely. First off, indications are that Lorimar was only a distributor of Mama's Family, not a production entity, even in the first-run syndication years. Second, post-production on television programs is not always in-house at the production company or distributor. Third party post houses do the work and the finished tapes are delivered to the clients. The more likely scenario is that sometime in the '80s, a post-production house was paid to cut these shows down for syndication and only the final versions were delivered to Telepictures.
What is comes down to is that at best, Warner did a inexplicably poor job in preparing the season one dvd release - I would have assumed that for any release, their lawyers do research on rights issues just be sure they aren't going to a lot of trouble to release a dvd, only to have it pulled at the last minute because someone else claims ownership. And the run length alone of the Mama's Family episodes should have been a tipoff that maybe the Warner owned episodes weren't the original cuts. Add in the fact that the dvd release came with no extra whatsoever (something almost unheard of these days), suggests that Warner just didn't put much time or effort into the season one release.
But it seems that now all the facts (we hope) are out in the open, it would appear in everyone's interests (Warner, John Hamilton and the fans) to solve the problem, if only for future season sets. I can't imagine why Hamilton would not give Warner the uncut episodes (of course, getting compensated appropriately). I'm sure Warner will not like having to shell out money for the rights to the uncut shows, but assuming sales of the first season dvds have been encouraging, they ought to still be able to make a reasonable profit on the future season sets, even if they have to cut Hamilton in for share.
Also, just as an aside, Gord Lacey does a great job on his site, and deserves our thanks for his hard work getting TV dvd info out. On occasion I have sent him email with questions about dvd release issues, and have gotten personal and helpful replies from him within 24 hours, even though he doesn't know me from Adam.
There's a review posted now on Amazon for this set. It's extremely informative in a way I haven't seen about what's wrong with this release and why we should indeed be complaining. The writer compared an audio recording of the Wedding Part 1 episode as originally broadcast with the DVD release version and meticulously records the differences. They are significant.
The posting is dated November 11 and the URL is here: