"Newhart" is much like "Night Court" in that respect. With "Newhart" many casual fans would purchase starting with S2 when Julia Duffy came on full time with many more at S3 when Steven Kampmann (Kirk) left and Peter Scolari (Michael) came on board full time. I like the entire run but it was S3 when the series truly hit its' stride. Much like "Night Court" which reportedly suffered slow early sales because many were waiting for Markie Post in S3.Originally Posted by MatthewA
With the announcement of Nickelodeon's The Wild Thornberrys coming from Shout! I can now safely assume there will be more still to come from the CBS/Paramount/Viacom deal. I hope they get the last two seasons of Family Ties. I imagine they're the only hope for the rest of Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Petticoat Junction. Considering that they did a fine job with Webster: no cuts, no music replacements, and original logos on every episode, these shows would probably be better off with Shout.
MGM is moving their distribution to Sony yet again. How this affects their deal with Shout! I don't know. But hopefully the beautiful remasters of the first three seasons of Green Acres were done on the last three. On all but one episode it looked like a brand new show.
Newhart is where I make the case for either complete series sets or season sets in reverse. The last episode is arguably the most famous one, and the first season is most fans' least favorite. Many predicted the first season would bomb on DVD, and they were apparently right.
It's a shame when long running, much loved series like these two (plus "Green Acres", "Beverly Hillbillies", and others mentioned in this thread.) get "shelved" for "slow sales" when pure dreck gets full series releases. Of course the same thing happens with broadcast. Quality shows get cancelled while things like reality shows or predictable/retread-type clones-of-old-popular-shows keep running year after year after year... Frankly, I doubt that many of the shows mentioned in this thread would have gotten a run longer than their respective DVD releases in the current broadcast climate. I know that one person's "classic" is easily another person's "dreck" and the suits have to keep the bottom line up so they will only continue releases of what sells *well*, but you would think that if they keep series alive that at least break even in sales it would endeer purchasers to the studio and actually help future sales of other series. Maybe that's the whole problem in that sales expectations are just too high. After all, many people I know do *not* purchase TV on DVD in the volume in which I, and many here, do. They may own seasons of 4-5 shows with a couple possibly complete but *not* in the dozens, much less hundreds.
I've come to the conclusion that studios would rather release 1-3 season shows simply because it's easier. Sales numbers will peak early and not really fall too much by the last season. It also seems that many short series have "cult" type status so people will purchase on release date or shortly after "just in case" - I know I have.