Can you imagine just 5-8 years ago?... (1 Viewer)

Who would have thought that we would be getting shows on dvd that we never thought we would see again....even in syndication.

Shows like..Ark 2, Harsh Realm, 80's Twilight Zone, etc.

Pretty cool.

I remember thinking that only the biggest shows ever and those with rabid fanbases would make it to DVD--X-Files, Star Trek, Simpsons, Seinfeld, All in the Family; maybe a few less popular shows, but ultimately, not really anything obscure.

I never in a million years thought we'd ever see Wait Till Your Father Gets Home on DVD (it's supposedly out next year), Pete and Pete, The Weird Al Show...and I never even thought I would want to see full seasons of Survivor or Amazing Race on DVD.

Even 4 years ago!

I was buying I Spy at $25 per 4 episode release in the hopes that by supporting the range I would cause the studios to put more TV on DVD.

I remember the pathetic TV Shows section at Best Buy and other stores just 3-4 years ago.

Geez, A few years ago. I was buying 4 or 5 tv series from Columbia House on vhs. Thats $25 a tape with only 2 episodes. And now we complain when a season on dvd is over $40 and comes with extras and better video & sound quality.

That's because TV on DVD has created, for the first time, a U.S. market for such shows. For many years the rule of thumb was that you needed 100 episodes for a show to be viable in syndication. (Because most syndicated reruns air 5 days a week and a show that stars over again with episode 1 in less than 20 weeks "burns out" too fast in a given timeslot on a given station.) A cult hit like Star Trek could bend the rule, but until the advent of small, speciality channels like Sci-Fi (which could run "event" marathons or devote one regular timeslot to a succession of short-run cancelled series) there was nothing the studios could do with a show that only ran 13 or 26 weeks. And since most series were produced at a deficit, with the network license fees covering only a portion of the cost, the studios flat out lost money on such shows. That is one reason why successful shows often show no profit on paper - the studios charge off the cost of flops against the income from successful shows - the ones that do go into syndication and eventually earn actual profits. It ain't all greed and creative bookkeeping.

Even a flop TV series will often attract millions of viewers. The problem is a network TV show needs to attract 8 to 10 million viewers to be a success. If you attract 3 or 4 million, you're cancelled. But a DVD doesn't need to sell millions of copies to be a success. If even a fraction of the 3 or 4 million folks who watched an old show buy it on DVD that can be enough to make it profitable. So it can be worth the initial investment to release at least one season to see how it sells. Because otherwise the show is a dead loss to the studio that must be charged off for years.

It will be interesting to see if the studios are gradually forced to start paying the paper "profits participants" in all the successful shows that have continued to be in the red (on paper) once all the money now being collected for "dead" shows on DVD gets to be too much and has to be accounted for and applied.

Regards,

Joe

Well, I've been in the DVD market since July 2000, that was when I purchased my 1ST DVD player. Back then, there weren't too many TV shows on DVD but look at it now.

Nowadays, we have many TV shows on DVD & more & more of them are on the way.