Hill Street Blues abandoned? (1 Viewer)

The insert in the Season 2 box said that Season 3 was coming in the Fall of 2006. Still no announcement. Someone on imdb posted that they emailed Fox and got a reply which said that they have no plans to release further seasons due to poor sales of S1 and S2.

Does anyone have concrete evidence that this is true, or is it just hearsay and rumor?

I'd say that information is correct.

Gord

Oh no!

I hope this isn't ominous for the November 28 release of St. Elsewhere and subsequent seasons.

This is just sad news... I will cross my fingers and hold out hope that they will release the remaining 5 seasons. It did look like for awhile that they would not release anymore nypd blue either and we know they eventually continued with that show. If you check sales rankings at various online shops hill street has done aswell as nypd blue has. Infact Hill Street has sold significantly better than nypd blue has according to Amazon. So Who Knows ?

The weird part is the website fox has setup: http://www.foxhome.com/hillstreetblues/
It clearly shows they had every intention of releasing the 7 seasons with the seven boxes at the bottom of the page to me.

If they have decided to not release anymore than they should make a statement saying so. They owe it to the people who started collecting the show.

Maybe no more seasons of Hill Street Blues? :frowning: That's quite a shame..

Another Fox show that had an insert in the last set saying the next was coming in Fall 2006 was King of the Hill.. have we heard anything on that?

They always have intentions of releasing the complete run of a series, but if sales are poor then they cut them short. I've never heard an exec say "We're just going to release a few seasons of this show and then stop."

Dramas seem like a hard sell on DVD... I don't know why.

Gord

All the major studios are abandoning their back catalogs. The only shows next year that will be released are shows after the year 2000. So people go on Ebay and buy tapes of your favorite shows because you won't see them in cable or dvds. Too bad nobody bought these older shows on dvd. Go buy a vcr and buy tapes because you are dreaming if you think you will see any show made before 2000 out on dvd. These companies are out to make a buck and obviously no one bought their dvds. So to answer your question-yes it has been abandoned along with all the other good shows made before 2000. So has the Mary Tyler Moore Show, the Bob Newhart Show, All in the Family, etc et all. Let's face it-the dvd market failed.

Odd thing to say...seeing as how the TV on DVD section at my local Best Buy continues to grow and shrink down the Movie on DVD section.

I'm not really surprised considering that they are trying to obtain maximum profit with minimal effort. It always blows up in their face in the long run.

I am not a fan of either NYPD or Hill Street Blues, but come on, maybe Fox would have more to spend on those DVD's if they weren't too busy repackaging Buffy, X-Files and Angel over and over again, and putting too much money in special limited edition packaging for Simpsons sets (when they saw that most people were outraged with the season 6 packaging). It's no different when Warner talks about not being able to afford releasing further Night Court and co. sets, when they keep repackaging Friends over and over again.

I sure hope Phyll is wrong. It's a dark picture that's posted. Phyll, do you have definite studio contacts that are relaying this info to you? Just curious. I do know that the past 2 years have seen some older-series releases in Jan-Mar , so I'll be watching TSoD as we all do to see what happens. But, like you said, it's all about the #'s. I had thought that there were plenty of 'Boomers out there from my generation that were supporting the sales of the 60's - 80's series. I'm surprised if this information turns out to be what happens.

well, I think Phyll got a little over top himself by saying Bob Newhart (which has been coming out at a reasonable pace and season 4 came out not too long ago) and MTM (which I'm sure we'll see season 5 in the first quarter of 2007) are abandoned. I mean, you waited almost 3 years for season 2, what's 9 months for season 5?

I also don't believe All In The Family has been abandoned either, Sony has committed to "one season a year, that's all" since 2002, we'll see season 6 in 2007, is it as fast as you wish? no, but I don't think they will abandon it now when they saw fit to release Archie Bunker's Place just on the tail of seeing how AITF sold.

I used to email a person at Fox and she would give me a hint about what shows to expect in the future. Now she must have been replaced because all I get is an automated response from Fox saying my email has been forwarded. That's all it says. This cannot be good. I really hope they don't abandon Hill Street Blues because I have never seen the show until I bought the dvds and now I am hooked. I hope you guys are right about the other Fox MTM shows. I think if these companies start a show they should finish it. If you look at the last few months it seems like there are less and less shows from the 70's and 80's being released now. I have emailed all the big companies and only got a positive response from one of them. So it just doesn't look good right now but things can always change. Thankfully, Fox does have a habit of changing their minds.

But they're not losing money on "Friends," they're making money on "Friends." Just as 20th has made money repackaging "Buffy" and the rest. Yes, these reissues may use resources (manpower, hours, etc.) that could be given over to releasing previously unreleased material, but financially, they're sound bets.

Yes, reissues are free money and shouldn't even be taken into consideration in these kinds of talks. To think that reissues are actually taking money away from producing unreleased material?????

Classic tv shows on dvd(like Hill Street Blues) are far from dead.

A funny thing happened around 2002 for tv shows being released on dvd. The market became over saturated. TV sets on dvd were so popular, there was a huge flood of titles being released, and the pace hasn't slowed one bit since then. If anything, it's gotten worse. With titles from so many different studios, it's nearly impossible to keep up with all your favorite tv shows being released. Sometimes the studios need to catch their breath before diving back in. Just give it time. I'd bet my life there will be a 3rd season of Hill Street Blues.

I'm inclined to believe Gord. Of anyone here, he's most likely to know what's what. Having said that, I'm also hopeful, but not optimistic, that we'll see additional seasons at some point in the future. Never say never.

Does anyone else think that Fox seems to be the worst culprit for abandoning series? The only one to my mind that comes a close second is Sony.

I also wonder if they had spent a bit more money on both the production and promotion of HSB on DVD, it might have done better. The packaging of both seasons seemed cheap, and they appear to have been dumped on retailers without any fanfare or marketing, which led them to disappear very quickly to the back of the "catalog" racks (if you could find them at all). Unless you had done your homework and knew that HSB had been released, you weren't likely to have stumbled across it in the stores - especially in Best Buy, Future Shop, HVM or Wal-Mart here in Canada (which are the 4 biggest DVD retailer here).

Cheers gets no promotion, no production value or extras (other than Season 1), and 'blah' menus, but it seems to be a great seller.

don't forget the "if it's a sitcom that isn't outplayed and begins with an F (Friends, Fresh Prince, Full House), fuhgettabout a season 2" Warner or the "one and done" antics of Universal. I think those two are worse than Fox.

This is just TOO much for me. First Columbia House stops sending HSB to me after only a few tapes & now FOX just up & quits!?! If "Dramas" are such a bad product to sell why has a series like "Little House" had so many seasons released? Hell FOX might as well just close down "St Elsewhere" right now so they don't "waste" any money on a pre-2000 series.