Our Miss Brooks Returns to TV! (1 Viewer)

Big news! An episode of ‘Our Miss Brooks’ is scheduled to air on Decades (sister network of Me-TV and H&I) on September 23rd! Any thoughts about this?

Never saw this series but always liked Eve Arden. I wish Decades would get something resembling a regular schedule for the classic shows it broadcasts. It's frankly a pain in the neck trying to find out when (or if) a show is going to be broadcast on any given day of the week. Seriously, the guys that program this channel must have Attention Deficit Disorder.

potnoodle said:

Never saw this series but always liked Eve Arden. I wish Decades would get something resembling a regular schedule for the classic shows it broadcasts. It's frankly a pain in the neck trying to find out when (or if) a show is going to be broadcast on any given day of the week. Seriously, the guys that program this channel must have Attention Deficit Disorder.

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It's a great series! I own an episode on 16mm film and it is great, in my opinion. About Decades, it's a great channel. But yes, a regular schedule would be nice.

Someone posted a while back that the show was being remastered according to the CBS Syndication Bible, so I'm happy, but not surprised. Some people speculated that the show was being prepped for a DVD release or syndication. I think CBS owns the Decades channel, so they need programming. It was smart to get this series out of their vaults, and back on TV. But, yes, their schedule sucks, but I do like the marathons on weekends, so maybe they will have an Our Miss Brooks marathon! This weekend its Bob Newhart, and next weekend it's Abbot and Costello.

Ron Lee Green said:

Someone posted a while back that the show was being remastered according to the CBS Syndication Bible, so I'm happy, but not surprised. Some people speculated that the show was being prepped for a DVD release or syndication. I think CBS owns the Decades channel, so they need programming. It was smart to get this series out of their vaults, and back on TV. But, yes, their schedule sucks, but I do like the marathons on weekends, so maybe they will have an Our Miss Brooks marathon! This weekend its Bob Newhart, and next weekend it's Abbot and Costello.

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A binge of Our Miss Brooks would be fantastic! Soon, I'll have better quality copies that can replace the blurry, low quality ones I currently have, which came from YouTube.

I have Me-TV but not Decades. Hopefully, since they're considered sister networks, episodes will eventually turn up on Me-TV. (What I really want is a DVD or Blu-ray release, but I honestly don't see that happening.)

Dave Lawrence said:

I have Me-TV but not Decades. Hopefully, since they're considered sister networks, episodes will eventually turn up on Me-TV. (What I really want is a DVD or Blu-ray release, but I honestly don't see that happening.)

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It should pop up on Me-TV sometime, like you said. And it most likely will. As for DVD and Blu-Ray, I don't think so either because the only masters CBS made was syndication masters.

For me, one of the great disappointments in TV on DVD is how the I LOVE LUCY-clones didn't make it to DVD.


An I LOVE LUCY-clone is a series where a wacky, hare-brained, but lovable female makes some male's life miserable with her wacky, hare-brained schemes. The male could be her husband, father or boss. The other major, long-running ones were MY LITTLE MARGIE, I MARRIED JOAN, OUR MISS BROOKS, PRIVATE SECRETARY, OH! SUSANNA and THE ANN SOTHERN SHOW.


Since these are all sixty years old or thereabouts, interest in DVD releases is close to zero. Of course, if TV-on-DVD had come along in the Fifties, Sixties or Seventies, these would all have been released in their entirety long ago.


I want to add, technically, that OUR MISS BROOKS came before I LOVE LUCY, being a radio show that began in 1948, but bringing it to television must have been inspired by the success of I LOVE LUCY. In fact, it was Desilu's second sitcom. (Besides which, I LOVE LUCY was based on the radio series MY FAVORITE HUSBAND, which came along at the exact same time as OUR MISS BROOKS, so it's a tossup as to which set the standard for the "wacky female makes male's life miserable" type of series.)


(I should also add that apparently the real beginning was the Fanny Brice radio series about Baby Snooks, which was written by MY FAVORITE HUSBAND-I LOVE LUCY's Jess Oppenheimer. He said he based the character of Liz Cooper/Lucy Ricardo on Baby Snooks, who was a wacky, hare-brained little girl who made her father's life miserable with her schemes.)

I think the relative merits of these Lucy "clones" could be debated, but the primary reason these other shows haven't made it to DVD as opposed to Lucy is that "I Love Lucy" is, and probably always will be, in class by itself. In many ways, Lucy became the standard by which all other sitcoms were measured. It is the classic show of the 50's with an almost miraculous combination of brillant casting, stellar writing and flawless directing. No other show from that period could come close to matching that superb combination.

Many years ago, back in the late 1960's, my cousin Robin Todosychuk made the decision to change his hard-to-spell, hard-to-pronounce last name to "Arden" when he started his high school teaching career. A few years after he made this change, I asked him why he picked "Arden": "Was it because of 'Our Miss Brooks' with Eve Arden as a teacher?" You should have seen his face. He thought he had just picked "Arden" at random, and suddenly realized he hadn't. Anyhow, I think that both my cousin and I would like seeing "Our Miss Brooks" again some time.

I don't know the difference between "re-mastering a show" and making "syndication masters". If someone wants to give me a brief description, I would appreciate it. I assume the latter is cheaper. I just wish Sony would create syndication masters for The Farmer's Daughter. I don't need an official DVD release. I just want to watch the show on TV again.

Ron Lee Green said:

I don't know the difference between "re-mastering a show" and making "syndication masters". If someone wants to give me a brief description, I would appreciate it. I assume the latter is cheaper. I just wish Sony would create syndication masters for The Farmer's Daughter. I don't need an official DVD release. I just want to watch the show on TV again.

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It's very possible that Our Miss Brooks was transferred from 16mm prints, similar to The Millionaire, as opposed to going back to the original 35mm negatives.

Neil Brock said:

It's very possible that Our Miss Brooks was transferred from 16mm prints, similar to The Millionaire, as opposed to going back to the original 35mm negatives.

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I've been saying that since March, back when the CBS Syndication Bible was updated to reflect the change to Our Miss Brooks. However, we may just have to wait until September 23rd to find out.

davidmatychuk said:

Many years ago, back in the late 1960's, my cousin Robin Todosychuk made the decision to change his hard-to-spell, hard-to-pronounce last name to "Arden" when he started his high school teaching career. A few years after he made this change, I asked him why he picked "Arden": "Was it because of 'Our Miss Brooks' with Eve Arden as a teacher?" You should have seen his face. He thought he had just picked "Arden" at random, and suddenly realized he hadn't. Anyhow, I think that both my cousin and I would like seeing "Our Miss Brooks" again some time.

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Shakespeare's 'As You Like It' is set in 'the forest of Arden' (Ardennes). Maybe that' s what your cousin was thinking of.

Ron Lee Green said:

I don't know the difference between "re-mastering a show" and making "syndication masters". If someone wants to give me a brief description, I would appreciate it. I assume the latter is cheaper. I just wish Sony would create syndication masters for The Farmer's Daughter. I don't need an official DVD release. I just want to watch the show on TV again.

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I thought Syndication Masters were (in the case of a half-hour show like Brooks) cut to 22-minutes for syndication vs. original full-length episodes. (and I know how long you've been waiting for The Farmer's Daughter to return to TV Ron--about the same amount of time I've been waiting for It's a Living).

Kasey, on 04 Sept 2015 - 2:28 PM, said:


I thought Syndication Masters were (in the case of a half-hour show like Brooks) cut to 22-minutes for syndication vs. original full-length episodes.

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You are correct. That IS what is meant when CBS refers to "syndication 4x3," which is their terminology for a syndication master offered in 4x3 screen format. It means that OUR MISS BROOKS is available to broadcasters from CBS only in an edited-for-syndication 22 minute version. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the material from which the transfers were sourced.

Am I dreaming? I believe someone pointed out in another thread that syndication masters were all they had on hand from the original syndication, though they weren't necessarily edited down to 22 minutes.

Ron1973 said:

Am I dreaming? I believe someone pointed out in another thread that syndication masters were all they had on hand from the original syndication, though they weren't necessarily edited down to 22 minutes.

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I think they were from Viacom's syndication package, if I'm correct. I'm not sure if these will be fresh “out of the oven” syndication masters or if these are just re-transfers of some they had on hand.

Seanhtf said:

You are correct. That IS what is meant when CBS refers to "syndication 4x3," which is their terminology for a syndication master offered in 4x3 screen format. It means that OUR MISS BROOKS is available to broadcasters from CBS only in an edited-for-syndication 22 minute version. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the material from which the transfers were sourced.

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Here's how I see it: On most of the series in the CBS Syndication Bible, if a series is transferred in HD, they would list the masters as HD. If remastering from the 35mm prints, I think it would list the transfers as ‘Network 4x3 HD’. In the case of very popular series, such as Andy Griffith, they have Network as well as Syndication masters in HD. Our Miss Brooks doesn't have any HD masters, even though it says “transferred into HD”. My guess is that it's actually saying “there are brand new transfers for this series”.

TheLogoGuy94 said:

Big news! An episode of ‘Our Miss Brooks’ is scheduled to air on Decades (sister network of Me-TV and H&I) on September 23rd! Any thoughts about this?

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I just checked their schedule on that date, and the title of the episode is "The Novelist" from season 3.