Brandon_D
Stunt Coordinator
- Joined
- Mar 8, 2004
- Messages
- 91
Now that The Golden Girls are being released on DVD, I sure hope Empty Nest will start to be released. It was equally hilarious as Golden Girls!!
Originally Posted by David Rain
Intelligent, adult sitcoms often don't seem to sell very well on DVD. Just ask the poor folks still waiting for Mary Tyler Moore to finish it's run on DVD. Or all the fans waiting for more Murphy Brown.
When was Empty Nest in syndication? It never played here after its network run.Originally Posted by FanCollector
I hate saying it, as I am a tremendous Empty Nest fan, but the prospects have always seemed unlikely to me because the show was such a monumental failure in syndication. Generally, an older show's network success is irrelevant to its DVD chances, but its syndication and cable rerun success between, say 1980 and 2000, is a very good indicator. There are exceptions, but usually that calculation works pretty well. (Your Mary Tyler Moore and Murphy Brown examples illustrate the rule...fairly successful network runs and poor syndication results.) Alas, that leaves Empty Nest in a bad spot. Worse, it is a Buena Vista show, and they are notoriously bad about older show releases.
But I hope I am wrong!!
It appeared in some local markets briefly in the 1990s. It was not successful, generally showing in very weak timeslots. Subsequently, it was aired on TBS, again briefly. Some shows get another chance, as The Golden Girls did, for instance. Not a big syndication hit (though bigger than Empty Nest), it really skyrocketed on cable showings. Empty Nest never seemed to catch on. My private theory is that the show damaged its own syndication potential by running too long. The first season of Empty Nest is as good as any show there was. The next couple of seasons were also good, though not as consistently so. The precipitous decline in the show's quality after that, however, created some bad associations in people's memories. By the last couple of years of the series, the ratings had plummeted and the once-prestigious show was critically reviled. That was the atmosphere into which the show was released in syndication, and I suspect that people who had caught some episodes from the last few seasons of the series were in no hurry to revisit it.Originally Posted by Elena S
When was Empty Nest in syndication? It never played here after its network run.