How Is That Not Out? Biggest Head Scratchers By Decade. (1 Viewer)

[Frank Soyke]

Ok for the sake of arguement , only including unreleased stuff or shows with a just a best of or special release not stalled by season shows.

50s - Lassie - Really
Ozzie and Harriet- we know why but cmon, iconic in its time
77 Sunset Strip - We know why... at least what they tell us
Life of Riley- I guess just the age of it is the problem... so popular though
Amos and Andy- Yeah I know.... I'll keep my comments to myself, don't want to get
Banned. Should be out.
60s - Green Hornet- A superhero show unreleased, for real?
Fantastic Four 66- See above
Julia - Groundbreaking show... most others of black interest long released
My World and Welcome To It- Critical darling
Ben Casey- So popular and no whisper of a release
70s- Chico and the Man- Only major 70s sitcom completely unreleased save that Best of stuff
Trapper John MD- See Ben Casey above
Phyllis - Any idea on this one?
BJ/Lobo- Eveybody loved BJ during the trucker craze... Movin On comes out but not
These far more popular shows??

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Well, Phyllis makes sense, since both MTM and Rhoda struggled to get released in full.

Green Hornet is in the same rights quagmire that Batman was in, but without half the interest in it.

The ones I think of are Burns and Allen, Dragnet, and Head of the Class.

And no, I don't consider the PD releases for B&A or Dragnet.

 

[Joseph Bolus]

I keep hearing that “BJ and the Bear” had all its original negatives destroyed in a fire ...

That series along with “My World and Welcome to It”are both “Grail” shows for me — and we’ll probably never see either one.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

I keep hearing that “BJ and the Bear” had all its original negatives destroyed in a fire ...

That series along with “My World and Welcome to It”are both “Grail” shows for me — and we’ll probably never see either one.

Now, were the BJ and the Bear original negatives destroyed in the Great Universal Fire of '08, or were the usable videotape masters destroyed?

IIRC, that's what happened to Baretta, and why that's forever stuck on season 1. And I think Emergency's then-current masters were destroyed, which led to them giving us the HD transfers that started appearing a couple years later, most notably with season 6 on DVD.

In the case of Emergency, it was worth their while to make new transfers. But a show like BJ and the Bear? Well, the negatives still may exist, but like Dragnet 5X, it would cost more to make new, usable transfers than they would ever make back on them, so that's it.

 

[Sky King]

There are other classic '50s series that will most likely never see the light of day, but were successes during their network run. Some that come to mind are...The Bob Cummings Show aka Love That Bob, Lassie and Bachelor Father just to name a few. Like my Holy Grail, Ben Casey, excuses for these non releases range from poor remaining elements to music rights issues. IMHO I think these excuses are crap, promoted by executives who are most likely, too young to remember these shows and their popularity when initially aired. They feel these shows wouldn't warrant the time and money invested. I think fans of the shows I mentioned plus other popular network shows, would take syndication prints over nothing at all.
When Warner Brothers released The Adventures of Superman on DVD, they used 16mm syndication prints transferred to tape in the early 1990's and it still sold well despite the less than stellar video quality.

 

[MartinP.]

I'm adding:

Twelve O'Clock High.

 

[Bryan^H]

Ok for the sake of arguement , only including unreleased stuff or shows with a just a best of or special release not stalled by season shows.

50s - Lassie - Really

Yeah what gives??

The most iconic 50s golden age television show ever created and nothing.
I'm so disappointed. I would have thought it would have been released on DVD years ago.

 

[skylark68]

Bachelor Father was a great show. The reruns used to air on Antenna TV (I think) a few years ago. I'd watch it whenever I caught it scanning through channels. How many seasons were there? I doubt too many. It was a fun show though.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Bachelor Father was a great show. The reruns used to air on Antenna TV (I think) a few years ago. I'd watch it whenever I caught it scanning through channels. How many seasons were there? I doubt too many. It was a fun show though.

Five seasons, about 160 episodes.

 

[jcroy]

(More generally).

Did 1950s era shows suddenly stop showing up in semi-regular daily reruns sometime in the late-1970s or 1980s? (ie. On the three/four tv networks).

When my parents moved back to america in the 70s, they got a color tv. For the longest time, I don't remember watching any black & white shows in reruns. (The only black & white stuff I watched on tv, were mostly movies).

 

[BobO'Link]

Of those on your list I think the biggest head scratcher is "Lassie." While I watched it semi-regularly during the original airings I never much cared for it. In spite of that I consider it to be a hugely iconic program. Right up there with "I Love Lucy," "Leave it to Beaver," and others. I remember running across reruns of that one well into the 80s. The stories are good, it had generally good to excellent production values, and is appealing to all age groups.

I know "The Green Hornet" is, like "Batman" was, tied up in rights hell, but it also co-stars Bruce Lee. Given his huge cult status you'd think they'd want that out just for that one reason. Of course, that could be one of the major hold-outs too, with one, or more, rights holders wanting far more for his iconography than it's truly worth.

"Ozzy and Harriet" is also a major head scratcher. It, too, is rather iconic, but I also don't remember seeing it much during reruns. Like "Burns and Allen" (a grail show of mine), it's seen a few runs, with excellent looking elements, but I don't think those runs did all that well, for either program. To me, both of those are timeless comedy programs, much like "I Love Lucy," with humor that's not bound to the times in which they were produced and generally appealing to all age groups.

 

[Ron1973]

(More generally).

Did 1950s era shows suddenly stop showing up in semi-regular daily reruns sometime in the late-1970s or 1980s? (ie. On the three/four tv networks).

When my parents moved back to america in the 70s, they got a color tv. For the longest time, I don't remember watching any black & white shows in reruns. (The only black & white stuff I watched on tv, were mostly movies).

Not 50's, but I remember the b&w episodes of 60's shows still airing on regular TV in the 90's.

 

[Brian Himes]

I keep hearing that “BJ and the Bear” had all its original negatives destroyed in a fire ...

No, the original negatives did not get destroyed in the fire of 08. What got destroyed were the tape masters used for striking syndication prints. Thus those would most likely be used for DVD transfers as well. Now whether those masters were original broadcast length is anyone's guess. I tend to think that they were since there have been no DVD releases from any of the shows that were reported as lost (or speculated to be lost as the case may be). Emergency! seems to be an exception. Universal did report that nothing TV or Film wise was permanently lost. The stuff lost were merely back up copies of films and syndicated masters for TV shows. At least that was the report at the time. Again, whether or not that was an accurate assessment is anyone's guess. Now there has been an overseas release of Baretta season 2 but I don't know where the transfers came from (either Universal or some other affiliate that just happen to have the series). The Australian release of season 1 of McCloud is a good example of this. Universal did not have or were unable to locate the original 1 hour length season 1 episodes of McCloud and those were located in England, I believe.

Universal could strike new tape masters for everything that was lost in the fire but that has been stated as being very expensive. Apparently some stuff is getting newly struck masters (Emergency! comes to mind) but at a very slow pace. So, it could be a long while before BJ and the Bear is released. There is also the music licensing to consider for BJ. So, that's two hurdles that are holding up BJ and the Bear.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Fantastic Four 66

Fantastic Four 1966 happens to have the rather bizarre distinction of being owned by Marvel Comics' mortal enemy's parent company. For that reason, it will probably never be seen again.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Fantastic Four 1966 happens to have the rather bizarre distinction of being owned by Marvel Comics' mortal enemy's parent company. For that reason, it will probably never be seen again.

Nah, if there was any interest, a deal could be made. WB did some horse trading in the past with Fox for Batman, for example.

But speaking of Fox, they're the problem. Fox is holding the Fantastic Four movie rights hostage, which made looney old man Ike Perlmutter essentially blacklist the characters by canceling the comic, removing them from all marketing, and issuing orders to not use the characters. So until Fox makes another failure of a movie and finally gives the rights back to Marvel, F4 will probably never happen.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Fox has no control over the tv rights, if they did we'd never had seen releases of the late-70s and mid-90s Fantastic Four. This is entirely between Warner and Disney. And that is why its not going to happen. So basically if you're making the Batman analogy here, Warner IS Fox in this case.

 

[Steve...O]

In theory, Universal would have received insurance payments that should have covered the cost of replacing the assets lost in the fire. Whether the insured value was adequate I don't know. It's also entirely possible that the senior leadership team used the funds for other purposes, which is entirely their right to do so.

Speaking as a fan and consumer it is a shame that Unversal hasn't treated their classic TV properties as well as CBS/P from a home video standpoint as we'd be seeing much better home video releases than we are.

 

[Dave Lawrence]

70s- Chico and the Man- Only major 70s sitcom completely unreleased save that Best of stuff

Besides Chico, the only other 70s sitcom I can think of that ran longer than 2 seasons and remains unreleased is The New Dick Van Dyke Show. Obviously it can't compete with the classic Van Dyke show, but it ran for 3 seasons and from what little I've seen of it, I liked it. I've read that it could have continued even longer, but Dick wouldn't do a 4th season without Carl Reiner, who quit over disagreements with the network over content restrictions. I'd love to see both C&TM and TNDVDS released.

(For unreleased 70s sitcoms that only ran for 2 seasons, I'd love to have The Tony Randall Show and Temperatures Rising.)

 

[phenri]

Besides Chico, the only other 70s sitcom I can think of that ran longer than 2 seasons and remains unreleased is The New Dick Van Dyke Show. Obviously it can't compete with the classic Van Dyke show, but it ran for 3 seasons and from what little I've seen of it, I liked it. I've read that it could have continued even longer, but Dick wouldn't do a 4th season without Carl Reiner, who quit over disagreements with the network over content restrictions. I'd love to see both C&TM and TNDVDS released.

(For unreleased 70s sitcoms that only ran for 2 seasons, I'd love to have The Tony Randall Show and Temperatures Rising.)

What studio owns the New Dick Van Dyke Show or is it privately owned?

 

[Lord Dalek]

What studio owns the New Dick Van Dyke Show or is it privately owned?

Warner Bros.