Idea for the studio geniuses (1 Viewer)

[Mark To]

What we need is for the studios to form divisions similar to what the music industry did. Form specialty divisions to market the lesser appeal shows. Time Warner has Rhino Handmade, which puts together CD releases of limited appeal items. They only press a small number of anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 and when they sell out, that's it. Universal music does the same with their Hip-O Select. Sony has their special products division. All of these are ways to get out catalog that otherwise wouldn't merit seeing the light of day. Something like that would be perfect for putting out short-run, older and limited appeal series. Things that wouldn't sell in any great numbers but could certainly sell a few thousand copies. It would be a way to make some money on shows that are just collecting dust right now. It's gonna happen at some point, mark my words. Like anything else, someone in the industry has to be willing to be the first to take the risk with it. May not happen soon but I guarantee within 5 to 7 years it will. Oh, and before anyone starts to bring up music issues, that's only a problem for shows from the last 20 to 25 years or so. No one used any music that would be a problem on shows in the 50s or 60s. Now that annoying trend of peppering every show with pop songs is coming back to bite people in the ass. For 99% of the shows my generation cares about it's a non-issue.

 

[Tory]

And if they sale out faster than expected they can always print more but you must realize that the music industry is actually suppresing some artists material because they think they will not sell like Fionna Apple, Poe, and others. Those two are stuck in contracts and they are essentialy out of work and unable to continue making their art. They did this to several older country music stars who have since flown the coup to indie labels or more indie like branches, generally devoted to alternative punks as they provided a more welcoming home.

 

[James Reader]

The thing is, the studios already have such an option. It's called licencing. Companies like Anchor Bay would be happy to licence any TV series with reasonable sales potential, and the studios would get a fixed income.

Sadly, most don't seem receptive.

 

[Joshua Lane]

The thing is, most of the limited CD releases you mention are already mastered and prepared for that format. The same is not true for many old TV shows... they don't exist as digital copies yet. That's a large and prohibitive cost that likely holds back any sort of low-run, limited edition release. Selling only 10,000 copies likely wouldn't be near enough to cover the costs of actually producing the set.

 

[Mark To]

That would be true if you are talking about going back to the 35mm negative and going off of that, which is something they are not doing right now. Most of the older shows that are coming out, they are just taking whatever elements are conveniently available. Lost in Space they went off the 1-inch tapes made in the 80s. Combat, same thing, and time compressed to boot. Rhino put out Kimba the White Lion from faded old 16mm prints. Alf from Beta SP syndication copies. I Spy, likewise just came from Beta SP copies, even though some of them had cuts in them. And I know because I have off-air videotapes from the early 80s before the show got to it's current owner. So they are already putting out older shows for general release and taking what they have and not putting any money into "remastering". They are just doing straight transfers onto DVD. Believe me, if they took an older show, even one that was never put on tape for syndication (and most have been at some point), it would only add costs if they cleaned it up and color corrected it. To just do the transfer as is, which is what most of them are doing now anyway, the costs are negligible.

 

[Jeff#]

Has music licensing also been a problem with rock groups on a current series put out on DVD, such as Smallville?