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Is the b&w era of TV on DVD slowly coming to an end? (1 Viewer)

Gary OS

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Steve...O said:
Happy Belated Birthday, Gary! I trust it was a good one with the family.

Thank you for the updates although it isn't what anyone wants to hear. Bonanza isn't one of my grails, but I do feel for those who do collect this title. Gunsmoke is one that I haven't started collecting but has always intrigued me. I'm also concerned that this news also means that whatever chance we had of CBS/P going back and "fixing" the unremastered seasons of HAVE GUN or RAWHIDE has slipped away.

I am not on the MOD bandwagon yet simply because I have a hard time paying more for less. I picked up the first two seasons of Maverick at retail as gifts but then WHV moved it to the Archive at a much higher price and without the English subtitles so I stopped buying them. Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and even Cannon are still syndicated and can be captured by those wanting them off air so a MOD program adds little value to me. Others love MOD and I respect their opinions; I can see why this would work for some.

It's really too bad that the DVD technology didn't exist in its current form 30 years ago when the market for these shows was much bigger and the economy was fairly robust from the 80s through the 90s.

EDIT: the CBS/P syndication bible was updated today (3/19) and a random check shows no updates to the B&W Westerns. The Classic Honeymooners now shows as HD which is no surprise given the upcoming BD release. Happy Days is now remastered up through S5 which S6 in progress.
Thanks for the well wishes, Steve. It's appreciated. All the points you brought up I see the same way. Being the bearer of bad news isn't something I relish. But facts are facts and right now the situation with Bonanza is one of those unpleasant realities. We'll have to see if things change up down the line. All we can do is keep our fingers crossed.

jdee28 said:
It's definitely a minor miracle that CBS/Paramount completed Rawhide. I had doubts. Even though some seasons are not remastered, at least they did release all the episodes unedited. If they ever do remaster those two seasons,1 and 4, it would be the icing on the cake.

It's been another minor miracle that they've released Gunsmoke through Season 9. I never thought they get this far! I really hope they can finish off the two black and white years they have left and maybe do a couple of color seasons.
I hadn't really thought of it in those terms, but I think you are probably right. We should be thankful that Rawhide will be finished. Other than the 2 "hiccup" seasons that were not remastered, I have to be happy because this was a big grail show for me. One would think if any CBS western was going to make it it would be Gunsmoke. But who knows at this point. The potential market for a show like this dwindles day after day. I just don't know what the future holds for this series although at present I am a bit concerned. Time will tell.


Gary "no doubt the b/w releases have been very lean over the last 6 months" O.
 

Ron1973

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My pastor loves Gunsmoke, Gary! He's managed a time or two to bring Matt into the sermon. :D

I used to argue that I liked the color seasons the best. Last summer I had the chance to really start watching the b&w episodes on Encore and I believe I might like those better. I'm still partial to Festus, though. :rolleyes:
 

LouA

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Richard V said:
Cursed be the day that Shout! bought out TMG. :angry:
Many on this thread predicted that Shout! would be the end of B&W releases by Timeless. I was hopefull considering that they had several ZIV releases in the pipeline. But you can see now that there won't be many B&W releases in the future on Timeless. A shame . The situation is made worse by the fact that companies like Inception, MPI, Schanachie , TGG Direct don't have much to offer either.
 

Professor Echo

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It figures that as soon I start buying BONANZA, this word comes in. Then again, as I posted elsewhere, I'm sure the reason I was able to get the first five seasons so cheaply is because it wasn't selling. There's a Catch-22 for you. I can say now I'll be happy with seven seasons, but once I finish watching the last released season perhaps that perspective will skew differently. Based on viewings about ten years ago I always thought the series went downhill after Adam left because it subtracted story potential and diminished the original dynamic. But I've watched some of the later seasons on Encore and Ioved them. Now I wish I was recording them just in case, but that's a big undertaking given it would be seven seasons to record onto DVD-Rs. This is where an external hard drive connected to the DVR might come in handy. I certainly agree with birthday boy, Gary ( happy belated, old boy!) in his prognostications over current release patterns and also about already having enough to watch for a long time, but inherent collectors will always obsess over WHERE'S THE REST and/or WHAT ELSE IS THERE?
 

Neil Brock

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Had to happen sooner or later but at least we can be thankful for getting as much as we did. As for the shows that will never make it out, well, that's why what we have our VHS collections for! Not as good quality, but better than nothing. Unfortunately, my 2 favorite genres, dramas and sitcoms, are not big selling DVD items.
 

Vic Pardo

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Neil Brock said:
Unfortunately, my 2 favorite genres, dramas and sitcoms, are not big selling DVD items.
Back on April 16, 2010, in the "Sitcoms with 2 or more full seasons that are not on DVD" thread, you said:
Since sitcoms seem to be the most popular genre for DVD releases (I prefer dramas myself), I thought it might be interesting to take a look at what popular sitcoms (those that ran at least 2 full seasons or more) have not seen a decent release on DVD.
A lot can happen in four years... :D
 

Neil Brock

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Not the sitcoms that I want, unfortunately, which are the shorter running ones from the 60s that I watched as a kid. I don't think that any time soon we are going to see DVD sets of Occasional Wife, Love on a Rooftop, Blondie, The Jean Arthur Show, Karen, Harris Against The World, Tom, Dick and Mary, No Time For Sergeants, Wendy and Me, Second Hundred Years, Mr. Roberts, Accidental Family, Nancy, He and She, Baileys of Balboa, The Cara Williams Show, Many Happy Returns, It's About Time, Pistols and Petticoats, The Queen and I, Make Room For Granddaddy, The Paul Lynde Show, The Good Life, Temperatures Rising, Adam's Rib, Needles and Pins, A Touch Of Grace, The Little People, Valentine's Day, Double Life of Henry Phyffe, The Tycoon, The Good Guys, To Rome With Love, The Smith Family or The Governor and JJ.It seems for a shorter run show to be released, the best bets are Westerns or SciFi.
 

LeoA

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I'd love to see the Jean Arthur Show be released. Never saw a bad movie with her yet and the few bits and pieces I've seen of the show, she seems every bit as appealing as she was in her movie days decades earlier.
 

Neil Brock

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I'd love to see the Jean Arthur Show be released. Never saw a bad movie with her yet and the few bits and pieces I've seen of the show, she seems every bit as appealing as she was in her movie days decades earlier.
Not a great show by any means and it was the last thing she ever did on screen. But she was in her mid-60s at the time and she looked around 20 years younger. They even said that they were worried about Ron Harper being believable playing her son and he was 30 years old.
 

LouA

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Neil Brock said:
Not the sitcoms that I want, unfortunately, which are the shorter running ones from the 60s that I watched as a kid. I don't think that any time soon we are going to see DVD sets of Occasional Wife, Love on a Rooftop, Blondie, The Jean Arthur Show, Karen, Harris Against The World, Tom, Dick and Mary, No Time For Sergeants, Wendy and Me, Second Hundred Years, Mr. Roberts, Accidental Family, Nancy, He and She, Baileys of Balboa, The Cara Williams Show, Many Happy Returns, It's About Time, Pistols and Petticoats, The Queen and I, Make Room For Granddaddy, The Paul Lynde Show, The Good Life, Temperatures Rising, Adam's Rib, Needles and Pins, A Touch Of Grace, The Little People, Valentine's Day, Double Life of Henry Phyffe, The Tycoon, The Good Guys, To Rome With Love, The Smith Family or The Governor and JJ.It seems for a shorter run show to be released, the best bets are Westerns or SciFi.
Many shows I'd like to own on your list .
 

Silverking

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I attended a film fair here in the UK this weekend & got chatting to Renown films one of the stallholders . Renown are mostly known for releasing old British 'B movies from the 30's to the 60's.It appears they have the rights to all the Four Star catalogue 'Burke's Law, 'Big Valley' 'June Allyson','Black Saddle' etc.etc.for the UK, Scandinavia,& curiously Africa.They have just re-released 'Honey West' here.I enquired if they planned to release any further Four Star material & they told methat a clause in their rights stated they could only put them out if they could guarantee to sell a thousand copies. Not much chance of that for these old B/W shows in the UK. I thought it interesting that perhaps a similar clause exists for whoever hold the rights in the US.
 

JoeDoakes

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Silverking said:
It appears they have the rights to all the Four Star catalogue 'Burke's Law, 'Big Valley' 'June Allyson','Black Saddle' etc.etc.for the UK, Scandinavia,& curiously Africa.They have just re-released 'Honey West' here.I enquired if they planned to release any further Four Star material & they told methat a clause in their rights stated they could only put them out if they could guarantee to sell a thousand copies. Not much chance of that for these old B/W shows in the UK. I thought it interesting that perhaps a similar clause exists for whoever hold the rights in the US.
I bet that they could sell a 1000 copies of Burkes Law, especially if there was a mastering glich that failed to region code the disks.
 

Gary OS

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Silverking said:
I attended a film fair here in the UK this weekend & got chatting to Renown films one of the stallholders . Renown are mostly known for releasing old British 'B movies from the 30's to the 60's.It appears they have the rights to all the Four Star catalogue 'Burke's Law, 'Big Valley' 'June Allyson','Black Saddle' etc.etc.for the UK, Scandinavia,& curiously Africa.They have just re-released 'Honey West' here.I enquired if they planned to release any further Four Star material & they told methat a clause in their rights stated they could only put them out if they could guarantee to sell a thousand copies. Not much chance of that for these old B/W shows in the UK. I thought it interesting that perhaps a similar clause exists for whoever hold the rights in the US.
Wow, that's really sad. Not that the company isn't producing these Four Star series, but that they feel they couldn't even sell 1,000 copies of any of them. I'd have thought selling 1,000 sets wouldn't have been that hard, even for older TV series like these. Shows what I know.


Gary "that's really disappointing news" O.
 

Silverking

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Agreed. But bear in mind a lot of Four Star shows such as Richard Diamond & most of the westerns (apart from Big Valley) never played here so there is no nostalia factor to boost sales.
 

FanCollector

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Also, there is the difference of population scale. The equivalent amount in the U.S. would be about 5,000-6,000. I do wish that there was a little more transparency about sales so we could know what the realistic expectations should be. VCI touted Burke's Law and Honey West as big sellers, but we don't know the company's usual sales figures. Did they sell 5,000 copies? 10,000? Burke's Law obviously did well enough to warrant a second, slimmer edition of the first volume but how do we know what the actual numbers might have been?
 

LouA

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Silverking said:
'Bilko' aka 'The Phil Silvers Show' aka 'You'll Never Get Rich' the complete series + extras is scheduled for UK release in July. Horrendous price but I'm sure it will drop. You can check it out on Amazon UK. I imagine a US release will be in the offing.
Great news ! I'll be ordering this - I have a multi-region player . I think at this point it would be "iffy" for a US release . Paramount hasn't done anything with the show in years . But we can hope , and meanwhile the complete series is finally coming out .
 

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