Jack Benny Program Stalled? (1 Viewer)

[darkrock17]

I've been watching a lot of Jack lately on YouTube and it got me wondering what happened to this series getting more releases. Shout Factory gave us vol. 1 of The Lost Episodes back in 2013, but it's now 2018 and it is still the lone officially approved edition of this classic series.

What happened? did Shout lose interest? Where sales not as great as they hopped for? Could be some long, complicated technical legal reason for why it stalled?

 

[Neil Brock]

CBS gave them a hard time about that set and they had to pull 6 episodes (I think that's the number) from the set. I'm not sure what the ownership is on the filmed ones, whether or not its Universal or the Benny estate for home video rights. Maybe CBS has a piece of that too. In any event, I don't think there was enough sales to encourage any further releases.

 

[Randy Korstick]

Universal released a few volumes I think 6 -8 episodes total of the filmed 1960's episodes on VHS back in the early 1990's. So they may still have the rights to those.

 

[Neil Brock]

I recorded the 104 from the syndication package off Antenna, which ran them complete and with no station bug. Then there's another batch of live PD episodes on various DVDs. I doubt that the full run of 261 I believe will ever be available. Still, not bad that we have what we do from a show which had such a history, with filmed shows, live and videotaped shows. Especially considering the number of shows with music performances.