"Mama's Family" ratings on i Network boad well for DVD releases! (1 Viewer)

[MatthewA]

Well I don't buy the idea that Hamilton "can't" release the uncut episodes to the successor-in-interest to the contracted party (WB as successor-in-interest to Lorimar-Telepictures). The two parties need to work out an agreement no matter what, and whoever is to blame, they could have saved time, money, and heartache by doing it first. And don't bother releasing season 2 until such an agreement is made.

Universal made deals back in the 1980s with Reeves Entertainment Group to syndicate "Gimme a Break" and "Kate & Allie" in the United States. Reeves was later bought by Thames TV, whose holdings are now at FremantleMedia. While the syndication deals still stand, Universal was still able to obtain uncut episodes of those shows for DVD (in the case of the latter show, however, I think FremantleMedia may have been fooled by the format for tag scenes, which come after the Director & Writer credits at the end of act 2, which is why they sent cut episodes to Universal and the Canadian VEI).

So it's a matter of willingness on the part of WB and JHP to admit they were W.R.O.N.G. I still say, recall, reissue, and repent.

 

[Ethan Riley]

I can't find any kind of blame whatsoever for John Hamilton. He it not under any sort of obligation whatsoever to step up and offer to negotiate for WB's dvds. That was their obligation, to the fans. WB should have known bloody well that their versions were syndies and they should have called John to offer him some sort of allowance for the uncut versions. He probably gets paid either way, though. Probably what's going on is that WB has broadcast and dvd rights for the show, but they only actually possess the syndie versions. John probably owns the show outright and leases those same syndies to WB. But John can't just go and put out dvds because contractually, only WB can do so at this moment.

If WB is smart, what they should do is drag their tails and talk with John, re-master those dvds and offer replacements to people who bought them. This is incredibly far-fetched, though...it certainly didn't happen with Roseanne or 3rd Rock From the Sun, which had similar situations. Replacement dvds are just too rare, when they should be an industry standard. Quality control should not be a bad word in dvd marketing, yet I guess it is.

 

[JeffWld]

First of all, John Hamilton's statement indicates that he's not at all sure of his position. He speculated "I don't believe I'm allowed...", so I consider this a non-answer and does nothing to let Warner off the hook. However, I'd be willing to bet that if John Hamilton had gone ahead and struck a deal with an independent to release "Mama's Family", Warner Bros. would running to their legal department crying foul and you'd have another "Man From Uncle" situation.

 

[Jason_V]

That's how I'm interpreting this entire situation too. I wonder what all this means for an eventual S2 release. Will Warner do the right thing and obtain the original versions from John? With all this brought to light, I really can't see them trying to put syndicated cuts out there twice.

Universal went and remastered Back to the Future after the framing issue was brought up. BCI put out new He-Man sets (forget which volume) when some discs didn't play. ADV redid the first two seasons of Farscape from double sided discs to single sided. It's not totally out of the realm of possibility for Warner to redo these and roll them out to fans first and then slowly put them on the shelf. I'm not optimistic, but it's possible.

 

[MatthewA]

They did re-do Kiss Me, Kate and promised to redo some of the Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes discs.

 

[JohnMor]

The OWNER of the title doesn't have any obligation to the fans?? I would say yes, he does. When he made the DVD deal with WB he could have made sure it was for the uncut versions.

 

[MatthewA]

It ultimately doesn't matter who has the responsibility, because whoever it is failed miserably.


There's a furry little alien who wouldn't agree with that statement.

 

[Malcolm R]

Not allowed? If he's really the owner he can do whatever he damn well pleases with those episodes. Who is going to stop him?

I don't know why everyone seems to be siding with JHP. It sounds like he's behaved as badly as Warner regarding "Mama's Family". He knew the set was coming. He knew WB apparently didn't have the full-length shows. He couldn't pick up the phone or shoot off an email to his WB contacts alerting them to this potential problem and, perhaps, decide how to resolve it?

And in what clusterf*ck universe are syndicated episodes considered a completely different property from the original masters? Did the WB license agreement specifically say that WB only has rights to the shortened, syndicated versions? Why on earth would WB ever agree to that? I would think they licensed "the show" not "the syndicated episodes of the show."

If Warner didn't have rights to the show...the original broadcast version...they shouldn't have bothered. And if they had any artistic integrity at all, they wouldn't have released this set.

 

[Derek Miner]

In an ideal world, sure. But seriously, this is a bit too much. Creative people like to think it's SHOW business, and executives like to think it's show BUSINESS.

 

[Gord Lacey]

I think everyone is forgetting that Warner Bros obtained rights to this show when they bought Lorimar. Warner Bros didn't license this from Hamilton.

Gord

 

[David Rain]

I don't believe anything that Warner Bros. say. Or any other studio for that matter. These syndicated eps problems have been happening way too often for it to continue to be mistakes everytime. The studios know what the fans demand but they don't respond to it.

Does anyone know an address or contact info for JHP so we can write and ask that they make the originals available to Warners ? Assuming that's what it would take to get season 2 done correctly.

 

[Ethan Riley]

Warners' isn't incompetent; their Dallas dvds were complete, original broadcast episodes. However, I did notice now and then a little jump in the editing and picture quality, as if something had been reinserted, ala the Brady Bunch dvds. So in that case, they probably gave us the syndicated episodes with the deleted scenes reinserted by using older copies or whatever the hell they had lying around. They didn't do this with Mama's Family. Either they had so little regard for Mama's Family that they didn't want to be bothered with deleted scenes, or there was some legal reasons not to do so. Either way, it's a lose-lose situation all around. We lose because we don't get the dvds we want, and they lose sales because we're not buying them and giving our money to WB. This is so stupid. In a world where SNL can be released unedited, don't sit there and tell me they can't release Mama's Family unedited.

 

[Derek Miner]

Well, that explains to me how they ended up with the distribution rights to Max Headroom as well...

This also lends a little credibility to my theory above. Lorimar was a distributor for the first-run syndication years of Mama's Family starting in 1986. Perhaps some deal was made to add the early episodes into a syndication package under Lorimar-Telepictures, which could mean the rights in that deal only apply to the modified episodes. If Lorimar never made a deal for the full, unedited versions, those rights wouldn't have transferred to Warner.

In general, I'm sympathetic to everyone who feels cheated by these kinds of mistakes, but I think you've got to keep some perspective. Movie studios didn't realize until the 80s that material they previously thought to be useless (deleted scenes, etc.) could have value in a new home video market. A lot of fascinating bits of movie history are lost forever because of this. It wasn't until the last 3-5 years that anyone realized that television shows could actually be sold directly to consumers.

Now the studios have to deal with years and years of mishandling of materials and deals that didn't take the home video market into consideration. Not to mention one season of a sitcom generally involves many individual sources (compared to a single source for a feature film release, for instance). This means asessing and cataloging at least five times as much material as they would for a single film.

And as sad as it may seem, the people who are going to be put in charge of this are probably not fans and probably not knowledgable about edits and missing footage. Before Rhino took the rights to all the episodes of The Monkees, who would have known that the first season episodes had different opening titles that hadn't been seen since the 60s? To use that show as an example again, for years Columbia/Sony used credits for syndicated episodes that listed songs that appeared in alternate versions of the episodes from the 70s, but not in the versions they were airing.

I think it's a bit harsh to make Warner Bros. into some evil empire over this, and I'm willing to bet there are a lot of people in the company who were surprised to find out they had released an edited product. I don't think there was any conspiracy to release edited shows under the radar and hope nobody noticed. It's just really unfortunate when this happens to a show that's not popular enough to justify the expense of fixing the problem. At the very least, however, I'm willing to bet now that Warner knows what the situation is, they will take all these issues into consideration when deciding whether to do further releases.

 

[Malcolm R]

It's not that they hoped no one would notice. Recent history proves that once the sets reach the hands of the fans, they WILL notice. But just like a film studio releasing a crap movie to theaters without advance reviews in order to maximize first weekend grosses, WB probably hoped to hoodwink as many people as possible during the first week sales before the feces hit the fan. Anyone who doesn't frequent a site like HTF would have no idea until the disc was spinning in their DVD player and the closing credits rolled at 20 minutes instead of 23-24 minutes.

 

[David Rain]

Warners knew these were edited eps. They released them without any indication on the box that they were edited. That's what it comes down to. JHP knew this release was coming and that they are the ones with the unedited versions. People are to blame for these mistakes. They should be held accountable for faulty product and false advertising. Defending them will not make things better in the future. They will simply continue to put out sub-standard product and get away with it.

 

[Ethan Riley]

I guess this doesn't boad well for Season Two.

 

[Malcolm R]

 

[JohnMor]

Aaggghhhhhhh!!!! [JohnMor's head explodes!!]

 

[Gord Lacey]

Actually, no, they didn't. I asked them back in July if these were the uncut episodes, and I was told they were. The person I spoke to had to ask the person in charge of the tapes, and she was told they were uncut, and then relayed that information to me. Then, when the news that they were cut came out I emailed my contact at Warner Bros and asked what the hell was going on. She contacted the person that told her they were uncut, and that's when they started looking into why cut episodes made it on the set since they obviously wouldn't want to release syndicated episodes. The fact that syndicated episodes made it onto the set caused a shitstorm at Warner Bros; no one there is happy about it.

So yes, someone there messed up, and messed up bad, but it wasn't a company-wide ploy to deceive the consumers into buying edited episodes. Warner Bros has TONS of shows they can release, so why would they want to release something like "Mama's Family" and piss fans off on purpose? This isn't an evil company out to screw over people take their money. Warner Bros won't release tons of shows because they know they would have to change the music, and they realize fans don't like that. I understand people are pissed off about syndicated episodes being released, and yes, someone at the studio messed up, but I think some of you are going a little overboard with the accusations leveled against the company.

Gord

 

[MatthewA]

Okay so they aren't evil. But they still dropped the ball and dropped it HARD on the feet of every Mama's Family fan on the planet.

They have the ability to pick it up and make amends. Will they?