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

[JohnMor]

Gord, that makes sense, and I've been defending WB to a large degree here, but now I'm confused. Didn't WB issue a statement that they didn't have the leagl right to issue the uncut epsiodes? That implies it wasn't a mistake, and that they knew what they were releasing.

 

[Scott_J]

I believe that is the statement WB made after the set's release, when Gord contacted them about it. I'm sure they researched it when Gord asked them about it.

 

[David Rain]

This wasn't a simple oversight that can be explained away. At anytime during the production of this set someone could easily have checked the running times and CLEARLY seen that they were edited. People can do that on home on their VCR's and DVD players. Am I supposed to believe that a professional company can't do the same ? I would think this situation would have been even easier to figure out since the original versions had the Harvey Korman openings and these do not. They may not have been attempting to fool the public but they are still grossly incompetent. How difficult is it to check a running time ?

I'm also hearing conflicting message from Warners. Did they know ahead of time that they only had the syndies ? And if so then how could they have been surprised by it ? They really need to pick an excuse and stick with it.

 

[Malcolm R]

Again, despite knowing they had cut episodes, they released it anyway as the "complete" season. They could have pulled the plug; scrapped the set. Can you imagine the goodwill they would have built among fans if people heard that they cancelled the set because they learned they were cut episodes?

But no, not even a warning sticker or a press release.

There is no possible way this went all the way through conceptual development to final retail shipment without someone at WB knowing they were cut episodes. That would imply that every single WB person involved in the production of this set is totally and completely ignorant about the world of series television. And I would find THAT very hard to believe at WB.

 

[Gord Lacey]

Right....and they found out the episodes were edited AFTER they released it. I already said someone fucked up, but the people in charge of the DVDs found out they released edited episodes AFTER the set was released, not before the set was released. They researched the problem and issued the statement about not having the rights to the full episodes AFTER they found out the episodes were edited. This information was confirmed by the rights holder AFTER the set was released.

Remember, there are many, many people that work on a DVD set. The people in marketing (that I deal with) don't receive information about the lengths of the episodes (this is common with most of the studios I deal with) unless they ask for them. Marketing already checked on the episodes and were told they were uncut, so why would they think otherwise?

Obviously this show is different from other shows Warner Bros owns since they didn't own the rights to the uncut episodes. Did people know this before they started working on the set? No. Do they know it now? Yup! Should they have released the set? Probably not.

Gord

 

[JeffWld]

The sequence of events is what is killing Warner. They are claiming the following fanciful tale (in summary):

1. They decide to release Mama's Family and (supposedly) go through the usual research about who the rights holder truly is for the purposes of the DVD market. I mean, a big organization like Warner isn't stupid enough to believe that because they have broadcast rights that it automatically constitutes home video rights as well...or are they?

2. They pull episodes from their own library that are clearly marked "U.S. Domestic Syndication Master...TRT:22:00"....and not a single soul throughout the entire process catches on to this and raises it as an issue.

3. Warner releases the set, and THEN claims they were ambushed. They thought they had been working with uncut episodes. But wait a minute, how could that be?..Warner doesn't have the rights to uncut episodes....and John Hamilton isn't sure what he owns and whether he's allowed to do anything.

I only have one comment to Warner: I may have been born at night, but I wasn't born LAST night.

 

[Gord Lacey]

Alright, I'm officially done with this thread and release. You can all have fun in your little world where the evil studio is bending you over and giving it to you.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

Someone here, understandably, has to "play ball" with the studios so he gets release info.

But the bottom line is: If it's true that at no point in the production process it dawned on them that these were cut prints, then they have no business being in the business they're in. Why is it we "amateurs" noticed it instantly?

 

[MatthewA]

I'm skeptical of the studio's response to this issue. I've been spoon-fed so many unconvincing excuses in this regard that it's natural for me to think that way.

Anyone working on this release should have known:

A) Seasons 1 and 2 aired on NBC from January 1983 to May 1984. It is not until season 3 when the show aired in first-run syndication.

B) The first season episodes start with the Alastair Quince introductions.

C) No network sitcom from 1983 would run significantly less than 24 minutes. In fact, if the running time doesn't reach at least 23:45, you should definitely be suspicious.

There were regulations on the amount of commercials in prime time from the early 1950s until 1982, but it wasn't until the 1990s that things started to get out of hand. Here's a helpful guide to how long a typical network sitcom should be by era:

1950s: 25 1/2 to 26 minutes
1960s to early 1970s: 25 to 25 1/2 minutes
mid 1970s to early 1980s: 24 minutes to 25 minutes
mid 1980s: 24 to 24 1/2 minutes
late 1980s to early 1990s: 23 to 24 minutes (usually in the middle)
mid to late 1990s: 22 to 23 minutes (usually in the middle)
today: 21 minutes

And a show that aired at the second half of the hour would be about 30 seconds shorter than one that aired at the first half of the hour due to network news breaks (at least in the 1970s and 1980s).

 

[David Rain]

If they knew these eps were cut then they are to blame. If they didn't bother to find out if they were cut then they are to blame.

Why are people defending Warners when they clearly put out a faulty product due to their own negligence ? And I'm supposed to believe that they only found out afterwards and they were surprised ? Spare me.

 

[Steve Phillips]

Let's say I accept that this is all a mistake. I'm not sure I do, but say it's true.

If Warner would simply issue a press release that stated that the edited episodes were released in error and that they will ensure that all unshipped copies will be sticked with a disclaimer, they'd be off the hook with me.

If they were thinking in the public interest, they could also then get hold of the uncut versions they say they thought they had all along, re-do the set, and offer an exchange program for those who wish to return the edited sets.

If might be a good idea to refrain from releasing the second season until the day comes that they have uncut masters to work with also. If they truly can't get them, then don't bother, or at the very least remove the word "complete" and CLEARLY mark the packaging with a statement that the set does not contain the entire show, so that no unsuspecting buyer gets ripped off.

Honesty is all we ask.

 

[MatthewA]

What could make them think that the "uncut" versions ran under 22 minutes? Did they think the show was in first-run syndication from the start? Any TV reference book can tell you that was not the case. A glance of the running times of any network sitcom from the 1982-1983 season would have shown a relative uniformity of running times. Whether it was produced by a studio or an independent producer, or on tape or on film does not make a difference.

Aren't these edited, syndicated tapes are marked as such in the vault inventories and on the tapes themselves? Even at the public access TV station where I have worked in the past we always write pre-roll time and total running time on the tapes.

Even tiny little VEI of Canada postponed the release of the set with the 2 Stockard Channing shows from the 1970s to find better quality masters. I'm sure the home video division of a multibillion-dollar media empire could have done the same.

Anyway, the damage has been done and it's pretty easy for them to make amends.

 

[Michael Alden]

Something that I was thinking about after reading this entire thread. Lorimar, which then was bought by Warner, got ahold of the series after the NBC run. After they produced the episodes that ran in FIRST RUN SYNDICATION, they then put together a package for rerun syndication, including the NBC episodes. Well, those had to be edited to syndication length. Who do you think did that? It wasn't Hamilton Productions. When Lorimar bought the series I'm sure they were given the original broadcast masters from which they then edited the shows down to syndication length. So to say that Warner does not have copies of the complete episodes in their vaults is ludicrous. This was not a high priority release for them and they just grabbed they Beta SP tapes that were handy rather than wanting to go back to the one-inch masters. That's the bottom line. And to say they haven't done it before is bullshit. Rhino, a division of Warner, when they released the second season of My Favorite Martian, included several time-sped episodes because they claimed they couldn't locate the originals. Well, all of the 35mm prints and negatives are sitting in the vaults of Jack Chertok's estate. You think they don't know this? They were too cheap to bother and I think it's the same story here. Let them make excuses all they want. They could have done it properly but they didn't want to spend the extra money.

 

[Jay_B!]

I received a copy of it (didn't pay for it, for free I like the show enough that I'll add edited episodes in my collection, but not for money, I got Roseanne season 1 free too), I must say that the prints are also unremastered and look terrible for video taped from that period, especially when you compare it to how well Gimme A Break and The Facts Of Life (both of which were also NBC shows from around the same time that were shot on video) have held up on DVD picture wise twenty-five years later. There is a real annoying yellowish tint on the prints that made it to the DVD, compare this to how the picture for Gimme A Break, Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts Of Life all look exactly the same now as they did in first run, but the prints have obviously been kept in better shape than Mama's Family.

 

[JeffWld]

That's because syndication versions are, at minimum, 6 generations down from the original 1" master...another reason Warner's incompetence on this release is unacceptable.

 

[Joe Lugoff]

Taking everything into consideration, I vote "Mama's Family Season One" as the worst TV-on-DVD release of 2006, so far. Congratulations to WHV! (And can you imagine what Mama herself would have to say about all of this?)

 

[MatthewA]

Joe,

This disc is running unopposed for that award.

As a side note, I'm not too crazy about the picture quality on any of their releases of "The Waltons" or "Dallas" either, but at least THOSE shows appear to be unedited. Warner could have gone back to the 35mm negatives of these shows, Lorimar series which they own outright, and restored and remastered them, not just for DVD, but for TV distribution, next-generation disc reissues, and beyond.

If people are buying fewer TV shows on DVD it's because the effort put into their releases is often minimal. For every carefully planned Image, Time-Life or Shout! Factory release is something like this.


So to add insult to injury, they are not only missing 3 minutes but not even color corrected!

For Gimme a Break, Universal, the show's American syndicator, bothered to contact the copyright holder, FremantleMedia, to get unedited tape copies suitable for DVD mastering, and Canadian VEI got the same ones. Diff'rent Strokes and the Facts of Life were produced by Norman Lear's company and are thus owned outright by Sony. And I won't go into Sony's foibles but at least most of their TV show episodes on DVD are unedited.

 

[coryE]

I never liked this show personally but feel bad for the fans who got shafted on this release.

I also don't buy Warners excuses, when small companies like VEI up here can make the effort to find unedited episodes.

They were just plain and simple too lazy to bother for a release that they obviously don't care about.

If they really cared about the quality of the shows they release then they would recall this product from the stores.

Thats got a snowballs chance in **** of happening though. In the future I'll be very careful with future releases from them.

Cheers

Cory

 

[Ethan Riley]

I don't think Warners tried to defraud; I think they simply did not know what was going on. Anyone who's ever worked for a big corporation knows how easily these things can happen. The corporations don't do the research. Some of you say things to the effect of, "well it would have been so easy for them to notice that the running time was short, or that something was obviously missing." But realize that these are corporate employees, just doing a job. The decision to release a Mama's Family dvd was a routine project mandated by a corporation, not a labor of love by dedicated fans. The people involved in these dvds very, very likely aren't Mama's fans, they don't know the original running times, and they aren't necessarily old enough to have watched the show in first run. They're just doing a job. They did it badly, but to do the research you suggest would have been the result of yet another corporate mandate, one which they did not receive. The decision was probably along the lines of "Please release a Mama's Family dvd." It was not "Please research and restore Mama's Family for eventual dvd release." That's where the problem lies: short-sighted corporate thinking, not nefarious and fraudulent practices. The people who worked on the dvd aren't the ones we should yell at. The company on high needs to understand what the public really wants. If they continue to do stuff like this, the higher-ups will get wind of it and (maybe) change their policies. More likely, by the time they find out, they'll have lost their jobs and some new dummies will be in there. That's corporate reality.

We should let this thread drop; there's no more news, and if Gord's cussing that much, then he's been pissed off. We're all pissed; Warners is pissed; Harvey Korman's pissed; the whole situation is the Big Disappointment of 2006, so let's move on and talk about good dvds like SNL and Lost.

 

[David Rain]

Yes, I suppose there's nothing much left to say. Until Season 2.