Questions Shout! Factory Answers On Facebook About Stalled Holy Grail Shows (1 Viewer)

[Neil Brock]

hopefully we will see a studio finish black sheep squadron.

Its happening.

 

[texboil]

Ramis was gone after Season 2, along with John Candy and Catherine O'Hara. They were replaced for Season 3 by Tony Rosato, Robin Duke and Rick Moranis. For the 4th season (first of Network 90), Candy and O'Hara returned, replacing Rosato and Duke. I believe that the first couple of Network 90 shows may have included some clips from previous seasons, so maybe that's how some of the old cast members slipped in there. Rosato and Duke went on to join SNL for the 1981-82 season.

Ramis left basically after season one, but made a couple early appearances in season 2. The first 9 episodes of SCTV on NBC -- the first cycle and the first volume of Shout's releases -- relied often on sketches from seasons 1-3 as they didn't have enough material together to meet their NBC premiere date. However, sketches featuring Ramis, Rosato, or Duke were either not used or edited to remove their parts. That's why the first 9 NBC episodes are the best -- not only was the cast using the 90-minute format to produce some of their best "wraparounds," but they used so much great early material. The argument against releasing the first 78 half-hour shows (music clearances and sales figures aside, which are really the only arguments that matter) is that there would be some repetition with the shows already released on Volume 1. And indeed, there is even some repetition between Volume 1 and Best of the Early Years. However, certainly not enough to make the release of the first three seasons (in my view) very important. And the repetition argument does not hold at all as a case against releasing the Cinemax shows, although I would completely agree that those Cinemax shows are the worst episodes they produced, with only four cast members and a ton of over-padded sketches and other filler.

 

[TVonDVDJunkie05]

Ask MGM. Shout would love to do Green Acres but MGM won't license it out to anyone.

Doesn't Fox have the distribution rights to MGM shows, if so then perhaps its Fox that is the problem and not MGM?! If they don't want to license it out then why the heck won't they release the final 3 seasons themselves?! Season 3 was re-released a couple years ago by Fox but not Seasons 1 & 2 for some reason?!

Which they are likely to lose their shirts on.

Are you saying that all the series VEI has acquired the rights to are going to sell terribly, thus resulting in them suffering a huge loss?! Why would they acquire the rights to series that have the potential to not sell well, I would think that they did some due diligence before acquiring the rights to these shows?!


I think the best avenue for VEI IMO is for them to release compete series sets as this way fans of the series they will be releasing have the ability to purchase the entire run of a show all at once instead of waiting months or years for all seasons to be released. This is one of the reasons some shows don't sell well, some people don't purchase season sets until they know that all seasons have been released, unfortunately this can result in a series becoming stalled due to poor sales.

 

[MatthewA]

And for some shows, their later years would be more likely to sell as parts of complete series sets than as stand-alones anyway.

 

[Neil Brock]

Are you saying that all the series VEI has acquired the rights to are going to sell terribly, thus resulting in them suffering a huge loss?!

That's my belief. I truly hope that I'm dead wrong.

 

[phenri]

That's my belief. I truly hope that I'm dead wrong.

If you believe that these series will sell poorly for VEI, what classic TV series on DVD do you believe would sell well, besides the obvious (Dick Van Dyke Show, Andy Griffith Show, I Love Lucy, Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Honeymooners)?

 

[Darby67]

I really hope Shout or VEI or some other outfit licenses Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour from Universal and releases complete series set for both on pressed discs.


Darby

 

[smithbrad]

If you believe that these series will sell poorly for VEI, what classic TV series on DVD do you believe would sell well, besides the obvious (Dick Van Dyke Show, Andy Griffith Show, I Love Lucy, Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Honeymooners)?

My take is that a lot of it depends on the licensing fees charged by CBS and the amount of work needed to prepare the prints for use. The lower these upfront costs are the easier it is to be successful at a lower quantities of sales. I'm guessing Neil is taking these factors into consideration when stating a huge loss.

 

[LeoA]

I imagine that a number of these stalled series from major publishers ended up stalled not because they lost money, but because they simply didn't earn enough.


I've tried to make this point around here before, but even large corporations have limited resources. Just like we have to make hard decisions at times, such as forgoing installing new windows in a drafty old house despite the knowledge that they'd pay for themselves in a few years in energy savings, big corporations have to make decisions where to direct their limited resources as well.


Just because Show A is stalled, doesn't mean that it wasn't profitable. It could just as easily mean that it just wasn't profitable enough to justify their use of resources furthering it on DVD over another, hopefully more lucrative project somewhere else.


Why do you think that some of these biggest wishes on our list, reportedly aren't available for licensing? Does anyone think that MGM isn't willing to negotiate with Shout Factory over Green Acres while DVD releases for seasons 1-3 lost money for MGM? Where's the logic in that?


To me, if accurate, that tells me that they indeed did make money and that MGM sees value there that they may want to directly go after themselves when the time is right, and aren't ready just to settle for what they can get via licensing it out.

 

[Cowboy]

Titles Shout didn't finish that they were doing one season at a time:

-Different Strokes
-Fantasy Island
-Ironside
-Marcus Welby, M.D.
-The Paper Chase
-Peyton Place
-Police Story
-Police Woman
-Rhoda
-The Rookies
-Room 222
-Webster

Amidst all the things they have done with finished titles and complete series sets, that's still an abandoned output that exceeds every other studio label I know of. Universal for instance has by my count only three vintage stalled titles not licensed out to any other label (McCloud, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Amazing Stories. There is a rumor that some label might finish Baa Baa Black Sheep/Black Sheep Squadron)

Universal has stalled Baretta also.

 

[Jack P]

No one can finish "Baretta" because all the old tape transfers went up in the Universal fire in 2008. If they hadn't, I'm pretty sure someone would have already restarted that at some point. This is also why no one's done "Switch" because no one can find a set of transfers for that either.

 

[JMas]

RTV showed Switch just a few years ago. I don't know where they got their prints, but they were pretty bad.

 

[Vahan_Nisanain]

No one can finish "Baretta" because all the old tape transfers went up in the Universal fire in 2008. If they hadn't, I'm pretty sure someone would have already restarted that at some point. This is also why no one's done "Switch" because no one can find a set of transfers for that either.

Universal COULD restore Baretta from the original elements if they wanted to, like with the final seasons of Emergency!.

 

[Jack P]

I'm surprised we still haven't seen a slimline Emergency! complete series set that could get those new transfers of the earlier seasons to DVD. Only season 6 and the post-series movies got to DVD in remastered condition leaving us stuck with the older, ratty looking prints (save for the small number of S1 and S2 episodes that had been transferred in the early 90s for the Columbia House Video Club).

 

[kingfish]

Its happening.

i am wondering when. it would be nice if they could get some type of interview with robert conrad. conrad has had many problems since an automobile accident a number of years back.

 

[kingfish]

Its happening.

i just asked at the shout factory facebook page about black sheep squadron and they stated there are no plans that they know of to finish the series.

 

[jcroy]

i just asked at the shout factory facebook page about black sheep squadron and they stated there are no plans that they know of to finish the series.

Wonder if it is somebody else like VEI, Olive, etc ....


(VEI has done Universal properties in the past, such as "McMillan and Wife" and "The Equalizer").

 

[jcroy]

Universal COULD restore Baretta from the original elements if they wanted to, like with the final seasons of Emergency!.

A better question is whether Baretta is still broadcast at all in off-network syndication.


(None of the channels on my basic cable lineup, have broadcast it recently).


If a show is not in off-network syndication (or hardly at all), then there is probably very little to no motivation to create new HD quality transfers.

 

[Jack P]

If the tape masters are gone from the fire they *can't* show it in syndication or on cable. That's the point.

 

[jcroy]

If the tape masters are gone from the fire they *can't* show it in syndication or on cable. That's the point.

The only (hypothetical) scenario I can think of offhand where somebody *might* still be able to broadcast episodes in syndication (under license), is if a broadcaster still has an old copy of the tapes previously used for syndication and has not destroyed/returned it yet.


With that being said, it's very much a chicken or the egg scenario for this particular tv show. ie. Is anybody still willing to broadcast Baretta syndication reruns, after Robert Blake's huge legal problems over the past decade?