The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Blu-ray … ever? (1 Viewer)

[darkrock17]

Mary is lucky because it’s from the era when TV shows shot on film were also edited that way. Shot in 35mm, it has the potential to look stunning in high-definition.

Mary, Bob, and Rhoda would look great on Blu. However, Disney would have to make a deal with another company like Shout to first remaster these series and that's not going to come cheap as Disney will want lots of $$$$$$ for licensing.

 

[MatthewA]

Usually, remastering is the studio’s responsibility. Rhoda only got remastered under great duress because they screwed up the first season.

It’s their 1980s library I’m concerned about the long-term storage of. They followed everybody else into the shoot-on-film-edit on-tape method. Newhart, the Vermont one, is all over the place in terms of picture quality on DVD. Hopefully all the successors in interest to MTM - this means you, Pat Robertson - saved negatives and not just tapes.

 

[darkrock17]

Usually, remastering is the studio’s responsibility. *Rhoda* only got remastered under great duress because they screwed up the first season.

It’s their 1980s library I’m concerned about the long-term storage of. They followed everybody else into the shoot-on-film-edit on-tape method. Newhart, the Vermont one, is all over the place in terms of picture quality on DVD. Hopefully all the successors in interest to MTM - this means you, Pat Robertson - saved negatives and not just tapes.

Newhart's first season was shot on tape but from season 2 onward it switched to film. Hill Street Blues got completed by Shout in 2014 where as St. Elsewhere got a one and done release by Fox back in 2006. Between these two 80's MTM series, St. Elsewhere is going to need the most work.

 

[MatthewA]

Newhart's first season was shot on tape but from season 2 onward it switched to film.

That is true, but in season 5 they switched to a tape-based editing system. You can tell the difference easily; seasons 2-4 always looked drab and washed out, while the last 4 seasons looked brighter and more colorful. Hopefully they can rebuild it in HD.

St. Elsewhere will sell, that is a given, but the production costs to do it right will be astronomical because:

—You need to obtain master-quality copies of unedited episodes from all 6 seasons (theoretically doable barring some major archival/storage/lab crisis, but after the total disappearance of Lou Grant* S5 from the Fox archives, I'm seriously scared of what else went missing)
—You need to clear copyrighted music that was mostly covers to begin with, but also includes character performances from time to time. Even using song lyrics as dialogue counts (ALF, linked to The Bob Newhart Show via Tom Patchett, used to do this fairly regularly).
—You need to factor in the cost of promotion. You can't spend all this money on a complete series set only to let it sit unannounced by anyone but the usual sites that announce these releases, which is basically preaching to the choir.

It's also telling that MTM Enterprises launched no hits after 1982, a year they launched those and Remington Steele (the only MTM show besides Mary that Fox finished itself), after Grant Tinker left the company for NBC, and after his marriage to Mary Tyler Moore ended. Even the post-Norman Lear Embassy still had a 227 and a Married with Children in them before Columbia dissolved them altogether after they split it up like King Lear's kingdom**. The decline and fall of MTM was much slower, but once Arthur Price replaced Grant Tinker, you could tell something wasn't quite the same. Bay City Blues tried to extrapolate what worked about Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere onto baseball. Jim Carrey did The Duck Factory, a show that tried to do for animation what MTM and WKRP did for TV news and radio, respectively. And even Mary herself couldn't launch another hit when practically everyone else on her 1970s show could; her late 1985/early 1986 sitcom with Katey Sagal came and went a few months before Lucille Ball's ill-fated Life with Lucy.

And after Mary sold the company to a UK company called TVS, things didn't improve. Nell Carter and Roger E. Mosley, whose respective shows were both displaced by Bill Cosby's and ended up cancelling each other out when slotted against each other, flopped in You Take the Kids and Sharon Gless did, too, in The Trials of Rosie O'Neill. Even rebooting WKRP in Cincinnati in syndication couldn't even last as long as What's Happening Now!!, showing just how far their prestige had fallen. They seemed more interested in buying other people's shows for distribution. They actually distributed America's Funniest Home Videos in reruns! This pattern continued under International Family Entertainment's ownership — it was they who let most of the music licenses lapse — until News Corp. absorbed it into Fox. What a sad end for a company that produced so many great shows. Maybe being owned by Disney will give some of them a fairy tale ending.

*At least when he got on his soapbox he dropped the pretense of being on a comedy. They tried the reverse — spinning off a sitcom from a drama — 10 years later with Beverly Hills Buntz and it didn't work.
**Ironically the Embassy TV library has stayed relatively put while the movies have bounced from owner to owner as have their home video rights.

 

[bmasters9]

Mary is lucky because it’s from the era when TV shows shot on film were also edited that way. Shot in 35mm, it has the potential to look stunning in high-definition.

Like many of CBS' greats (comedy and drama), right?

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Like many of CBS' greats (comedy and drama), right?

Half and half on 70s sitcoms.

MASH was filmed. Bob Newhart's shows were filmed. Norman Lear's shows were videotaped. WKRP was videotaped.

 

[MatthewA]

Half and half on 70s sitcoms.

MASH was filmed. Bob Newhart's shows were filmed. Norman Lear's shows were videotaped. WKRP was videotaped.

Witt-Thomas-Harris, who did the best job of synthesizing the MTM and Embassy philosophies of situation comedy, also used tape. Their shows are split between Disney, Sony, and WB.

Warner Bros. shot Alice on tape and most of their 1980s comedies as well. Lorimar, which they later acquired, sprang for film for every sitcom of theirs but She's the Sheriff and that show that replaced Webster on Friday nights. By the time they even got into sitcoms, tape post-production was the norm. Valerie premiered around the time Knots Landing switched to a film-to-tape edit workflow.

Most of Paramount's sitcoms of this era were filmed and they didn't adopt tape for them until the 1980s with Madame's Place, Family Ties, Webster, and Brothers. Screen Gems went into a dry spell for sitcoms when it became Columbia Pictures Television; That's My Mama was on tape but Tabitha was filmed; both flopped, but since Sony actually wants to get as much mileage out of its catalog as they can, they both got released (although the former was riddled with cuts). After The Partridge Family, shot on film, ended, SG/CPT didn't have another hit sitcom until Designing Women, which was shot on film and edited on tape. I can't recall any successful Universal sitcoms from this decade, believe it or not, as many mystery shows and action shows as they had. In the 1980s, they syndicated the two taped comedies from Alan Lansburg*, Gimme A Break! and Kate & Allie, while they hired Al Burton away from Embassy, who was using their soundstages for their shows by that point, to produce that Willie Aames show on tape themselves. MGM also largely seemed to stay out of the sitcom game outside of Danny Thomas's short-lived The Practice, which was apparently on film.

*He ended up with the last two Jaws movies for some reason since Spielberg didn't want them. Thank goodness Robert Zemeckis insisted on doing the Back to the Future sequels himself.

 

[darkrock17]

Witt-Thomas-Harris, who did the best job of synthesizing the MTM and Embassy philosophies of situation comedy, also used tape. Their shows are split between Disney, Sony, and WB.

What show of theirs was made by WB? As I only know them for Soap and Benson at Columbia/Sony and The Golden Girls and all of it's spin-offs at Touchstone/Disney.

 

[Harry-N]

Bob Newhart's shows were filmed.

Bob Newhart's second MTM series known as "NEWHART" (the Vermont one) was videotaped in its first full season. Bob reportedly didn't like the look of it so for the second season onward, it was filmed but processed and edited on videotape, a practice that ultimately plagued STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. If it were ever to be desired and the film elements still exist, then NEWHART could be upgraded to high definition a little easier than TNG since there aren't many special effects in NEWHART.

 

[MatthewA]

What show of theirs was made by WB? As I only know them for Soap and Benson at Columbia/Sony and The Golden Girls and all of it's spin-offs at Touchstone/Disney.

WB owns It's A Living, which Witt-Thomas made without Susan Harris. They got that from Lorimar along with the TV distribution rights to Mama's Family and ALF, both also on tape.

 

[darkrock17]

WB owns It's A Living, which Witt-Thomas made without Susan Harris. They got that from Lorimar along with the TV distribution rights to Mama's Family and ALF, both also on tape.

Oh, I only know of the series that Susan was involved with.

 

[MatthewA]

After Mary ended, it was Paramount who inherited much of their writing/producing staff for Taxi.

 

[Madfurby]

I'm actually hoping a 4K master is released on UHD Blu Ray or at least streaming purchase. The great thing about the Mary Tyler Moore Show is thankfully it was shot on 35mm film, and it would benefit from a 4K upgrade showing detail and color that has never been seen before.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I’d love to see a new HD master, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Unfortunately, the show sold extremely poorly on DVD, to the point where the studio has for the past several years bundled their overstock into a complete series set that often sells for less than a single individual season goes for. TV on Blu-ray is one of the poorest selling categories of physical media; if there wasn’t demand for I Love Lucy in the format, no other vintage sitcom that hasn’t already been has a shot. And whether it’s the passage of time or the subject matter, the show really isn’t in much demand these days; there doesn’t appear to be a streaming outlet or cable network interested in licensing the show at a price point that would justify remastering the show.

As someone who is in the middle of watching the show on DVD currently, I’m a little disappointed that this is as good as it will get. On the other hand, I don’t feel like I’m losing out on anything by being able to see it “only” at DVD resolution so if this is as good as it gets, it’s better than so many other similar shows have gotten.

I’d love to be wrong but I’m not sure the existing fan base is big enough or dedicated enough to support a redo, and I’m not sure that the show has the kind of universal appeal that could be used to sell it to a significant number of new viewers in today’s media landscape.

 

[B-ROLL]

I’d love to see a new HD master, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Unfortunately, the show sold extremely poorly on DVD, to the point where the studio has for the past several years bundled their overstock into a complete series set that often sells for less than a single individual season goes for. TV on Blu-ray is one of the poorest selling categories of physical media; if there wasn’t demand for I Love Lucy in the format, no other vintage sitcom that hasn’t already been has a shot. And whether it’s the passage of time or the subject matter, the show really isn’t in much demand these days; there doesn’t appear to be a streaming outlet or cable network interested in licensing the show at a price point that would justify remastering the show.

As someone who is in the middle of watching the show on DVD currently, I’m a little disappointed that this is as good as it will get. On the other hand, I don’t feel like I’m losing out on anything by being able to see it “only” at DVD resolution so if this is as good as it gets, it’s better than so many other similar shows have gotten.

I’d love to be wrong but I’m not sure the existing fan base is big enough or dedicated enough to support a redo, and I’m not sure that the show has the kind of universal appeal that could be used to sell it to a significant number of new viewers in today’s media landscape.

Perhaps the execs and Diss-Knee need to have a little song, a little dance...A little seltzer down their pants !