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What do you think the next Time Life Set will be? (1 Viewer)

jamoon2006

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Jack Mooney
Personally, I don't understand the uproar. For people of my generation, Ghostbusters is something we grew up watching, just as U.N.C.L.E. was for a previous generation. (I'm not saying the two are equals, just trying to put them into context.)

I remember friends of mine and I would watch the show, play with the action figures, even wear the toy backpacks (yes, I had one.) It was a popular show that still has an active fan base...why shouldn't it be on DVD?

I guess my point is, "classic" shouldn't just be limited to something that came before 1980. If you don't want it (and even though I liked Ghostbusters that set is too much for me, both in content and cost), don't buy it...but why mock people who enjoyed it, or belittle people who wouldn't rush out to buy something like Man from U.N.C.L.E.?

Maybe I'm outside the norm - I'm a 24 year old who collects and loves classic TV (the Time-Life Get Smart set was one I plunked down my coin for). I just don't see (a) the cause for alarm, since Time-Life has not indicated they are strictly getting into the cartoon business, and (b) as I mentioned before, if you don't like it, don't buy it.
 

Matthew H

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Thank you.

And I'm glad you got a hearty "laugh" over Ghostbusters commmunity. Gord, who has an account at the largest website, can testify that it's pretty damn big. Time Life is already guaranteed that many sales.

So please. Save your complaints.
 

Hank Dearborn

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I'll explain it to you. Every week, month and year that goes by, the audience for shows from the 50s and 60s gets a little older, more of them die off or retire on fixed incomes. You say you like older shows but for every young person like you there are thousands more your age who don't know or care about anything before their time. Because if you look at it in years, those of us who would have bought a set of lets say Maverick or Dr. Kildare for instance, are now closer to the ends of our lives than the beginnings. This Ghostbusters could come out in five years and you'd be 29 as would others who want the show. A lot of people who grew up with Maverick might be dead in five years. That's the why people are getting alarmed.
 

MatthewA

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The whole "How Dare You Release Anything After 1970" mentality is tiresome, as is the apparent sense of entitlement to absolutely perfect DVD releases of shows prior to then. Time Life does not owe anyone any release of anything any more than they owe The Real Ghostbusters to anyone who would buy it (which won't include me). Why they should ignore one demographic while only serving another is beyond me.

I have come to believe that the real "Golden Age of Television" is whenever the user of the term was five. I'm starting to detest the designation of any era of any medium as a Golden Age. It's merely a term of artificial inflation of one era, with arbitrary beginning and ending dates, based on:

A. Nostalgia
B. Dislike for the current offerings of the medium, or anything that misses the cutoff dates for the "Golden Age"
C. The fact that the worst offerings of that era have all but disappeared
D. Condescension and nastiness towards any other era.

Jack, you are not alone. My grandfather is 82, and I don't see him rushing out to buy any old TV shows on DVD (although with his eyesight failing, I doubt those would be on his mind). My mother loves The Andy Griffith Show but she didn't buy the DVDs. I'm 25 and I am the only one in my family who is a serious collector of TV show DVDs. The oldest is from 1951 and the newest is from a few years ago.

I'd say the lack of interest among young people in the fine arts, literature and history is more alarming than lack of knowledge about minute details of a 45-year-old TV series. But if they don't know about shows that they might otherwise like, I'd blame Nick at Nite and TV Land for ghettoizing old TV shows. This is why local stations and other basic cable networks will never touch them.
 

MatthewA

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I don't totally plead innocent here. I don't like most television shows of the last 20 years, and I think most stuff before then was better (certainly not everything; some of the Saturday morning cartoons from the 1950s through the 1980s wouldn't make it to pilot stage today; the only ones that do it for me anymore are those that have interesting stories and characters and/or multi-layered humor to compensate for their limited production resources), but I cannot begrudge people their own tastes, nor would I openly mock them on this board. I wonder if people are nostalgic for what was around when they were kids because when you're a kid, you're protected from the hardship and uncertainty that adults face every day. I had no idea what impact the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War, or the collapse of the Soviet Union had until I was an adult; they never mentioned it on Pee-Wee's Playhouse.

The release of The Real Ghostbusters can only help the TV-DVD market. I doubt anyone in the industry will say "hey, this late 1980s cartoon sold well, let's not sell that late 1950s western we were not going to release anyway." I have argued time and time again that it is not a zero-sum thing when it comes to choosing what to release, nor should it be. There needs to be room to cater to all tastes.
 

Jeff*H

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This is shaping up to be one of the (unintentionally) funniest threads I've read on the HTF! :)

Even though I have zero interest in a Ghostbusters cartoon, TL is making a smart move based on the fanbase out there.

Matthew A summed the whole thing up pretty thoroughly.
The whole argument of which generation of TV shows was better is pretty ridiculous, and I suspect there are many TV collectors out there like myself who enjoy a good show no matter what decade it was made in. I have lots of shows from every decade through today starting with the '50s.

The sky has not fallen. Had it fallen, TL would not have released ANYTHING this year and given up on the TV-DVD game.
 

Charles Ellis

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Boy, you guys make me sound like I'm ready for a retirement home! I'm not: I'll be 43 in two weeks and MatthewA, according to your theory my "Golden Age" was in 1970! Believe me, I've lots of shows after that time. For the past decade:

CSI
Law & Order SVU
Will & Grace
Desperate Housewives
Veronica Mars
Firefly
Blue Collar TV
Doctor Who
- the revival
Torchwood
Reba
George Lopez


Now, as a kid I grew up watching reruns of shows from the 60s & 70s that I have collected on DVD. However, as an adult I have discovered many a vintage show on cable, like Burke's Law, Car 54, and 77 Sunset Strip among others. I just got the first DVD set of Burke's Law and am enjoying it. On the other hand, I can't wait for the first seasons of Chuck and Pushing Daisies to be released- two of the shows I loved from the past season.

After watching so many shows for over 35 years, it is natural for someone in my age group to want releases of vintage shows for one simple reason: they're great! There are a lot of shows released prior to 1980 that have stood the test of time due to the quality of the material. And let's not forget: not every show from the 50s-70s was of top quality or a ratings smash. Those that did survive are still rembered and are desrving of a new audience.

I compare it to a classic film- a few months ago my teenage niece saw Rosemary's Baby for the first time on cable, and the ending shocked her as it did those who first saw it in theaters 40 years ago! People under 20 can see the likes of Bogart, Davis, Stewart and Audrey Hepburn on DVD and Turner Classic Movies. I only wish there were a premium TV channel that showed classic TV shows uncut and without commercials the way TCM shows classic films. If such a channel were to exist, you will eventually see young people gravitate to it, as the shows on such a channel will be proven past successes. There are young people making websites on the internet to stars who died decades before they were born, and to TV shows that were on the air while LBJ was President. In my own opinion, one reason why people tend to appreciate classic shows than today's is because there's nearly 50 years of backlog material out there from L Love Lucy to Hill Street Blues, and today's shows seem to pale in comparison in creativity and quality. I blame the networks in not being open to diverse programming today. Some good genres have fallen by the wayside as a result (variety shows, westerns, half-hour dramas, anthologies, traditional detective shows) while the nets are desperate for cheap reality programming. But that's merely my opinion.......
 

MatthewA

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They can also tie it in with the rumored Blu-Ray of the movie Ghostbusters, and the video game supposedly coming out. And if that rumored third movie ever gets made, they can have this around to help promote it.

No one is arguing that there was never anything good on TV. And I'm in total agreement that if one was to define an era of television by the best of its content, and the quantity of those esteemed shows, the current era would come up short (I would also object to using 1980 as a cut-off point, and I consider many of the "quality" 1990s and 2000s shows to be hugely overrated). I would guess that once Brandon Tartikoff and Grant Tinker left NBC, that network became much more reluctant to take chances on untried ideas, as they certainly were in the 1980s (Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere come to mind). CBS and ABC had already become stuffy and played it safe, hence CBS's reputation as a network for old people. Even so, there was always HBO to pick up the slack. Consider that we have a TV landscape where ideas are used up much more quickly than before, and where the law of diminishing returns is enforced, we're likely to soon see a show that wouldn't have been good enough for a pilot pitch 40, 30, or even 20 years ago will not only get made but win the adoration of critics and audiences, and even a Peabody.

I also agree that the networks are desperate to get the most bang out of the fewest bucks, and that's part of why we see so many reality TV shows now. Who will watch any of them 50 years from now?

Variety shows will never make a comeback because there is no real common popular culture anymore. Everything is so fragmented that everything has its own cable network for it, including (and especially) music. But the genre got really bad in the late 1970s; The Brady Bunch Variety Hour and Pink Lady & Jeff had to be the ultimate nadir, and those are on DVD whereas the ones that are viewed for entertainment, not rubbernecking, are MIA due to music rights. SNL was a rebellion against this genre, yet that show has become just as desiccated, and many of the "classic" era sketches have a "you had to be there" quality to them.

That's not exactly the point. The market for old shows is under-served, but a Saturday morning cartoon based on a movie from 1984 will not affect it. If anything, the thing hurting these shows is lack of their own exposure, not the exposure of other, totally unrelated shows. No one has been able to prove that it has. All I have heard is "I don't like show X, therefore its availability will keep show Y off of DVD." Zzzzzzzz.

Does anyone want to try and blame this show for the absence of the remaining seasons of The Mary Tyler Moore Show? I thought not.
 

Mike*HTF

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...
Exactly.
I personally don't care for the series, but just vote with your wallet, fgs.
 

Gord Lacey

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I think people are looking at Time-Life as the protector of classic TV, while TL is simply looking to release shows with a "cult" following, no matter what year they came out.

Gord
 

Aryn Leroux

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I simply look at it like this.. This release is going to make some people happy.. just like some previous releases made others happy. That is all it's about! Hopefully the next release will be a show i am waiting for. But i am not going to bash this release just because it is something i am not fond of. That would be the same as big fans of ghostbusters bashing say a eight is enough release that i want so much. There is room for everyone's tastes, i just hope there are more classic shows on the horizon to be released. The announcement's seem to few and inbetween these days or maybe that is just me.
 

Tony J Case

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Because of course Man from Uncle is such a bonified classic. Sorry, I'd rather have some witty JMS writing than some moldly old James Bond knockoff.
 

Gord Lacey

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Joseph Michael Straczynski - creator of Babylon 5. JMS is such a common acronym for his name, it even works on IMDB.

Gord
 

MatthewA

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Thanks. I typed in his name and I got three main choices. One was Joseph Michael Straczynsky, and another was...

Barbra Streisand.
 

GuruAskew

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The reunion of the original cast in the video game is definitely bigger news for Ghostbusters fans but that's not to say this isn't major. It's monumentally exciting among the fanbase in a year where something even more monumentally-exciting is happening.

But yeah, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this outsells "Get Smart" and "The Man From U.N.C.L.E."
 

Hank Dearborn

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Because what sells best is ALWAYS an indicator of higher quality.

All arguments aside, this has nothing to do with old vs new but more to do with good shows vs bad. I readily admit I know nothing about this show other than that it had a passing relation to the movie. So I checked with a friend of mine who is a big animation fan and asked him if this was some sort of Bugs Bunny/Rocky and Bullwinkle type cartoon that was written on two levels, both for adults and for children or if it was like a Hanna Barbera 7 year old level. He told me it was strictly a kids cartoon. Another friend told me it was just a cartoon created to sell merchandise. Exactly why would this thing have a following, other than the fact of twenty somethings remembering it from their playpens? If I was going to hope to see an 80s show done, it would be something like Scarecrow and Mrs King or Murphy Brown. But then I don't think too many 7 year olds watched those so their wouldn't be as much glee for them on this board.
 

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