Where is "Hill Street Blues" & "St Elsewhere"???!!! (1 Viewer)

[MatthewA]

Although they got most every other MTM show Fox didn't want, which was pretty much everything other than The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Remington Steele, Shout! would rather do the likes of Saved by the Bell and Power Rangers in box sets. I still haven't forgiven NBC for pushing out all their Saturday morning cartoons for the former nor Fox for pushing out Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs for the latter, and I never will. My wallet needed a break anyway after a huge wave of shows I actually would watch with a gun to my head in addition to shows I'd been waiting to see finished for years and years along with this one.*

Let's face it: this is how the DVDs would look if they came out today. But at least DVDs would be yours as long as you wanted them. I really am trying to see all sides of this equation.

*That's why I don't buy them pleading poverty on either this or Silver Spoons, which is linked to St. Elsewhere by Crimson Tide, by Ray Walston guest appearances, the use of the song "Saving All My Love For You," and for it getting pushed to syndication for another show Chad Allen was on: Our House, which also ended in 1988 after failing to beat Disney in the race to come in second opposite 60 Minutes. Thank goodness for Sony's Fraggle Rock Blu-ray set to remind me that some 1980s nostalgia really is justified.

 

[Bryan^H]

What happened with Time-Life tv on dvd?
They should release St. Elsewhere.

They performed miracles with music rights-Wonder Years was one thing, but with China Beach I can't imagine the cost for the music justified the units sold.

 

[MatthewA]

China Beach was only on for three years, so that likely made it less costly. I didn't watch that show, so I don't know whether they used the real versions of popular songs or soundalikes.

For St. Elsewhere, most of the pop songs they used, not counting times a character sung them or quoted their lyrics in dialogue, were all soundalikes rather than original recordings.* Since it was shot on film, the licensing rule that enabled WKRP to afford the actual versions of the songs they used by shooting on tape didn't apply. Once TV post-production switched to tape, that point became moot and the rule went away.

*With Bosom Buddies, eventually they decided they'd rather have the real Stephanie Mills instead of a fake Billy Joel. Meanwhile, another show Terence Knox was on, Tour of Duty, used "Paint it Black" by The Rolling Stones as its theme, now gone from its DVD in this country but not in the UK. Apparently, it is in the US and the US alone where one sector of the entertainment industry can legally hold another one over a barrel over a few seconds of music.

 

[PMF]

The way I've been ineffectively moaning about this issue for years...seems to indicate the complete LACK of power I have!

Anyone who can write a bad review of the "Jacques Brel is Alive and Well..." BD and then, in the same post, go on to successfully unload and sell it possess more powers than is known to man; be it here or Elsewhere.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Philip's got a point (even though I hope he meant a "negative review" rather than a "bad review." )

But with great power comes great responsibility. I hope to realize that I must use this power just for "good."

 

[bmasters9]

China Beach was only on for three years, so that likely made it less costly.

I thought it was on for 4 (first one being a midseason replacement).

 

[MatthewA]

You are correct. I said "three years" because I was thinking in terms of calendar years rather than TV seasons. Even so, they cleared 94% of the original music in that case.

 

[bmasters9]

You are correct. I said "three years" because I was thinking in terms of calendar years rather than TV seasons. Even so, they cleared 94% of the original music in that case.

Pretty impressive just the same!

 

[Bryan^H]

Heavens to Betsy, the interface on HULU is antiquated, archaic.
St. Elsewhere..I'm not sure what exactly I'm dealing with here. Some eps. are 46 minutes, some are 49. Some seem SD, and others look like HD(I couldn't figure the source display on HULU). At any rate St. Elsewhere doesn't feel like it is ready for prime time yet especially with a bulk of the episodes being cut.

 

[bmasters9]

Heavens to Betsy, the interface on HULU is antiquated, archaic.

Difficult to select episodes, perhaps?

 

[MatthewA]

Doing better than this would require going back to the negatives just as CBS did for MacGyver. That would mean actually finding them. Except with MacGyver, the only change in ownership has been from Paramount to CBS. The MTM Productions library has now been sold four times: first from MTM to TVS, then from TVS to Pat Robertson's International Family Entertainment*, and from IFE to News Corporation who merged it into Fox. Now guess who owns Fox!

*Though his attempts to expand into series drama never caught on (despite some success in TV-movies other than sending the Facts of Life girls around the world), Norman Lear never would have sold out to him in a million years. It was IFE who let all the music licenses lapse after the short-lived MTM Home Video venture brought many of the shows out for the first time with original music, including flops such as The Duck Factory that haven't made it to DVD.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Wow. This thread has been stagnant for nearly five years.

While I have begun streaming some, Hulu is not one of my current services. And, I don't even know if St. Elsewhere is still available there. (Can anyone answer that for me?) I know I have read that most streaming eps of SE (post season one) never looked that good.

While we all have learned to "never say never," I guess any chance for discs is a lost cause. Crazy.

 

[TonyD]

St Elsewhere has survived the purge.

 

[bmasters9]

St Elsewhere has survived the purge.

View attachment 185648

Is this on Tubi?

 

[TonyD]

St Elsewhere is on Hulu as has been discussed in this topic.


And the awful streaming purge continues I would recommend to anyone who loves St Elsewhere to start watching now since at any moment anything can be removed the way things are going.

 

[Kevin EK]

I need to note that Hulu (and the Hulu window in Disney+) is now missing episodes from every season of St. Elsewhere. I believe some are also mislabeled. I don't remember episodes being missing before, but they are definitely missing up to 4 episodes in some seasons.