Straight-to-video movies aren’t unheard of by any means, but could a TV series accomplish the same thing?
Take one of my favorite one-season-wonder series for example: Freaks and Geeks
I’ve heard that they’re eventually going to release the series on DVD. If the set sold really well, what’s to stop them from producing a second season and releasing it as well? Does anyone know if it costs a great deal more to produce a TV series in comparison to a straight-to-video movie?
How cool would it be to pick up a DVD set with a good fifteen or twenty brand new episodes of your favorite show? 
About two months ago, there was a story in the news section of tvshowsondvd.com about this very thing. One of the things they noted was that there’s going to be a DVD-only spin-off of 24 coming out. http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/articles/sales.cfm
I’ve been predicting for a while now that soon a new television programming model will develop.
I predict that, in the near future, certain series will be produced solely for migration to DVD. That is, the show will air for a short run, perhaps a season or two, and then it will be “cancelled” on the air. Rather than continuing a network run, the show will continue on in serial DVD form. Production values can be lowered, and advertising costs can drop to almost nothing. And the valuable airtime it once occupied can be used to produce another series.
I don’t know if it’ll work or not, but someone’s bound to at least try it.
Well, in the case of freaks and geeks in particular, “What’s to stop them” is that it’s been something like 3 years since the show was first made and most of the kids have probably grown up too much to pull it off. If they’d been on continously for those 3 years, it might work. But with that kind of gap, it will be obvious that they’re all too old.