We all have guilty pleasures. Sometimes they are terrible boy bands, or crappy b-movies, and sometimes they are short lived TV series.
I’ve had such TV guilty pleasures through out my life, some more guilty than others, and it pisses me off that after years since their (usually abrupt) cancellations the studios refuse to release these series in any way, shape or form.
Fine, you don’t think you can make back your investment if you release a 3 DVD set of Covington Cross (British Comedy set in medieval times), you’re probably right, but don’t just sit on the video and let it molder in some basement, release it! There are some of us who would snap it up in Itunes for a few bucks, or as a watch now feature on Netflix. I can’t believe that this would cost you people much! You left us with no other options that ot buy the bootleg version from some guy on Ebay, which is really just old VHZ tapes of the show captured on some cheap VCR with terrible reception for incredibly bloated prices.
So many TV series suffer from this problem, Boston Commons, Two guys a girl and a Pizza place, the afore mentioned convington cross, are just a few I care about.
So I pit the studios that would rather sit on these instead of letting the few fans that remain enjoy some nostalgic trips back memory lane.
I don’t have an issue with your thesis - there’s quite a bit of “lost” tv I’d love to see - but I don’t recall Covington Cross being what you think it is…
I think that the issue is less DVD release costs, and more having to go over all of the copyright and residuals and whatnot. It seems that they often have to renegotiate deals with everyone involved in the project before they can try and make any money off of the series via methods that didn’t exist or weren’t expected at the time.
There’s no designing women DVd’s out? See what I mean a travesty!
And if it is a matter of having to renegotiate a deal with all copyright holders, then I’m pitting the bastards too. Stop being greedy asswipes, you’ll make money, even if it’s from micro transactions, common! I want my Covington Cross!
Since we’re talking about him in another thread, I’d like to see the Batman series starring Adam West released on video. There are crappy bootleg copies which have been transferred from VHS off TV Land, but I’d rather see a studio issued release of this for home video.
There are a myriad of theories as to why Batman hasn’t been released. One says that the dispute is between DC Comics and 20th Century-Fox, which produced the series. The editors at DC take dispute with the campy tone of the series and feel it detracts from the more serious motion pictures, such as the Tim Burton pictures or Christopher Nolan’s take on the Dark Knight. Others suggest that the dispute lies between Greenway Productions, Fox, and ABC. Whichever the reason, the 1966 motion picture is available and even being released on Blu-Ray. I’d like to see the parties all come together and give Batman a proper home video release.
You can get all the Daily Show you want- including the Colbert check-ins- on the official website. Unfortunately, it only works in the U.S., but it is a good example of an alternative that more studios should be looking into for shows like The Daily Show which wouldn’t work on DVD.
Things like the Daily Show are unlikely to be released because the interest will be minimal. The shows are extremely topical, and so it doesn’t age well. Also, how many DVDs would you need to for a whole year’s worth of shows? They have put the Daily Show content on the web, and it’s nicely searchable.
If we’re talking about what we want to see on DVD, my vote is for the old television series “The Paper Chase”. (Although some old stuff doesn’t age well. I saw an old episode of MacGyver a few months ago and wow, that was a cheesy show.)
OK, but not only is the Daily Show topical, it’s very US-centric. So considering how few Americans would buy the show on DVD, I think the number of non-Americans who would do so is even more tiny.
I wonder about this sort of thing from time to time too.
I really, really want a DVD or whatever release of the HBO children’s series Encyclopedia…there were some really funny and informative sketches on there and it would be great to watch it again and be able to give it as a gift to people with young kids.
