TV Shows held hostage

I'm not talking about shows which are not available due to lack of interest but shows which even if there was interest, the owners would not let out.

Amos and Andy (CBS) - A shame because its one of the classic sitcoms of all-time. CBS has them all sitting in the vaults but would never do anything with the show commercially again. The backlash isn't worth whatever profit they could make from syndicating or releasing the show on DVD. Luckily, all but 4 of the 78 episodes circulate so its not completely unavailable. I know a film collector who made a contact at a warehouse and by a week missed out on 2000 prints of the show which were destroyed.

Make Room for Daddy Seasons 1 - 3 (Danny Thomas Productions) - When Jean Hagen left the show after the 3rd season, it was almost cancelled. After the 4th season (the widower season), Danny remarried and the show moved to CBS where it flourished. Only recently have seasons 4, 10 and 11 seen the light of day but the family still refuses to make the first 3 seasons available. The only time they were ever rerun was in the early 60s on NBC's daytime schedule. Danny didn't want them seen again and his heirs have honored his wishes.

 

Do you know why Thomas would want to bury those seasons? Did he have a falling out with Hagen?

 

Censored Eleven - Wikipedia

The Censored Eleven is a group of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons originally produced and released by Warner Bros. that were withheld from syndication in the United States by United Artists (UA) in 1968. UA owned the distribution rights to the Associated Artists Productions library at that time and decided to pull these eleven cartoons from broadcast because the use of ethnic stereotypes in the cartoons, specifically African stereotypes, was deemed too offensive for contemporary audiences. The ban has been continued by UA and the successive owners of the pre-August 1948 Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies. These shorts have not been officially broadcast on television since 1968 and have only been exhibited once theatrically by Warner Bros. in Spring 2010 (see below for more details) since their withdrawal. They have turned up, however, on low-cost VHS and DVD collections over the last thirty years. [meaning bootlegs]

In 2018, according to a user on Shadow and Act who spoke to Beck, he stated that that plans to release the cartoons have been scrapped due to changing cultural sensitivities as well as the poor sales of classic cartoon DVDs.[13]

 

Ed, the NBC series from the early 2000's. Four seasons worth loaded with music licensing.

 

I have heard they did not like each other and she owned a percentage of the show.

 

Quick disclaimer: I'm quoting JediJones but he was quoting a Wikipedia article and I'm not criticizing him, not in the least! Also, sorry for the long, off topic rant. But the quote was made in this thread, so I have to reply in this thread.

Poor sales of the "Looney Tunes" DVD's? How about you try releasing them in Australia? Or how about "Animaniacs"? Or "Thundercats"? Instead you give us several re-issues of "Friends" including a BluRay release! We didn't even get "The Flintstones" past season 3!

Now, back in 2004/2005 we got several volumes of "Looney Tunes". Turns out each one was the equivallent to ONE disc from the four disc sets available in the US and the UK. You got "Golden Collection" discs one to four and "Golden Collection Volume 2" discs one to four while we got those discs sold seperately. As for volumes 3 to 6, we didn't get a look in! And they were out of print by 2007. I looked to import "Golden Collection" volumes 1 to 4 from America, only to find all six volumes bundled into a 24 disc, 6 case box, which I promptly bought. I didn't even know about the last two volumes before that. And, at the time, I didn't know the set had come out in the UK in PAL four years earlier. Good thing all Australian DVD players can play both PAL and NTSC dscs.

So, Warner Brothers, if Australia is a big enough market to support several reissues of "Friends", maybe, just maybe, we're a big enough market to support a small run of the complete "Looney Tunes Golden Collection", the complete "The Flintstones", the complete "The Jetsons", a release of "Animaniacs" and "Thundercats". Not to mention the original "The Banana Splits Show" is very much a cult classic here, mainly thanks to our public broadcaster repeating it into the 1980's.

We might not boost your sales enough to also release "The Censored Eleven", but we could certainly add to them. Excepting I won't be. DVD regions have meant nothing to me for over a decade. Those sets weren't available in Australia, so I imported them. "For sale only in the U.S. and Canada." Yeah, get stuffed!

And, really, don't get me started. There's several sets from Sony that I'm chasing, Disney really sucks on the releasing front, too. And as for Universal, what they have and haven't put out defies logic! Then there's lots of old movies and TV shows on BluRay we don't get. And there's something nasty to be said to Network DVD in the UK. But at least they sell direct to the public, including international customers and give us good customer service, so I'm not so upset with them.....

 

Well, that's on co-creators Jon Beckerman and Rob Burnett. The show aired in the DVD era, so there was no excuse for not taking music licensing into account. A similar music-intensive show that debuted at the same time, Gilmore Girls, showed foresight and every season was promptly released on DVD.

At this late date, I'm 100% certain that my, um, "unofficial" Ed DVDs are the only discs of that show I'll ever see in my lifetime.

I'm not sure that Ed is even streaming anywhere. A shame that a good show like that got so quickly forgotten because of its creators' colossal screw-up.

In any case, Ed doesn't fit the premise of this thread, but it's rare to come across someone who remembers the show, so I thought I'd reply.

 

They did not get along at all and he felt they didn't have a good on screen chemistry. And the big thing was that the show almost got cancelled after she left.

 

Which is when I would have seen them.

 

Even though Batman tv series was finally cleared and greenlighted for a Remastered and released DVD & Blu-Ray set few years ago there is still no movement on licensing and packaging a Remastered package of the 26 episodes from "The Green Hornet" tv series and in the last ten years it may have been possible, but with physical media sales shifting to a Streaming future now there's probably not enough money to recoup in such a project today or tomorrow....

Burt Ward, Adam West with
Van Williams and Bruce Lee... ​

 

great thread! but it's going to get worse...never better. These shows will all be forgotten...control is not in the hands of the public...when they chisel at History you know we are doomed.

 

what a great job they did! and I love the deluxe BD box set!

 

great pic! thanks for posting it...yes, grab the shows you want on DVD, BD...they will be gone in the near future...

 

I loved Ed, and would definitely watch it if the opportunity arises.

 

Season 1 throught 3 on youtube.. and other places so much for keeping your show buried Danny

 

I'm just glad we eventually got a VHS set of the Ernie Kovacs show at one point. Too bad we couldn't get one for Spike Jones' 15-minute program...lasted what, two seasons...?

There was a time when there were descendants and spouses and close family members who would have loved to have gotten their famous relatives' classic shows out there while they were still alive to take advantage of the video boom in the '80s, but there just didn't seem to be enough interest in paying for all the restoration and cleaning-up of the films and kinescopes remaining, to preserve such heritage.

Music clearance rights is the least of the problems of properly respecting our television heritage.

At least we have YouTube.

 

There are over 300 episodes of Make Room for Daddy. There was not a market in syndication for such a large number of episodes, so it made business sense for Danny Thomas to sell into syndication the ones he had full ownership of, and the ones that were the most popular (the show didn’t become a top 10 hit until it moved to CBS and Marjorie Lord was on board as the wife). He didn’t couldn’t even sell all the Lord episodes - just focusing on seasons 5-9.

Danny did sell the older shows to NBC for daytime reruns while originals were still airing on CBS, so it’s not like he was trying to bury them. And Jean Hagen later guest starred on The Andy Griffith Show, which Thomas produced (and Thomas stopped by to say hi to her when she was filming).

And now? MRFD is not exactly a hot property in syndication, so why reintroduce the old episodes and have to split the revenue with Hagen’s estate?

 

I think the real tragedy here is that for a lot of these shows, the audience that would have wanted to see them are gone and the physical media peak is long over. I'm Generation X and there's a lot of stuff even I wouldn't give the time of day. Some stuff has aged very well (like Dobie Gillis for instance) but there's much more that has not.

 

It's a shame too - that series is one of the greatest of the 60s.

And cancelled after one season!

It wasn't Batman, which is part of why it was so great, but it wasn't Batman, so...

 

Interesting!

It was a VERY good show, and the Annette episodes!

 

Would the game show Scrabble count? There's been lots and lots of demand for it (at least online), but nothing yet. The culprit seems to be rights issues with Hasbro, the rights holders to the Scrabble brand. It became a game show on NBC from 1984 to 1990, and again in 1993. Reruns of the original (and best series) were on USA from 1991 to 1995. Chuck Woolery was the host.

 

Moonlighting. I wouldn’t say it’s held hostage, exactly. But the music rights weren’t locked up long-term, and it was be very expensive to license it for Blu Ray release or streaming. The producer, Glenn Caron, said that he’s been approached by ABC a few times about replacing the music, and he always says no.

 

Homicide Life On The Street

 

Really? There's a demand for box sets of old game shows?

If Blu-ray sets of I Love Lucy and Looney Tunes (for example) are deemed to be unprofitable by the powers that be, I can't imagine these would see the light of day in a million years, agreements with the rights holders or not.

But I've been wrong before...

 

I mean reruns on a diginet like Buzzr for example. The show was produced by Reg Grundy Productions, which Fremantle owns. If not Buzzr, then maybe Pluto, like The Price Is Right: The Barker Era?