The Problem With Studio's And TV Sets

Amazon.com: Everwood - The Complete First Season

There has been a disturbing trend in TV on DVD I've noticed recently. As you all know, TV is not worth watching these days. At all. "ER" used to be a forty-five minute motion picture every week, but these days it's more of a prime time soap opera. "Veronica Mars" and "One Tree Hill" are terrible shows that get terrible ratings, but got renewed while "Everwood," a show that is extremely intelligent and got better ratings than the last few episodes of "The Apprentice" got canceled. "7th Heaven" got saved from the grave due to some seven million viewers watching the series finally, but still managed to lose The WB fifteen million dollars. The family sitcoms like "I Love Lucy," "Home Improvement," and "Boy Meets World" is dead.

Heck, scratch that: ALL sitcoms are dead, because we are no longer allowed to laugh and watch stupid (but fun) shows! Men and woman are on all these reality shows trying to win a million dollars by marrying into wealth. There is nothing rated TV-G on TV unless you watch Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon. Sex, violence, and language have go so high, that "The Simpson's" looks like a family show these days (it's not). I mean, gees, is it any wonder TV shows on DVD were one of the best things to happen in a long time? Now we had the opportunity to not only buy some of our favorite shows on DVD, but we could also catch shows that we didn't catch the first time around, or watch shows that never got a chance to find an audience (I've pointing at "Clerks" here).

At first, this was a wonderful thing. The chance to be able to buy every episode of "Home Improvement" (one of my favorite shows) was a dream come true. Story oriented shows like "Smallville" are a dream come on DVD, because you can spend long weekends watching an epic story unfold in your living room. And DVD like the "7th Heaven" DVD's remind you why the show became popular in the first place. Which is why these movie studios are really ticking me off with their new TV show on DVD policy. When this first started, the general idea was that if you started releasing a show on DVD in season box sets, you released the whole series sooner or later.

The reason was because there's an audience for everything. If the series only sold a few hundred thousand copies instead of the million you made, you just made less copies of the DVD come the second time around. On top of that, it was in the studios best interest to keep the sets of a show coming because poor sellers could sell tons in the long run if later seasons were released, and there were deals from stores that would give consumers a deal if they bought more then one season. That is no longer the case. Now the new policy is this: If the show doesn't ship a million copies the first week, then it's not in the studios best interest to continue releasing the sets.

Okay, now that might not be the official policy, but I can't imagine the real policy looking much different. The problem started when TV sets of recent series began hitting store shelves, like "Smallville," "24," and "One Tree Hill." After the first season of "Smallville" premiered, Warner Bros. released the first season on DVD a month before the second season premiered. This DVD sold like hot cakes because of the people who watched the first season, and from the people who didn't watch the first season, but bought the DVD after hearing from other people how good the show was. Then shows like "24," "Gilmore Girls," and "ER" started selling like hot cakes too. The reason was simple: The shows were still being produced.

Since TV shows started break the million units sold line, TV on DVD has been forever changed. Now the studios only want to release shows that can sell one million units in a short amount of time. This policy has put several shows on DVD in danger of not being released fully. For example, let's start with an older show that is a classic, but not a huge classic. The show is called "Mork & Mindy," and this is the show that introduced us to a comedic actor named Robin Williams, who, far as I can remember, became famous for voicing some blue genie in a Disney cartoon. Anyway, this is a funny show. A VERY funny show! It's also from the year 1978. That certainly isn't from the last ten years.

The first season was released on DVD. Despite the fact that there are only four seasons in this show, Paramount has no plans to release any more season of the show. The reason? Because the show "sold poorly." Now, they'll need to forgive me for being ignorant here for a few minutes. I'm not a studio executive, and I know that ultimately a studio releases something with the hopes of making some money on the product, but I have to wonder how "Mork & Mindy" could have POSSIBLY sold poorly! The show is almost thirty years old. No offense, but how many copies of this DVD were they hoping would sell? One million? Two million? Five hundred thousand? How many?

The reason I ask this is because this is an old show, and to expect it to be a million unit seller is kind of crazy. Of course, the other problem is that if fans want to get more seasons of a show released, they are at the mercy of the studios. "Mork & Mindy" fans want to know how many units of season one sold, and how many more would have to sell to get season two released. Paramount has not revealed the numbers to either of these questions, they've just stated that the series sold poorly, which doesn't really help the consumer out much. Another couple of shows that are in limbo are "7th Heaven" and "Party of Five."

Now both of these shows had to sell well enough to make some money, because they both got season two releases, but now the word is future releases have been canceled due to...you guess it; poor sales. But the question remains, how many units did they plan to sell to warrant another season, and how many did sell in the long run? And not only that, has the show has been selling decently over time, or does it only matter if it moves a certain amount of units during the first three weeks that determine whether a show continues to get future releases made? Whatever it is, you won't hear any of these answers answered by a studio executive.

My final example of how horrible this system is is with the release of the first season of "Everwood." Season one of one of the best TV shows came to DVD, but no future releases were made. The reason was that sales for the first set were too poor to warrant continuing the series. During a recent chat when people asked about future releases, Warner Bros. just said that more people needed to buy season one should they make season two. Since then, the season one sets have been selling like hot cakes. No one has any numbers to show how much sets have been sold the past few weeks, but Amazon.com has shown the set in the top ten for quite awhile now.

It briefly went to number 28 on the list when the new releases came out on Tuesday, but then it crept right back up to number 8. Surely this means the set is selling well, yet there is still no word on whether or not they've sold enough copies to continue the show, how much more they need to sell, or whether it's too late anyway, and it doesn't matter how many sets they sell, there won't be any more seasons of "Everwood" released. As you can see, what was once a great hobby has quickly become a big nightmare for fans. I can almost see why some fans wait until a company proves themselves by releasing the whole series of a show on DVD before they buy the sets.

Sure they may be shooting themselves in the foot, but at this point in the game, that almost makes sense. After all, why buy season one of a show, only to find out that you won't be able to buy the other nine seasons? It almost makes buying the first season feel kind of pointless. So what can be done here? I honestly don't know. A boycott won't work, because then the studios just simply won't release anything, and petitions are a waste of time because money does the talking. The main problem is we just don't know how much the studios want to continue producing sets.

It's a problem that needs to be addressed by some big DVD site, and hopefully it will be. Until then, all I know is that my first two seasons of "7th Heaven" and my first season of "Everwood" are begging for the rest of their family, and I don't know what to tell them

Currently Listening To: Angela Aki - "Final Fantasy XII" Soundtrack