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The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Blu-ray … ever? (1 Viewer)
Rick Thompson
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It'd be nice, but I'd rather they finish off the MTM hit series list with a complete St. Elsewhere.
I wouldn't hold my breath. It's a series held by Fox, now Disney. It took Oprah raving about it and complaining that it wasn't finished to get Fox to relent and finish it after being stalled for several years. I doubt there'll be a BR release unless someone like Oprah screams loud enough.
mrz7
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As much as I would love to have a Blu-Ray set of "The Mary Tyler Moore" show....I don't see it happening. First off, it was a 20th Century Fox property, in which Fox took forever to get the series on DVD (Thank God for Oprah Winfrey, who is a huge fan of the show and kept on making a big deal about having the series on DVD). Fox even stopped current t.v. shows from getting a Blu-ray release (only handful of seasons in the case of shows like "Modern Family" and "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia". Now that Fox is now owned by Disney, I really doubt the series would go to Blu-Ray. However, I could see this show getting upgraded to HD and shown thru Disney's new streaming service. Unfortunately, this is the route most of the Studios are tending to go......with the exception of Warner Brothers, who still think that physical media profitable (which is a good thing for us collectors). I hope I am wrong about MTM not getting a Blu-ray release, but I look to see what studio the show is under......than I remember that studio's history of releasing physical media.
Disney let Shout! have Gravity Falls. They'll want more if it's offered to them. They currently license non-Disney ABC titles to Kino Lorber along with Hollywood/Touchstone B-and-worse movies.
Shout! got the rest of the MTM library (except they've thus far passed on the aforementioned St. Elsewhere, still stalled after all these years since my Dad doesn't have a talk show), so the merger doesn't necessarily mean the deal will end. But this doesn't fill me with hope.
Those DVDs were also a product of Pat Robertson's failure to clear music rights when IFE owned and operated MTM after they bought it from TVS; they just didn't use as many songs to begin with. Ironically, the only place to see the actually uncut Christmas episode from season 1 was on the old MTM Home Video VHS release from the early 1990s. Fox spent so much time and effort on extras that they didn't clear music; they did for M*A*S*H but saved any extras for a box set after it was all done.
What's on Hulu is probably the same as what's on DVD. The archival status of their shows is all over the place, even within the shows connected to Mary, if Rhoda could be remastered while Lou Grant had to settle for off-air home recordings just to have a complete series!
Phyllis is the only spinoff with no disc release.
Shout! got the rest of the MTM library (except they've thus far passed on the aforementioned St. Elsewhere, still stalled after all these years since my Dad doesn't have a talk show), so the merger doesn't necessarily mean the deal will end. But this doesn't fill me with hope.
Those DVDs were also a product of Pat Robertson's failure to clear music rights when IFE owned and operated MTM after they bought it from TVS; they just didn't use as many songs to begin with. Ironically, the only place to see the actually uncut Christmas episode from season 1 was on the old MTM Home Video VHS release from the early 1990s. Fox spent so much time and effort on extras that they didn't clear music; they did for M*A*S*H but saved any extras for a box set after it was all done.
What's on Hulu is probably the same as what's on DVD. The archival status of their shows is all over the place, even within the shows connected to Mary, if Rhoda could be remastered while Lou Grant had to settle for off-air home recordings just to have a complete series!
Phyllis is the only spinoff with no disc release.
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The Obsolete Man
Senior HTF Member
As BobO said... owned by Fox, now Disney.
Virtually no chance.
Virtually no chance.
MartinP.
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Wonder why that is?
Meanwhile, neither of M*A*S*H's spinoffs got anything, even though Fox had more of a vested interest in that show's success because they actually made it.
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...and what floats around on YouTube is very poor sub-VHS quality. I do appreciate that fans have at least made that available but I wish I could just buy a copy, let the rights-holder get paid and let me have something in decent quality. I don’t need from the original negatives, I’ll take a copy of a 1” broadcast master or whatever.
Fox and Disney are a good pairing as neither, historically, have given any indication they care about their library of films and TV shows. Film releases are generally treated rather shabbily unless it's the latest tentpole/megablockbuster release. Disney's worse than Fox for TVonDVD releases - and Fox tends to release a couple of seasons and just stop. Even those that've received full series releases without either an intervention by a celebrity or finally being picked up and released by a 3rd party have been just average releases, often in horrible packaging. It took a *very* long time for Disney to let go of "Our Miss Bliss" and they didn't bother with the release themselves but licensed it out. They drug their feet with the Ducktales releases (you'd think those would have received royal treatment).
Both studios love to release WS movies in P&S versions. Disney went so far as to call those abominations "Family Friendly." I have a Fox release of a color film that received a BW pressing!
If this were Sony we're talking about I'd say there's a possibility of a release on BR with it licensed to Mill Creek. It's not. It's from two of the worst studios out there for even basic releases, much less upgrades.
I'd say the best you can hope for is a HD remaster for Disney + and even then I'd not hold my breath.
Both studios love to release WS movies in P&S versions. Disney went so far as to call those abominations "Family Friendly." I have a Fox release of a color film that received a BW pressing!
If this were Sony we're talking about I'd say there's a possibility of a release on BR with it licensed to Mill Creek. It's not. It's from two of the worst studios out there for even basic releases, much less upgrades.
I'd say the best you can hope for is a HD remaster for Disney + and even then I'd not hold my breath.
The Obsolete Man
Senior HTF Member
Neither was a good option due to too much media consolidation and all, but between the two companies vying for Fox, I would've rather seen Comcast get it solely because they do stuff with licensing their old shows out.
I don't care about Star Wars or Marvel movies, but I'd love to see old shows keep being released in physical media. Uni may have gotten that done. Disney? Almost no chance.
The shows were filmed (as opposed to videotaped) so they would look beautiful in high definition, but the series did not sell well (partly Fox's fault for overpricing it), and I guess a streaming option is the best we could ever hope for.
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I get all of the frustration with the studios and I often share it. I’m currently in the middle of a DVD watch of the complete series (entire set was like $40 at Walmart) and there’s obviously room for improvement. But the flip side is - they’re blowing out all this stock in condensed packaging because it’s not selling. So what market is there that can support an HD upgrade? It won’t do anyone any good if a hypothetical studio went bankrupt from spending money on projects and making products that there was no market for.
It sucks that they didn’t make better decisions in the brief window when the market was supporting this kind of stuff. But I suspect that a lot of TV on disc numbers were more abysmal than anyone led on. It seems that there’s not much overlap between people who will watch something for free on a syndicated station when they click past it and people who will actively go out and purchase these things. There are shows that I watched all the time on TV and then realized I’d never actively get up and put a disc on for once I could own them, and that discovery took me by surprise. If I’m an enthusiast, I can only imagine how little interest the casual viewer has.
It sucks that they didn’t make better decisions in the brief window when the market was supporting this kind of stuff. But I suspect that a lot of TV on disc numbers were more abysmal than anyone led on. It seems that there’s not much overlap between people who will watch something for free on a syndicated station when they click past it and people who will actively go out and purchase these things. There are shows that I watched all the time on TV and then realized I’d never actively get up and put a disc on for once I could own them, and that discovery took me by surprise. If I’m an enthusiast, I can only imagine how little interest the casual viewer has.
JohnMor
Senior HTF Member
I’d buy MTM on blu-ray, day one. But I’m certain it will never happen. Fox was unhappy with the dvd sales and Disney wouldn’t consider it anyway. The only reason The Dick Van Dyke Show got a blu-ray release was because Calvada retained ownership and knew how to treat their prize asset for future exploitation by making HD transfers from the original camera negatives. The blu-rays were just a happy offshoot.
I wish I could disagree with you on Fox and Disney's track records with their TV libraries — especially the latter with the glacial pace at which Wonderful World of Disney releases come out and the scattershot venues by which they do that you have to seek out actively since they never advertise them — but as long as there are still pre-print film elements, it's technically doable. But if it's on Hulu now, then it will likely stay there since the studio now owns most of it and since this is something that would have been made through Touchstone had they done it themselves and had it existed then.
IIRC, they don't actually own that Hayley Mills school show; it just aired on The Disney Channel when she was on it. DuckTales didn't get finished until after it got rebooted, and then only through Disney Movie Club, and those analog composite masters look less bad on laserdisc since there wasn't MPEG-2 compression to exacerbate video noise! I remember the days of their rushed-to-market pan-and-scan DVDs. The guy in charge of the department then now runs the theme parks, if you can believe it!
This is the same mentality that got everybody but Ted Baxter fired in the last episode!
NBC produced the pilot for Good Morning, Miss Bliss and decided not to air the series before the pilot aired. Brandon Tartikoff, then president of NBC, made a deal with Disney to produce the show for the Disney Channel. Disney aired 13 episodes and cancelled the show. Tartikoff, who believed the show had potential in a different time slot, was able to persuade the other execs at NBC to continue the show on Saturday morning. NBC then regained the rights, retooled it to Saved by the Bell moving its location to the west coast, and aired it themselves. When it went into syndication the Good Morning, Miss Bliss episodes were included and had the open changed to a "cold open" with an "Zach" saying they were from when they were in Jr. High and then followed by a title sequence remade in the style of Saved by the Bell's open. My understanding is that Disney owns the rights to those 13 episodes and when it was initially released on DVD, Disney wouldn't allow the Mills series to be included. The licensing got worked out for Shout!'s release.
jcroy
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At this point the only way I could ever see MTM being released on bluray, is if Disney/Fox ever licenses it to Mill Creek.
Rick Thompson
Screenwriter
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Disney: The film pirate's best friend!
Yo ho! Doesn't it strike you as odd how vociferously they go after intellectual property piracy while glorifying every other kind with a theme park ride and movies based on it?
But still, I never thought I'd see the day Disney owned this show. The Fox deal also gave them Nanny and the Professor and Small Wonder, which Fox actually produced* but are more the kind of of shows I'd associate with Disney. Somehow I thought there would be limits to their megalomania, some spark of the old conscience that used to drive the company telling them: "okay that's enough." I should have seen it coming in the second episode, "Today I Am A Ma'am," Ted invited Mary out to a movie: Son of Flubber, and his favorite movie was mentioned as being Snow White. And while Cloris Leachman and Ed Asner were doing this show, they appeared in Charley and the Angel and Gus, respectively.
*The latter had 12 episodes finished before Fox bought Metromedia.
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JoeDoakes
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Like so many 70s contemporaries, it suffers from 70s-itis. Parts of it can be kind of depressing. I think that held back a whole decade of sitcoms. The least depressing 70s sitcom-Brady Bunch-is most likely for blu.
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