Although over two dozen titles are being released today, none are related to classic television. Plenty of recent popular shows are now to help ramp up for the start of the 2009-2010 season, though. TVShowsOnDVD.com did post an article about Criterion’s upcoming The Golden Age of Television collection, revealing that the price will be $49.95 (that’s the suggest retail price and it will likely be available at a lower price). And, wonders of wonders, Shout! Factory has announced it will be releasing Small Wonder with the first volume coming out in early 2010. And the first season of The Patty Duke Show, also from Shout! Factory, will be out at the end of September this year.
Exploring forgotten TV from the 1920s to today.
SO…Shout! got the rights from SONY to finally issue “THE PATTY DUKE SHOW” on DVD. That’s a good sign- apparently, SONY believes Patty’s series isn’t “profitable” enough for them to release under their own home video division, so they leased it to someone else (“if it’s a flop, we don’t have to worry about losing a penny- besides, who wants to watch a black and white show, anyway?”, some of their executives might have concluded). And 20 Century-Fox obviously had the same attitude towards “SMALL WONDER”, without the “black and white” opinion. As it stands, “SMALL WONDER” is a “cult” show that Fox doesn’t even syndicate these days….the only audience who remembers it with great fondness are those in their mid-’30s who watched it on weekends in syndication from 1985 through ’89. To ME, it wasn’t that funny a series…and Tiffany Brissette wasn’t a great child actress {let’s face it, her acting was just as “robotic” as ‘Vicki’ was}. Who’d REALLY want to see it on DVD again?