Different Approaches to "Best Of" DVDs

Most of TVShowsOnDVD's registered members vote in favor of Season Sets just about every time on our TV Show Voting. It's rare to find a show's "Best Of's" vs. "Season Sets" choices where the voting in favor of Season Sets is less than 95%. Gord and I favor season sets ourselves, and we're sure that's no surprise to anyone.

But there must be SOME people out there who like single-disc best-of TV-DVDs, right? They've gotta be out there, we figure, because retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, even Best Buy and Circuit City all stock these sort of things. The people who buy them are not the type of die-hard TV-on-DVD fan who hangs out at Internet sites like TVShowsOnDVD, or in hardcore discussion forums like the Home Theater Forum or DVDTalk. But you probably know someone like that...a sibling, a parent or grandparent, one of your in-laws, a friend, neighbor, or co-worker. They're out there.

"That's okay," say the die-hard TV-on-DVD fans. "They can have their under-$10 best-of discs as long as I also get my seasons sets." And studios have heard you all loud-and-clear, because season sets are by far the most-released type of package in the TV-DVD genre. One glance at that section in any retailer will show that this is true. But the best-of's are easy to find, too, and many of them are for shows that also have season sets: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-Files progressed from season sets to best-of's, Star Trek: The Next Generation and the later Trek shows are in the process of doing this, Futurama and Family Guy are dabbling in it, and The Simpsons and Spongebob Squarepants have been going both ways for quite some time. Justice League, Teen Titans and Batman Beyond are all making the switch from best-of's to season sets.

By-and-large, we're past the "dark early days" of the TV-on-DVD format when you could ONLY get single-disc releases of shows like the original Star Trek, Twilight Zone, South Park, Friends, Married...with Children and I Love Lucy. All of these have "graduated" to season sets, and most of these are done or almost done on DVD, with entire runs of these shows available for the most part (M...wC's theme song licensing issues and the related slow-downs seem to make it the most obvious hold-out).

So TVShowsOnDVD readers are confused these days when it seems we are actually advocating "best-of" releases for shows that aren't available on seasons sets, like Family Matters, Alice, Perfect Strangers, and others. Not to mention the weirdness of Night Court going from "Season 1" back to a "best-of". Our stance in the news postings and in our posts in the discussion forum chats has been, "fans better get these best-of DVDs or the studio - Warner - won't release seasons sets".

Then we threw readers for a loop today with news about The Real Ghostbusters coming to DVD from Sony in best-ofs...and we seemed to condemn this approach. You are all left wondering, "What's the difference?"

Let me give a simple explanation as to why Gord and I look at these differently. Warner is well-known for their season sets in their mainstream TV-on-DVD department, and have only recently learned that the "kiddie" titles (which incidently appeal to a large number of adults) like Superfriends, Justice League, Teen Titans, Batman Beyond should come in season sets as well. The kiddie titles are in a different department, Warner Animation (instead of Warner Home Video), and so the people there had a different learning curve about season sets. Warner Home Video has been a steadfast supporter of season sets for years...but seem to be regressing to best-of's with these "Warner TV Favorites" series. Why?

Several reasons: for whatever reason, these shows are the properties that Warner is less convinced on that they will be successful with season sets. Despite votes at TVShowsOnDVD, despite other input, Warner's just not convinced...and they have a lot more historical criteria by now to use to judge with than they did in "the dark early days". This is a studio and a department that has PROVEN their dedication to season sets...so Gord and I tend to be trusting of them when they say "we need a popularity test" with these shows. We have little doubt on our end that these will all pass the test...but you never know. I never would have thought that Night Court would sell low enough to not get a season set renewal, either (yet there's lots of evidence that it got lost in the crowd on a busy release day...but that's another blog). In the meantime, Warner fills a niche with some best-of's, because the retail stores really DO sell plenty of this type of release: cheap, and easy to stock near the check-out stand. They make the chains happy, and they get their "test".

So we trust Warner a bit in this regard. What about Real Ghostbusters...don't we trust Sony? Well...yeah, they've pretty much learned that season sets are the way to go, except that once again we are talking about their main TV-on-DVD department. The one that releases "adult" fare like Seinfeld, All In The Family, Good Times, The Nanny, etc. But Real Ghostbusters is not with those learned people, we're afraid. Sony's got this property over in the "kiddie" department...the same group of people that release DragonTales, Jay Jay the Jetplane and Maggie and the Ferocious Beast. Yeah, those are some shows that have never seen season sets, and they don't realize that Real Ghostbusters isn't like those shows. Gord talked to the folks at Sony about these best-of releases planned (and announced today) for a February 28th release...tried to talk them into doing season sets instead. Tried to impress on them how the people who will buy this show are adult collectors, the same people who buy He-Man and Transformers.

The response? "Uh, you DO realize this is an ANIMATED show, right?"

There, that just about says it all. The people at Sony in charge of this title don't know what they have. They don't realize who their true audience of consumers are for The Real Ghostbusters. They forget (or never bothered to research it and find out) that the writers of this "kiddie cartoon" include Star Trek and sci-fi book writer David Gerrold, Babylon 5 writer/creator J. Michael Straczynski, Star Trek/Babylon 5 writer and Twilight Zone Companion author Marc Scott Zicree, and sci-fi book and sci-fi TV writer J. Michael Reaves.

So, no, we don't think that Sony truly is doing the right thing with the best-of release of The Real Ghostbusters. We don't WANT Warner to do the best-of's for the other shows, but we understand it nonetheless. As always, consumers will ultimately decide with their dollars what happens next.

Just don't expect the studios to necessarily understand what you mean with your purchase-indicated "votes". Don't want to buy a "best of" under any circumstances? Fine...but the studio is more likely to take that as a vote against the show, rather than against the best-of format.