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Date Posted: 15:14:39 12/13/01 Thu
Author: Barbara
Subject: Hope for QL DVDs? Not to mention "Enterprise"

Excerpts from Wednesday's New York Newsday newspaper:

TV SEASONAL GIFTS: DVDs

.... The DVD format allows studios and distributors to put whole season of TV series in consumers' hands in compact boxed sets loaded with behind-the-scenes material and other extras for serious fans.

With the number of DVD players in US homes approaching 25 million, collectible boxed sets have grown in popularity, and distributors have put out a rush of new sets in time for holiday-shopping season.

...On DVD, a full season requires just an inch or two of (shelf) space, and offers bonuses such as cast interviews, deleted scenes, series trivia, director and writer commentary tracks and other features.

DVDs also are more durable, provide better sound and images and eliminate that pesky task of rewinding videotapes.

"From a hard-core-fan point of view, it enables them to get more into the series," said Peter Staddon, senior vice president for home-video marketing at 20th Century Fox, which launched the TV series boxed-set business with "The X-Files" first season DVD release last year.

The studio has worked its way up to season four, released last month, with plans to issue two seasons a year until it hits the end of the show's run.

Fox has been a leader in mining its television catalog for DVD, and other studios and distributors have quickly followed.

HBO has issued the first two seasons of "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City," and will follow with the first season of "Oz" next year. MGM has put out season one of "Stargate SG-1." BBC Video released the full run of "Fawlty Towers." Showtime issues the first season of "Queer as Folk" in January. Artisan Entertainment this month comes out with the first season of "Twin Peaks." The latter series is one of those TV rarities, a short-lived series that still has a devoted fan base 10 years after it went off the network schedule.

Distributors shy away from releasing sales figures but say some sets have sold int he hundreds of thousands, bringing in tens of millions of dollars in revenue.

Shows that top the Nielsen ratings are not necessarily the top candidates for complete-season release on DVD. Warner Bros. has taken a different approach for its hit series "Friends," putting out two-disc "Best-of" sets rather than a full season's episodes.

Series with zealous audiences and continuing story lines, such as "The X-Files," lend themselves more to full-season treatment.

Audiences for those shows are smaller, but they are more likely the sort of loyal cult-series viewers to shell out $100 and up for some DVD sets.

Paramount has one of the mother lodes of TV franchises ripe for the DVD market in "Star Trek." The studio began releasing the original 1960's "Star Trek" series on DVD in 1999, in single discs containing two episodes each.

The final episodes come out on DVD this month, with the series taking up a bulky 40 discs.

Paramount has no immediate plans to issue the original "Star Trek" series in DVD boxed sets. But the first season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation"... debuts on DVD next spring.

Other "Star Trek" series will follow on DVD after the full seven seasons of "Next Generation" have been released.

A&D has been releasing such cult TV shows as "The Prisoner," "The Avengers," "Space: 1999" and "Thunderbirds" in two-disc sets. Next spring, A&E plans to begin similar treatment for the detective series "Peter Gunn." "The Prisoner" and Emma Peel era of "The Avengers," along with the full run of "Monty Python's Flying Circus," also are available in mammoth boxed sets that include all the episodes.

"What we do is very focused on collectors who want to be able to say they have the complete 'Prisoner' or the complete 'Monty Python,'" said Kate Winn, director of A&E home video. "That's absolutely a big appeal. Collectors are people who want to have everything. Every episode, every special feature."

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Re: Hope for QL DVDs? Not to mention "Enterprise" -- Samuel B., 15:59:26 12/15/01 Sat