Why We’re Just Now Getting the 1960s Batman TV Show on DVD

http://www.wired.com/2014/11/batman-home-video-finally/

by ghosh • 12 years ago

63 55 12 years ago

wired.com

goatforce5• 12 years ago

tl;dr: lawyers and money.

(The article is a good read though.)

jedberg• 12 years ago

Whenever someone asks why Netflix/Amazon/iTunes doesn't have a show, I'm just going to point them at this article and say, "the licensing rights to pretty much every show are this byzantine".

swartkrans• 12 years ago

I think we wont see Northern Exposure in any non-physical, digital format in my life time because of all the crazy rights involved with the show. :(

mschuster912• 12 years ago

Yeah, same for Cold Case due to the background music, which was licensed only for TV broadcast...

pasbesoin• 12 years ago

Even now that there are finally published DVD's -- I guess this is some years ago, already -- I find they aren't worth it. Because they removed so much of the original music. I remember watching the first episode and wondering, "What the hell is wrong with this?" Then it clicked.

As far as I am concerned, I think this is downright wrong. "Northern Exposure" -- pop culture though it might be labeled by some -- was a significant contribution to contemporary culture for many of us. It was one of those "water cooler" shows, around which everyone would be discussing it in the days following broadcast.

The fact that a private entity can simply "remove" such a element from our public culture and ongoing conversation -- or edit it into something else -- is, in my opinion, not something that was intended with "intellectual property".

Paying a reasonable fee is one thing. No (legal) access, whatsoever? That should not be permitted.

P.S. For those who are not familiar with it, in "Northern Exposure" a thoughtful and thematic selection of music became akin to another (omni-present) character. Removing those choices is akin to ripping (editing) a major character right out of the finished work.

JetSpiegel2• 12 years ago

I already see a compilation of all seasons, just click a certain magnet link and you're good to go.

anigbrowl3• 12 years ago

That's sort of irrational, since the availability of many other shows for streaming serves as a counterexample. Usually* the scope of ownership and transferability of rights is defined very very tightly in media contracts. When you have a lot of people with a potential claim then you run into the holdout problem, succinctly summarized here: http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/810/game-theory-st...

* but obviously, not always, or we wouldn't be having this discussion.

pluma• 12 years ago

This is especially true in markets outside the US. Wonder why your favourite show isn't on the local equivalent of Netflix (or why you can't get a non-dubbed version if you live in a non-English speaking country)? Licensing.

Zikes4• 12 years ago

For your convenience:

http://amzn.com/B00LT1JHLW - $175 for Blu-Ray, $135 for DVD

To be released November 11.

toomuchtodo• 12 years ago

I just searched the Pirate Bay, and found all ~20GB of the original series available, for free (single magnet link).

If you forget you're competing with free in the marketplace, you've already lost.

Zikes4• 12 years ago

I just paid $90 to pre-order the new Cowboy Bebop blu-ray box set, despite already having the series on DVD and it being easily found on TPB.

Some of us like owning the actual product.

ctdonath2• 12 years ago

When your hourly pay gets high enough and/or you get interested enough in other things, it's cheaper & easier to just shell out $175 for the complete BD package. Fiddling with torrents (with corrupted/bogus links & content, delays, technical obscurities, assuredly illegal activity, etc) is not free, it's spending time & resources & risks which could be used for earning more than $175.

rhino3692• 12 years ago

You can't compete with free piracy for digital products, period.

Legitimate retail isn't in competition with the pirate bay.

rayiner• 12 years ago

If you're not respecting other peoples' property rights, it's not a "marketplace" it's the state of nature.

anigbrowl3• 12 years ago

A free pirate copy isn't really in the marketplace, notwithstanding the manifest flaws in our system of administering legal copyright. If we admit this as normal commerce, how is it functionally different from uncompensated eminent domain? where is the incentive to produce if one cannot exert any control over the distribution and sale of creative works?

Sure, everyone who worked on Batman got paid years ago. But if I want to produce a film tomorrow, I'm facing essentially the same problem - I can't compete with free, and that makes it harder to recoup an investment. If I don't have an existing franchise to leverage so as to raise capital advance, then distribution rights are the only tool I have.

anon4• 12 years ago

While I believe that torrenting is your right, no matter what the law says, some of us do want to shower people responsible for things we like with actual money. If you find the price too steep, then by all means - get it from the pirate bay, from kickass torrents, from isohunt, etc. and show it to all your friends.

jonnathanson5• 12 years ago

The rights to many shows are tangled into "byzantine" webs. This is often a good thing, for reasons of economic incentives.

To use a personal example: let's look at the various parties involved in making "The Simpsons," whose DVDs have been available for many years. I had the good fortune to work on this show, albeit in a limited capacity, many moons ago. On this show, you have a lot of cooks in the kitchen (and I may be mangling some names here and there):

- Gracie Films (production company)

- Fox Television Studios (studio)

- Fox Broadcasting Company (network)

- Akom (animation company, based in Korea)

- 20th Century Fox Licensing & Merchandising division

- Whoever holds the rights for the music and theme song

- Matt Groening

- Syndicators in US and around the world

- Actors, writers, crew, and their various agents, managers, and lawyers

- Affiliates and home video partners

- Effects shops (if any, and if different from services performed by Akom)

Why would you want all of these moving parts? Isn't coordinating all of these stakeholders like herding cats? Well, yes. But absent this ecosystem of specialized players, no single player would be able to do everything at scale. The distributed ecosystem of TV development, production, distribution, and licensing is more efficient -- and allows for more shows to be made in the first place! -- than a system where a single company performs every step of the process.

Of course, this distributed system has its downsides. Complexity being a big one. No single party can unilaterally make decisions on behalf of the entire show. When the right aggregation of the aforementioned parties cannot come to an agreement about X, Y, or Z, then X, Y, or Z simply don't get done. This seems to have been the case with the Batman series. It's the case for several beloved shows, whose absence from the home video market is noticeable. It sucks when it happens.

This system is far from perfect. It is riddled with inefficiencies. Occasionally it leads to some mind-numbingly frustrating stalemates. It's especially bad about managing music rights; many high-profile shows have come to DVD and Blu-ray only very recently, after many years of wrangling the rights to the music in the shows. (Particularly '80s shows, which often relied on lots and lots of the pop music of the day). But in many ways, and on the balance, today's system is an improvement over the systems that came before it.

Generally speaking, this system is great at getting shows made. It is less than great at getting shows distributed to streaming services and home video. The system's strengths at the former are its weaknesses at the latter. It's an interesting paradox.

rkuykendall-com• 12 years ago

The sad thing is, we already had a fallback method, for when the many, many parties which helped to create iconic shows could not come to a deal after decades: public domain. However, no published work will enter the public domain again until 2019, with Batman '66 only public in 2062, and that is all assuming Disney doesn't push yet another extension through.

jonnathanson5• 12 years ago

I agree with you there. No argument.

The belief that public domain discourages economic incentives to leverage a property has been proven, time and again, demonstrably false. Look at Sherlock Holmes, for example. Or hell, look at Hans Christian Andersen, from whose works Walt Disney has made a fortune (The Little Mermaid, Frozen, etc.).

RexRollman• 12 years ago

This kind of stuff happens and it can cause long delays. I recall there were issues with Heavy Metal getting released on DVD due to licensing,as well as Miami Vice.

joezydeco• 12 years ago

Amazingly, a group managed to clear all the music rights that held up WKRP in Cincinnati all of these years. A new DVD set was launched last week with most (all?) of the original music intact:

http://music-mix.ew.com/2014/09/15/wkrp-in-cincinnati-dvd-so...

at-fates-hands• 12 years ago

Reminds me a lot of one of my favorite documentaries - "Los Angeles Plays Itself". The film is an essay on how LA is depicted in film through its architecture.

It was finished in 2003, but because the film is made up of a ton of film clips, it took more than ten years to get it on DVD. The reason was no publisher was willing to take on the mess of getting permission for all those clips.

Just in case you're interested: http://dailytrojan.com/2014/10/20/los-angeles-plays-itself-u...

Glad to see this series finally made it to DVD. My brother was a huge fan, and I'm not sure he knows this is going to be out in time for Christmas. Should be a great Christmas!

Why We’re Just Now Getting the 1960s Batman TV Show on DVD

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