Live Action TV Rescued / Keep Circulating The Tapes

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/KeepCirculatingTheTapes/LiveActionTVRescued

As with movies, several studios now make various TV miniseries for which there's not enough demand in the market at large to justify regular release but which are of interest to fans and collectors available through their burn-on-demand DVD archive series.
8 Simple Rules: The first and second seasons were both released on DVD and have been made available to freely stream on ABC's website. The third season has never been released on any of these, but the Dailymotion user Barney Miller has uploaded the full season.
ABC's 50th Anniversary Celebration was a special that aired in 2003 that showcased ABC's shows for the past 50 years. Due to copyright issues with the shows and footage, don't expect a DVD Release anytime soon. The special is available on YouTube, however.
The Adventure Game was a 1980-86 BBC Game Show intended for young audiences but entertaining enough to develop a following among adults. Of the four series (with a total of 22 episodes), only the last was re-run after the 1980s, with occasional airings on Challenge TV in the early 2000s. Of the sixteen episodes from Series 1-3, only eight (four from Series 1, two each from Series 2 and 3) circulated among fans, including two of the four episodes the BBC officially regarded as "lost" after they were wiped in a purge of children's television recordings on orders from then-Archive Selector Adam Lee in 1993. However, in 2016, the BBC made seven surviving episodes from Series 1 and 2 available for purchase on their website, and in 2017, a DVD box set containing twenty episodes (all but Series 1, Episode 2^note and Series 2, Episode 4^note) was released.
For 28 years, only six episodes of Adventures in Wonderland were available on home video (three VHSs were released in 1993 with two episodes on each VHS), but the entire series (save for "White Rabbits Can't Jump", an unaired episode pulled due to it guest starring O.J. Simpson) was made available on Disney+ on April 30, 2021.
The Adventures of Pete & Pete got around this by replacing any protested music cues with clips from their house band Polaris on the DVDs. Unfortunately, the "Nick Rewind" DVD series was discontinued (after it was designed, but) before the last season set was released. However, the fact that most of the music was independently owned and the musicians involved enjoyed working on the show makes it so that the number of replaced music cues can be counted on one hand.
The Adventures of Timmy the Tooth did not get a DVD release after the videotapes went out of print. Then, Kevin Carlson (co-creator and voice of Timmy) announced that the series will be available on the streaming service Peacock. All ten episodes were made available when the service launched.
While ALF had been available on Region 1 DVD for many years, the episodes were only the Edited for Syndication versions (even though the European releases were uncut). In late 2023, Shout! Factory rectified this with a virtually uncut, save for one episode due to music rights issues, box set of the entire series, plus its two Animated Adaptations and the Project ALF TV movie that resolved the series' cliffhanger ending.
The Alien Nation TV series aired from 1989 to 1990 and ended on a heart-wrenching cliffhanger. It was quickly released on VHS. The cliffhanger, and numerous unresolved subplots, were eventually resolved in made-for-tv movies that aired from 1994-1997. Only the first two were ever released on VHS, leaving more hanging plot threads with no resolution for fans who hadn't managed to see the movies when they originally aired. The series was given a full DVD box-set release in 2006; but it took another two years for the movies to be released, finally giving fans the entire story. However, the parody advertisements that were part of the original series airing have yet to be released in any format.
Ally McBeal fans in the United States either had to trade tapes, import the British DVD series set from the UK, or be content with a five-episode "Best Of Season 1" compilation for many years because of a flop of a syndication deal where FX took a nearly $2 Million bath every time they aired an episode (they stopped after two years and nobody else dared to air it again) and the sheer fact that all the music rights used on the show were not negotiated at all before the rise of TV on DVD, not to mention that Vonda Shepard would be looking at quite the sweet DVD royalty check for being the house singer on the show. Thankfully, the long wait was worth it — in October 2009, Fox released the full series in a Region 1 box set with no music cuts whatsoever.
American Gothic (1995) was one of the most campaigned-for shows for a while, until it was finally released on DVD in 2005 (R1) and 2006 (R2).
Andy's Fun House (aka The Andy Kaufman Special), the 1977 special that ABC refused to air until '79 due to its eccentric content, only warranted one VHS release in The '90s via Anchor Bay Entertainment. However, the movie has been remastered and uploaded the film on YouTube, March 2018.
Arli$$, starring Robert Wuhl as an unscrupulous Jerry Maguire-like sports agent, has never been released on DVD. Despite the show running for seven seasons and being modestly popular, its only DVD release was a "Best Of" collection that was released in 2001, and only featured 13 episodes from different seasons (but it's very easily acquirable as a $2 discount DVD collection at Walgreens thanks to extreme overprinting). Not only were no episodes from the second or third season featured, but it didn't bother to include the pilot or series finale. There has been no interest from HBO as far as releasing the series for the longest time, and it was impossible to find online until the entire series resurfaced on HBO's streaming services and every other place HBO is available as an add-on in 2018, many years after the show ended.
- There's a reason why the entire series took an eternity to be released: it was seen as a joke among the public. Arli$$ was long considered the lone black spot on HBO's otherwise stellar lineup. It was a punchline to jokes about bad 21st-century TV shows on everything from Saturday Night Live^note to The Simpsons. Furthermore, the show only lasted as long as it did because of the fact that Robert Wuhl was best friends with a high-ranking HBO executive who kept the show going as a favor to his friend.
Barney Miller: After the Season 1 DVD set came out, it took four years for Season 2 to be released, then another year for Season 3. Finally, Shout! Factory issued a deluxe complete-series box set for the show in October 2011.
The circumstances surrounding the holdup of the 1960s Batman (1966) TV show were numerous, even compared to other works. The prints of the series are owned by 20th Century Fox (now owned by Disney), but the characters are owned by DC Comics, which is owned by competitor Warner Bros. Discovery. Fox went to court in 2008 to battle Warner Bros.. regarding rights issues with the then-unreleased Watchmen adaptation, of which the acquisition of the rights to the Batman series was a key sticking point. Even besides that, there were still many other factors. This includes clearance rights for the cameos in each episode (some of which were fictional characters from other shows like Lurch and Colonel Klink), music rights, writers' residuals, a prior lawsuit that was filed by the Dozier estate (of William Dozier, the creator of the series) for residuals, and copyrighted designs that were unique to the series. Things had gotten so bad that Adam West basically said "screw it" and gathered up the remaining living writers, producers, and actors in order to produce his own Behind-The-Scenes DVDs about the series in the form of roundtable discussions of each two-part episode; before that, another company issued Batmania, a 2-DVD set featuring screen test footage, interviews and other content that can only be described as "DVD box set bonus features, without the box set". Ultimately, WB managed to clear the rights for a home video release in 2014... just in time for Batman's 75th anniversary!
- There are fears that the home video releases of the series may be in limbo once again as Disney, parent of DC rival Marvel Comics, purchased 20th Century Fox in 2019, including the rights to the series. Assuming that Disney's syndication rights to the series don't include streaming, you better get a copy of the home video release as soon as possible. And don't expect WB to wholly buy the series from Disney, either, as Disney is notorious for being protective of its intellectual property no matter what (especially for a series connected to one of the biggest comic book characters of all time, even if they don't own said character).
Bear in the Big Blue House had several DVD releases, but they did not cover the entire series. In fact, many of the episodes from Season 4, including the Grand Finale, were difficult to find as very few DVDs of that season were released compared to the first three. The series later got released to Disney+ in October of 2022.
Beast Legends was lost media for most of The New '10s, only available on Itunes. Though in 2023 they were uploaded to Youtube, averting it.
Bill Nye the Science Guy is now available on a number of DVDs, but as they are classroom-licensed releases they cost $25 or $30 for one thirty-minute episode. Those looking to save money ought to check their public library for these. Thirty or so episodes have also been added to Netflix.
The Bob Newhart Show once spent a long time in limbo with Season 5 and Season 6 not being on DVD due to low sales of the first four seasons, it wasn't until Shout Factory acquired the rights to the series in 2014 and released a complete series boxset on May 27, 2014, and later released the fifth and sixth seasons in individual sets on February 3, 2015. A lot of the Season 5 and Season 6 episodes also have the MTM logo followed by both the Viacom (the original syndicators of the series) "V of Doom" logo and the 20th Television logo.
The third season of Boy Meets World sold worse than expected on DVD, leading Buena Vista to indefinitely delay later seasons. Fortunately, Lionsgate acquired DVD rights and managed to release the whole series.
The Belgian TV show Buiten De Zone was finally released on DVD in 2010, after the last of the music negotiations (over the music from Twin Peaks) had concluded. The show, which ran for 2 seasons starting in 1994, still has a huge fan following and has achieved a cult status in Flanders. Bart de Pauw, one of the creators, was a soundtrack buff and used music from hundreds of films like James Bond, Aladdin, Indiana Jones, and even Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Acquiring all 380 (!) music licenses while keeping the price at a reasonable level was a huge undertaking.
Car 54, Where Are You? had some episodes released on VHS before the tapes went out of print. For years, various rights issues (Eupolis Productions, NBC, and CBS all claim ownership) prevented a DVD release. Fortunately, Shanachie Entertainment's home video arm got the rights to release both seasons on DVD in 2011. What's more, they were given brand-new transfers from the original 35 mm film prints, allowing the series to enter the digital age smoothly. It's also available on demand through numerous streaming services, including Pluto and Tubi, as well as the subscription Shout! Factory TV service.
Caroline in the City only had the first half of its four seasons released on DVD in 2008, with the other two seasons seeing no release, although the complete series was available on some streaming sites. However, over a decade later in 2019, Seasons 3 and 4 finally saw release on DVD, completing the series.
The Changes, a children's sci-fi series in which noises from modern technology cause people to abandon it and revert to a pre-industrial age, has never been released officially on video and hasn't even been rerun apart from on UK Gold way back in 1994. A DVD was released in 2014.
China Beach was unavailable on DVD for years due to music rights issues. Time-Life finally cleared most of the rights and released all four seasons on DVD in 2013 and 2014.
The 1987–present BBC kids' show Chuckle Vision suffered this as, due to a bad schedule, episodes over 20 minutes were not shown after 2004, but Barry Elliot announced that the BBC picked it up for a DVD release.
For decades, the 1957 version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella (starring a young Julie Andrews) was thought lost since it was only broadcast live (except on the West Coast). Until the black and white kinescope of the West Coast broadcast (the live version was in color) was found and given a DVD release in 2004. The same version has also aired on PBS. If you were interested, you could also find the 1997 Wonderful World of Disney remake. What about the first remake, which starred Lesley Ann Warren and became the most popular version after numerous re-runs and VHS releases? Sony pulled the DVD out of print after a few years. Fortunately, Shout! Factory released a new DVD of the special in September 2014 — and it's now streaming on free-with-ads services too.
In September 2021, Cold Case finally available to stream on HBO Max (now Max) in North America and Prime Video in Europe after becoming unavailable on home media due to music rights issues.
In September 2018, Buzzr announced that it had obtained the rerun rights to Classic Concentration (1987–91; produced by Mark Goodson Productions, whose library is owned by Buzzr parent Fremantle Media). It began airing on Monday, October 1.
Cop Rock was released by Shout! Factory in May 2016.
Crime Story has been released, but with knock-off tunes in place of the original early-1960s pop numbers underscoring the action. It just isn't the same.
Dan August only lasted one season (1970-1971), but it was instrumental in launching the career of Burt Reynolds. It received a DVD release in late 2018.
A Different World (1987–93) had only one of its six seasons available on DVD, released in 2005. However, in 2015, the entire series was released on Netflix.
"The Underwater Menace", an incomplete Doctor Who story of which only the second and third of four episodes exist, is a particularly unfortunate example. The entire soundtrack exists and was released on CD and episode three was released as a set with other "orphaned" episodes in 2004, but when episode 2 was discovered in 2011, The BBC decided to release the full story on DVD with an animated reconstruction of the missing episodes. With the special features and audio commentary complete and every other existing episode released, the animation fell through. The BBC couldn't justify a full DVD release of a single "new" episode and cancelled the DVD in June 2015. It was finally released in October, but with the proposed animated reconstructions replaced with ones using telesnaps (still photos of key moments from the show, officially taken from the broadcast feed using a specialised camera rig).
The 1970–72 BBC series Doomwatch was a casualty for a long time. Already only 24 of the 38 episodes produced survive. During the 90s, the BBC released just four episodes on VHS over two tapes (the first two surviving episodes, another first season episode and the second season opener), while most of the surviving episodes were shown on satellite. A largely unknown DVD release of the same four episodes followed in 2001, with plans by 2|entertain to release the whole series in 2006 cancelled because of the failure of similar releases. It wasn't until 2016 that all 24 surviving episodes were released on DVD by Simply Media, which ironically was the first time people could legally watch the unbroadcast episode "Sex and Violence".
The Equalizer was just that, until Universal released Season 1 on DVD. And, the funny part with the "Complete Season 1" DVD set? It's a rare case of "Better Export For Them".
After a while TNT stopped airing reruns of ER, replacing it with Supernatural. It's not particularly easy to come across episodes online but thankfully complete season sets have been released.
National Lampoon-produced spoof court show Eye for an Eye was caught in this trap for years after its run ended until it was made available on the Judge Nosey channel on the Pluto TV app in 2020.
The civil rights documentary miniseries Eyes on the Prize was once unavailable on DVD because it includes a lot of music and film footage that was licensed only for a limited time. The license was renewed in 2006, thanks to additional funding from the Ford Foundation. The funding to remaster and rebroadcast the series for PBS came with the stipulation that the DVD release be available for purchase only to schools and libraries, not individuals. However, as of 2010, it is now available to the general public for purchase on the PBS website.
The Eyewitness educational video series of The '90s was once only available on DVD via obscenely expensive copies from teachers' sites; one had to hope that they might be available in a local public library collection for checking out. But episodes have since been made available at a lower price point through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, etc.
Family Matters qualified for this for almost a decade until they finally released the first season on DVD. A second season was released in February 2012, more than two years after the first season was issued, giving hope to fans that the remaining seven seasons would eventually be released. Fans would get their wish, although it was slow-walked, with Season 3 not released until February 2013 and Season 4 in February 2014, and no releases at all in 2015... before the five remaining seasons were released at different times in 2016.
Averted with Freaks and Geeks, which got a DVD despite having a soundtrack that included Styx, The Grateful Dead, Cream, and two episodes that used only songs by The Who and Billy Joel respectively. One time when a short runtime helped the DVD release.
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air got Seasons 1-4 (of six) out on DVD, then got stalled by music rights for the last two seasons. This is because the number of licensed songs it used went up over the course of its run. As Warner cleared music rights, fans ended up having to wait six years for a fifth season DVD, and 11 more months for the last season.
In the early 1980s, ABC's Fridays was meant to rake in the same success that NBC had with Saturday Night Live. When it first premiered, it got flak for being a shrill, unfunny clone of SNL, but when SNL hit the wall in the early 1980s due to bad writing, a mediocre new cast, and the incompetence of new showrunner, Jean Doumanian, Fridays was revered as the new, edgy sketch show with a crazy young cast of comedians and a lot of new sketch ideas not even SNL would think to do (to name a few: a Bob Hope/Bing Crosby "Road To..." movie that takes place in an El Salvadoran torture chamber^note, a sketch about a human couple dining at a restaurant catering to zombies, a variety show starring ultra-conservative televangelists, a spaghetti Western about the creationism vs. evolution argument, a Marx Brothers-esque take on the Iranian revolution, and a 17-minute Rocky Horror Picture Show parody that mocked Ronald Reagan's inauguration). Naturally, ABC at the time felt this was all inappropriate and confusing, so a lot of sketches got cut in reruns, the show was moved to midnight from its cushy 11:30 spot and ratings dropped. After an unsuccessful stint as a primetime sketch show, Fridays was canned. It did air Edited for Syndication in the 1980s on the cable channel USA, but those reruns were gone just as quickly as they premiered. Home video and DVD release was impossible as Larry David and Michael Richards refused to sign for it, and the only way for people to see Fridays was either on the videos they taped the episodes on in the early 1980s or seeing clips of sketches on YouTube. Shout! Factory has finally saved ''Fridays'' from obscurity by releasing it on DVD, though it's a "Best Of" collection featuring a selection of memorable episodes (including its biggest claims to infamy: Andy Kaufman's Worked Shoot appearances). Hulu Plus also has this series, under the "Shout Factory" channel.
F/X: The Series skipped the VHS format altogether and finally landed on DVD after 15 years, much to the relief of fans who pleaded with its production company to release the two seasons of the show.
Ghostwriter wasn't available until Shout! Factory announced a DVD release of the first season.
Fans of The Glass House had to make do with the DVD that only contained the 2002 best-of episode and the six "Double Glazed" specials and the (very) early morning reruns of Seasons 8 and 9 in 2009-10, as the ABC did not have the rights to replay earlier episodes and did not say if full seasons would ever be released. The first five seasons (spanning 2001-2002) have been released in full on the iTunes Store, but the ABC currently have no plans to release seasons 6-9 in any form.
The Goodies is seldom shown in reruns (except, apparently, in Australia). There were episodes on YouTube that have all disappeared. There are 24 episodes available on DVD at the time, and they come with some commentary and extras too. It's not great, but it's better than fourth-generation copies. There were some butchered reruns on UK Gold and UK Arena in the 1990s. There have been four official Region 2 DVD releases (including all of the ones made by LWT after they Channel Hopped). A complete set of the BBC episodes was finally released in 2018.
The Greatest American Hero has been released, albeit with music rights problems.
Happy Days: Slowly but surely for the first four seasons. The first season was issued in 2004, and it was nearly three years before Season 2 was released. Seasons 3 and 4 were issued during the next 18 months, but Season 5 wasn't issued until May 2014, and nothing has happened since Season 6 was issued in December of that year. Music licensing, slow sales ... no official word has been given as to what the holdup is for the remaining five years.
The early 1980's series Heres Boomer was lost in limbo for decades, until Paramount/CBS Home Video released both seasons on DVD in 2019.
The Hollywood Squares is a rather unusual case. People thought the classic Peter Marshall era was gone, victims of NBC's wiping practices of the era (many other game shows suffered too); the only remnants known to be left were some scattered daytime and syndicated episodes on the trading circuit; the latter in particular. But in 2001, a search through an old LA-area warehouse (in an attempt to find the missing episodes of Dark Shadows) found the mother lode- a staggering amount of Marshall episodes, estimated to be between 650 and 3,000. However, GSN only reran some of those eps from 2002 to 2003- and even then, it was mainly of the 1971-77 syndicated run (along with some of the 1968 primetime run, and one daytime episode, specifically one of the oddball Storybook Squares- weeks where children and families would play the game, and the celebrities would be in costume as various historical or fairytale figures).
- Similarly, the spin-off The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour was very hard to find until 2019, when Buzzr added the show to their lineup.
Intensity, a two-part miniseries from 1997 based on the Dean Koontz book of the same name, starring John C. McGinley from Scrubs was released as a DVD-R title in 2012.
It's Garry Shandling's Show: All four seasons were released on DVD in Fall 2009. And Shandling's follow-up, The Larry Sanders Show, had all its seasons released in Fall 2010 after its post-Season 1 run was in release limbo due to a dispute between Shandling and Brad Grey, his former manager and producer of the program.
Once upon a time, the Nickelodeon live-action series Just for Kicks was probably the most short-lived and rarest TV show on the network to ever hit the airwaves. There was absolutely, positively no trace of the show left online for a decade. Then, a user on the Lost Media Wiki in 2016 discovered he had the entire series saved on his iTunes account; it's now on YouTube.
The Swedish show Kenny Starfighter got a VHS release in 1997, but due to copyright issues the series did not get a DVD release for many years. This changed in 2006 when the show got a proper DVD release. In 2017, the series also become available on the TV network SVT's "Öppet arkiv"-service, meaning that anyone living in Sweden can watch the entire series for free.
La Femme Nikita: Season 2 was released and then unreleased, pulled from store shelves, when one of the featured bands demanded more money for the use of their song. Instead, the song was replaced, the DVDs re-released and they got nothing.
Remember the 2002 test pilot for LazyTown where Shelby Young played Stephanie and the puppets looked creepy? A short promo reel appeared on the old pre-series LazyTown site which was the only evidence. In 2015, Shelby stepped in and uploaded her personal copy of the full test pilot to YouTube, which is in fact a series of 1-minute shorts done with storyboards with the obvious live-action footage. She also uploaded the full version of the "Bing Bang Song" recorded for the test pilot which she sang and became a Once an Episode feature in the actual show.
Legend. Richard Dean Anderson and John DeLancie in a Steampunk version of The Old West. Anachronisms left and right, but it's a fun ride. Too bad it only lasted one season, but at least it finally saw a DVD release in 2016 thanks to Mill Creek.
Life with Lucy, a failed attempt at a Spiritual Successor to I Love Lucy, featuring Lucille Ball herself as the owner of a hardware store, that ran for a spell in 1986.^note In 2019, CBS/Paramount released all 13 episodes on DVD, including five that never aired in its original network run.
Little Muppet Monsters was like this for over 20 years. Beyond the first episode, Muppet fans had no way to gain copies of the three aired episodes. In 2008, a Muppet fan came forward saying he had all three episodes that aired on CBS. He made copies for the Muppet fan community and they are now very easy to find.
All seasons and episodes of Malcolm in the Middle have been recovered on Hulu. However, there have still been no Region 1 DVD releases of the show except for the first season.
Mama's Family initially had only a Season One box set with edited, syndicated versions of its episodes to its name, but it received a full-series, uncut DVD release in Fall 2013 via StarVista Entertainment. However, music rights issues still resulted in some scenes being edited or cut completely—most notably, Vicki Lawrence and Imogene Coca's duet of "Ain't Misbehavin'" in the episode "Gert Rides Again" and Vicki's performance of "Harper Days" (to the tune of "Happy Days are Here Again") in "Mama For Mayor."
Until the end of 2007, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was a perfect example of this trope. About 40 episodes had been released during the 1990s on VHS, but promised DVD release kept getting put off for various reasons (one of the most cogent being that it was difficult to nearly impossible to find high-quality master tapes for the first season, and another being the long-running legal ruckus surrounding the Harlan Ellison-penned third-season episode "The Pieces of Fate Affair"). Anchor Bay announced plans to release the series on DVD, which fell through, and it was finally left to Time-Life, under license from Warner Bros. (which, convolutedly, had acquired the license from MGM) to release the series in an acclaimed box-set version in late 2007.
The original Sony releases of seasons 3-11 of Married... with Children were released on DVD with the theme song, Frank Sinatra's Love and Marriage, replaced with more generic music due to rights issues (the first two seasons retained them). In addition, some episodes were edited, whether (in the case of the fourth season, at least) due to the presence of the song, or being a two-parter cut into two episodes, etc. When Mill Creek acquired the rights in 2013, they were able to get the rights to the song back and were able to use unedited versions of most, though not all, of these episodes.
Martial Law suffered from this trope for more than a decade, with numerous fan petitions for one of Sammo Hung's defining performances to be made available on DVD. Hong Kong did get a partial Video CD release... of one episode in 2000 and nine more in 2005, out of a total of 44 (plus crossovers with Early Edition and Walker, Texas Ranger). The entire series, including the two crossover episodes, finally made it to DVD in the US and Canada in 2016.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show had Season 1 put on DVD in 2002. Thanks to disappointing sales of that set, it took three years for Season 2 to be released, and it ultimately took eight years to get all seven seasons on DVD.
Max Headroom suffered this in part. Although the original TV movie was released on DVD, the subsequent two-season series had not been and was only partially available in edited form on VHS and Japanese Laserdisc releases. Despite the existence of a substantial online market in bootleg compilations, a DVD release was not available until Shout! Factory released the full series in 2010. The Shout DVDs include the American TV series, but not the original TV movie. Granted, the pilot is a condensed version of that film, but...
Music rights are also the reason it took forever for Miami Vice to get a video release (the DVDs were first — it never got analog video releases), and why there were lengthy delays between each season's box set. Still, the episodes were completely unabridged...well, save for a sequence cut from the Season 4 episode "By Hooker, By Crook" because it was deemed to be excessively disturbing. It showed a prostitute being tied up and murdered while Crockett has sex with another woman. In an interesting case, however, while you can now find most episodes online (completely legally, through Hulu and Netflix), there are one or two episodes that are withheld from the internet for apparent rights issues.
Mork & Mindy: A Season 4 episode (more importantly, part of the three-part Grand Finale) has a joke about Mork not leaving the car until he finishes singing along with the last "Na-na-na-na"s of "Hey Jude". That would be no problem on its own, if not for the fact that Mork then enters the room singing said song. Since using songs from The Beatles catalog is near-impossible these days and the scene wouldn't make sense with the joke dubbed over or cut, it was unknown for many years whether or not Season 4 would ever see the light of day on DVD. The DVD finally came out in 2014 - sadly, after the death of Mork's actor Robin Williams - with any scene in which someone sings or mentions "Hey Jude" edited out.
The short-lived Nickelodeon sitcom My Brother and Me. After years of circulating the tapes, at least three episodes aired on The '90s Are All That in early 2014...and then the complete series became available as an Amazon MOD title that June.
My Mother the Car has no DVD release but is legally available on YouTube and Hulu.
A slightly different issue arose for My So-Called Life: It wasn't that there wasn't a DVD released for it; it was that it was so rare that the cost to buy it was prohibitive (there were sets for $200 on eBay). Luckily, a new DVD release came out, which dropped the price from prohibitive to merely expensive.
In Britain, companies like Network DVD are a godsend for people looking for rare archive shows, sometimes even going so far as to track down missing videotapes. A couple of examples:
- The Arthur Haynes Show: Haynes was a huge star in the 50s and 60s, with a popular sketch show written by Johnny Speight, yet after his untimely death in 1966 he was almost forgotten about until surviving episodes from his shows began to be released in 2011.
- The Strange World of Gurney Slade was a surreal 1960 series starring singer/actor Anthony Newley. It seems to have been too surreal for mass appeal, and it wasn't until 2011 that modern audiences got a chance to view it on DVD and judge for themselves.
A year and a half after Nickelodeon pulled reruns of Nick Arcade in 1997, the show made it to the Nick GaS lineup. However, 20 episodes were removed from the rotation for no specific reason. Fans have speculated that those episodes contained music videos, and Nickelodeon didn't clear (or didn't feel like clearing) the rights to each one. Of the missing episodes that turned up in the interim, each one featured a music video. The series as a whole met this fate after GaS went off the air until 2021 when the entire run made its way to Paramount+. As it turned out, every episode omitted from GaS had a music video as featured in the video puzzles "Hyper Channels" and "Video Repairman". No Season 2 episodes with the "Video Repairman" puzzle ever aired on GaS.
The first three seasons of Night Court were released as conventionally manufactured DVD sets between 2005 and 2010. Seasons 4-9 received Warner Archive MOD sets from 2011 to 2013, with a complete series box set not to manifest until 2023, after season 1 of the revival had aired.
The Nosey video service on Android and Google Play has managed to resurrect a large number of episodes of syndicated shows that had not been seen on television for years, including Maury, Jerry Springer, Family Feud, The Steve Wilkos Show and Cheaters. The downside is that because it's the only legal way to watch said episodes, it is prone to advertisement interruption. However, if you can ignore ads, then it shouldn't be much of a problem.
Season 3 of Once and Again is not available on DVD thanks to music licensing issues. Fortunately, Kyle Eiffel kept circulating the tapes and the season is available on YouTube.
Out of the Box only had two episodes released to VHS (with one of them also getting a DVD release). Disney+ added the full series (save for three episodes pulled from reruns) in November of 2019.
Parker Lewis Can't Lose took its sweet time to move onto DVD, mostly due to music licensing issues, but it's out now.
Perfect Strangers had a single box set of its first and second seasons released in February 2008, but no further seasons materialized afterward. The reason being, you guessed it: music rights. Apparently there were some rather high costs to clear the many popular songs sung by Bronson Pinchot and Mark Linn-Baker (usually a cappella) throughout the series. The fact that it had rarely been in syndication since its original run didn’t help to speed things along, nor did it make “circulating the tapes” of the series any easier. However, a “dance of joy” was done In 2017, when Warner Archive announced that the clearance issues had been resolved, and that the rest of the series would in fact be released on DVD. In March of 2018, after TEN YEARS AND ONE MONTH in limbo, the complete third season was finally released, with the remaining seasons quickly following after. The entire series is also now available on Hulu and on other streaming platforms in high definition.
Police Woman: The first season of this 1970s Angie Dickinson crime drama was released on DVD in 2006. Five years passed before Season 2 was released, and Season 3 had to wait another 6 years before its DVD release. The 4th and final season was released in 2018.
Under Disney, Power Rangers got screwed over with only some episodes (usually from the start of the season) ever getting DVD releases and just about every season, bar the recut of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, pulled out of airing. After Saban reclaimed the franchise from the Mouse House, MMPR was streamed in its original form one episode a day on the official website in early 2011 as a lead-up to Power Rangers Samurai and the entire franchise is available on Netflix starting June 15, 2011, alongside related Saban shows Beetleborgs and VR Troopers.
- And now, in March of 2012, Saban inked a deal with Shout! Factory to release all 700 episodes from Mighty Morphin all the way to Power Rangers RPM on DVD.
- They also made sure to release current series on DVD via Lionsgate ensuring that this doesn't happen again for the time being, however this is almost played straight with Super Samurai's Halloween episode, Trickster Treat which is only available on Shout Factory’s expensive Limited edition ^note. Legacy set.
Before Anchor Bay released the eight episodes of Profit onto DVD—four of which hadn't even seen broadcast in the USA—the show's creator circulated the tapes/DVDs himself! And the Anchor Bay set is now out of print so fans are still having to circulate the tapes.
Spike Milligan's sketch series Q5 debuted in March 1969, and was a big influence on Monty Python's Flying Circus; thanks to Milligan's highly fractious relationship with The BBC, Q6 didn't follow until 1975, with Q7, Q8, Q9, and There's a Lot of It About hitting the airwaves between 1977 and 1982. Said fractious relationship scuppered the BBC's inclination to show reruns; the most readily circulating fan copies of the series were ripped from VHS recordings of Australian broadcasts from the 1980s (and in some cases, the 1970s). Finally, in November 2016, the three surviving episodes of Q5^note and the full series of Q6 through Q9 were released in two DVD collections.
Red Dwarf took so long to appear on DVD that Buffy the Vampire Slayer made jokes about it (although a two-series-a-year blast from 2002 resolved that one eventually^note). Buffy itself was out in Region 2 long before Region 1 got a release.
It took until 2010 for The Red Green Show to get a DVD release. Before then, the only consolation was a 48-episode Stuffed & Mounted set with scattered episodes from the first ten seasons (except 2). Keep in mind the show ran from 1991 to 2006.
The full run of Remington Steele has been released, albeit with many edits to the soundtrack, most noticeably in the episodes "Steele Trying" (in which the entire soundtrack of Tony Bennett songs has been replaced) and "Steele on the Air" (in which Laura Holt is seen driving and singing along to the radio; Laura is singing "Girls Just Want to Have Fun", but the radio is playing something else).
Rentaghost: Only Season 1 has been released on DVD, and only very briefly. The other series are unlikely to see release any time soon due to contractual disputes with the surviving cast members and rights issues surrounding the music clips used in the series... until Rare-Tv-On-DVD has the complete series on DVD on 2020.
Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In: The series was seen again on Decades after Trio left the airwaves 12 years earlier. Also Timelife released the entire series on DVD where previous releases were only a selected number of episodes.
- It should also be known that both Decades and the DVD release were the 1st time the 6th and final season were seen since they last aired during the show's run. It's been suggested that the reason why the last season was never seen until recently is due to how bad it is which is why the show ended its run.
For a long time, Saludos, an 80's PBS series like Sesame Street that taught children Spanish, was very hard to find. You can now find it in high quality on this website.
Scarlett, the 1994 miniseries adapting the official sequel to Gone with the Wind, was one of the most sought-after TV titles until Mill Creek Entertainment produced a new DVD in 2017.
In 2019, the Direct to Video Sesame Street special Elmo's Potty Time went out of print because of distribution of Sesame Street titles switching hands to Shout Factory. Thankfully, the special saw a re-release by that company in 2022, but in an updated format with new segments about routines such as bath time and bedtime.
She-Wolf of London ... finally released after many years in February 2010 (Region 1), according to Amazon.
Small Wonder: Shout! Factory released Season 1 to retail stores on Region 1 DVD in February 2010. Season 2 was released directly to fans in June 2010.
Reruns of Soul Train started in November 2009 on BET's rebranded Centric network, with DVD sets available from Time-Life. Selected segments are also available through Comcast On-Demand.
The Starlost (1973), based on a story by Harlan Ellison (and later Screwed by the Network), finally got a full-series Region 1 DVD release in 2008.
The State had been released on iTunes, but all of the music had to be pulled for rights issues. Most of it was replaced with just close enough soundalikes, but on at least one sketch all of the audio had to be completely redone due to the lack of original masters, using looped actors' dialogue, fake Marvin Gaye music, and canned laughter. (Eventually) averted. Viacom finally got all the rights to every episode settled (mostly by replacing the original music)... and then decided not to release it on DVD anyway. Thankfully, campaigning by the show's stars managed to convince them otherwise, and a complete series box set is now available. Only one short segment had to be cut because characters were singing a Pearl Jam song that could not be cleared. Still, at least it got here before Daria.
Step by Step only had one single DVD release by Warner Bros., which went out of stock. It did air in the morning on ABC Family until the channel dropped the show from its schedule when The New '10s started to roll in. The Hub acquired syndication rights to the show in 2012 but dropped it after its change to Discovery Family in 2014. Years later, Hulu signed a contract with ABC to stream a few programs from its TGIF library (the Miller-Boyett library—Family Matters, Full House, and Perfect Strangers, Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, Boy Meets World, Dinosaurs and Home Improvement), and Step by Step came along with them. Finally, in 2018, the show's first season was released through the Warner Archive, and as of April 21, 2020, all seven seasons have been released on DVD.
In February 2011, The Paley Center for Media in New York, NY announced that it had received a verified copy of the CBS broadcast of Super Bowl I, donated to the Center in exchange for having it restored and archived. It was thought that there were no existing copies of either the CBS or NBC broadcast^note. The owner reportedly offered the tape directly to the NFL: they first tried to assert its exclusive copyright to claim the tape, then offered $30,000 for the tape (most experts say the tape is worth at least $1 million). It's assumed it is only a matter of time before the tape (which is missing a chunk of the third quarter and the entire halftime) is broadcast publicly.
T-Bag seasons 1-3 are available on DVD, but seasons 4-9 are unavailable.
Tenspeed and Brown Shoe, a short-lived, lighthearted detective show from 1980 that teamed up Ben Vereen and Jeff Goldblum (notable for being the latter's first starring role in any medium), had enough interest that Mill Creek Entertainment brought out a box set in 2010...but it didn't include the Pilot Movie because it couldn't license the rights to that from CBS^note. CBS DVD released the pilot movie as a standalone DVD release in 2015, meaning the entire series made it to disc in Region 1 (Germany received a complete box set). While those releases are out of print, Shout! Factory at least acquired the rights to the regular episodes in 2020; they are now available on the free-with-ads streaming service Tubi.
thirtysomething was this for about two decades.
The Tonight Show, hosted by Conan O'Brien...and nearly everything he did with the network for almost a decade, including the entire run of Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Following the whole debacle in 2009-10, NBC had scrubbed nearly all evidence that Conan has ever been employed by the network — even going so far as to replace his picture on the famous Rockefeller Plaza mural with Jay Leno. Prior to that, his Late Night run did yield two official DVD releases: the 2003 10th Anniversary Special and a Triumph the Insult Comic Dog best-of compilation. However, in May 2018, with most of the people responsible for the debacle at NBC gone, it was reported that Conan, in partnership with TBS and NBC, would be launching a subscription service in January 2019 headlining his entire late-night career, including his Tonight Show and Late Night runs, marking the first time in over 8 years any footage of Conan during his NBC tenure would be officially re-released.
Tutti Frutti, a 1987 six-part comedy-drama about an aging Scottish rock band starring Robbie Coltrane, Emma Thompson, and Richard Wilson, was unavailable to purchase for more than twenty years, allegedly due to copyright issues over a slightly reworded version of the title song (Coltraine sings "here's the rub, she makes me sleep in a tub"). These were finally settled and the DVD was released in 2009.
After years of being forgotten in its (small) fanbase's memory, Van-Pires of all series actually got a DVD release in 2007.
The Voyage of the Mimi, a 1980s educational drama about the titular ship and its crew starring a very young Ben Affleck as the ship captain's grandson, seems to be an almost entirely forgotten program, in spite of it being Affleck's first claim to fame. Copies exist on YouTube, at the very least.
The first season of War of the Worlds (1988) was only released on DVD after 15 years of waiting and pleading by its small fanbase. It took another five years to get the second (and final season) on the format as well. Talk about a long wait!
The Very Best of WCW Monday Nitro has saved some of WCW. WWE Network now hosts every WCW pay-per-view from the earliest Jim Crockett Promotions Starrcades up to Greed in 2001, and also hosts the complete run of Nitro and is in the process of uploading the salvageable footage from episodes of Thunder.
For years, the only episodes of the US Whose Line Is It Anyway? released on DVD were the first season and a "Best Of" compilation; with ABC Family's reruns tapering off, there was no legal way to watch the other 100+ episodes. After The CW revived the show in 2013, they put up the new episodes for streaming on their website, as expected...and then, in 2015, put up every single episode of the first American run on their CW Seed website, with the ABC episodes labeled as "Whose Line Classic."
Witchblade, released but with music rights problems.
The Wonder Years was another popular TV series whose DVD release was held up by music licensing issues. Time-Life finally cleared most of the music rights issues and released the complete series on DVD in late 2014.
The World War II documentaries by Maurice De Wilde were very well archived for research purposes, but the BRT still refused to let them air publicly. It turns out that this man had such a loyal fanbase that one of them decided to archive all Belgian documentaries that had been made about the war.
Nickelodeon pulled The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss less than three years after it first aired. It was available on Hulu at one point, but was pulled as well. The whole series can still be seen on Prime Video and the Roku Family Channel, and was released only in Australia by Shock Entertainment.
You Can't Do That on Television, which had only one known home video release, was added to Paramount+ on March 24, 2021.

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