DVD Series of every Sesame Street episode ever made

[Mark The Shark]

Sorry to drag up an old thread...

Hopefully my ideas will make some sense ... the only purpose I see for a Sesame Street episode DVD project is to raise MORE money for PBS, Sesame Workshop, or Noggin, or whatever.

The way I picture it, there would be a catalogue that lists each episode, along with its description/lessons. The customer would fill out the order form and say which episodes they wanted to see (with a limit of four or five per order). No one would be crazy enough to want to see ALL 4000+ of them, so they'd just pick out the ones they thought looked the most interesting (Big Bird's Insomnia, SS Goes To Prison, etc.), or the ones that would be most beneficial to their family (#1839), or the ones they remember most, and of which they want to relive their memories.

The episode DVDs would be treated with care like food at a (good) restaurant ... they wouldn't be made until they were ordered, because no one wants to go to the trouble of making them all at once (see above posts). If the project were treated with the kind of care it deserves, they'd take a shorter time to make the DVDs than A&E did with the FREAKIN' BIOGRAPHY DVD THAT TOOK FOUR FREAKIN' MONTHS TO REACH ME!! .... whew, excuse me, just lettin' off a little steam. Plus, the more orders they get, the more money they'll get, and the more DVDs they'll be able to make and sell, and badda bing! It sounds like I'm going overboard, but hey, I've made SOME sense, haven't I?

Oh, and for the record - I think a single DVD would only fit TWO SS episodes.

I used to get amused (but now only get annoyed) by people insisting that "Sesame Workshop has to release every Sesame Street episode ever made and every Electric Company episode ever made right now, right? And you agree with me, right? Well, don't you?" as if they want to *fight* me over it. (For the record: Yes, I'd like to have as much of this stuff as I can get my hands on...but I am *grateful* to have what I have now, and I never thought in a million years I'd ever get my hands on *any* of the early episodes from my youth. So I appreciate it.) But in reading the above remarks, it reminded me of Johnny Carson's website, where they do much the same thing as what is described above. You can look up specific "Tonight Show" airdates on a database, or search for certain guests who appeared. There is a long description about how thousands of tapes are stored underground in some sort of cooled environment, and there is no guarantee about what condition a specific master tape is in, or whether a certain show even still exists in the archives. They'll custom-make the tape for you (the last time I checked the site, it was tape, and I don't think they were selling DVDs then, but who knows) and they warn that these shows are complete as aired with commercials, that there is no express or implied license for their use, and that they are copy-protected. They say it could take a long time to get them to you depending on what research is involved in tracking the tape down, and they ask to list alternate choices, etc. and tehy'll get back to you to verify that the show you want is actually in their archives. I don't remember what this all costs, but as I recall, I think it was over $100 for a single episode, and that was on VHS. This is probably the only way they could make the Johnny Carson shows available...licensing all the guests, music, commercials, etc., would be absolutely cost-prohibitive, and I guess doing it this way circumvents a lot of those licensing issues, since they aren't being released to the general public.

So that would be really cool...I don't know if Sesame Workshop has ever or would ever consider something like that (and I have no control over whether they would do it or not), but I thought it was interesting.

Here's the site:

http://www.johnnycarson.com/carson/search/

 

[Lone Wolf]

Isn’t it great that the archive of past posts in these forums go back such a long time? You can come up with some pretty valuable information from just doing a standard search. Here’s what I found on this topic:

(Originally posted by “sstvideo” on 3/4/2003.) :

The agreements between PBS and CTW (now Sesame Workshop) have always stipulated that the Sesame Street shows can not be released in any other media in the US so long as it is playing on PBS. This provides the only logical protection for the PBS audience.

The problem with airing classic Sesame on Noggin was one of rights payments, not tape costs. The Workshop pays the street performers, both human and Muppet, for PBS rights only. Repeating inserts, including all Muppet inserts are "buyouts" for Sesame Street on PBS only. A special exception was granted in the PBS agreement for Noggin's launch. (read between the lines as "less money from PBS for Sesame" )

In order to air on Noggin, which is commercial digital cable, the Nick/SW partnership had to pay every creative person involved their residuals and royalties (and that means EVERYONE...including those playing the "right hand", the composers, musicians, directors, writers, etc. etc.) Luckily, digital cable being a new medium, the residuals were based on number of subscribers.... as subscribers grow, costs expand, to the point where it is no longer either cost effective or educationally effective to air classic Sesame on Noggin any more.

Note: the same is true of the Electric Company....even more so given the stars of that show.

So there you have it – the “official” reason Sesame Street Unpaved has been dropped from Noggin’s programming slot. As best I can tell from sstvideo’s other posts, it sounds likely to me that she is either affiated with Sesame Workshop, or Noggin or PBS in some way, in which case we can safely assume this bit of information comes from a reliable source.

 

[Lone Wolf]

I used to get amused (but now only get annoyed) by people insisting that "Sesame Workshop has to release every Sesame Street episode ever made and every Electric Company episode ever made right now, right?

I am in total agreement.

And I don’t understand this: When Noggin *was* showing Sesame Street Unpaved, fans were complaining: “They’re showing the same 67 episodes over and over again! They need to show MORE!” But it soon became apparent that not only were “they” not going to do this, but in fact were slowly phasing out Unpaved altogether, what was the reaction? These same fans started jumping up and down, kicking and screaming, writing letters and emails, phoning Noggin employees, circulating petitions…just about everything short of forming a lynch mob to try and get it to stay on. Why all the fuss to save something if you weren’t satisfied with it in the first place?

 

[ssetta]

Well, it's not that we weren't satisfied with it. I mean, I kind of liked the shows they picked, but I think they could have added more as well. But I think their rights expired as of January 2004.

 

[Erine81981]

Well, it's not that we weren't satisfied with it. I mean, I kind of liked the shows they picked, but I think they could have added more as well. But I think their rights expired as of January 2004.

I agree w/ Ssetta. I mean they could of shown others other then showing the same ones over and over. I remember seeing it for the first time and when I would record I would either get the same ones. So when they would get over w/ one set of episodes why not show others. Its over now and will never get to see old ones until they bring them to DVD and Videos.

 

[ssetta]

That's IF they bring them to DVD or videos, which I don't think they will.

 

[Ryan]

That's IF they bring them to DVD or videos, which I don't think they will.

Oh, really? You don't think it will happen? Never would have guessed.

 

[BeamlovesBob]

If only we could choose/vote on the Best of Season episodes that would be my favorite choice, but it's been so long since I've seen many of them that I would definitely need to see the full list of episodes with descriptions before I did voting.

They wouldn't lose money making these because I would DEFINITELY buy them...

I have almost no old episodes since I missed out on taping off Noggin before those disappeared

 

[MJTaylor]

I personnally would love to see complete DVD sets of every Sesame Street season, but I guess it is un-feasable. Maybe a better idea is to have just the first appreance of every segment and have it cut from all the other episodes, but in the set have a book or something that tells you what other episodes that the segment i.e. The Allegator King, was used in.

 

[zanimum]

Actually 6 hours of footage can go on a DVD, minimum. I've heard of DVDs with 8 hours, and I'm sure there are ways of compressing it down further.

But with 6 episodes per disc, that's 666 discs (presuming only 4000 episodes). At just $9.98 per disc, which is likely a little low, that's $6653 for the set. More realistic is $19.95 per disc, which brings us to $13300. That still would be cheap for such a specialized collection of television episodes.

Collect them all? I don't think many would.