Genius Products and Sesame Workshop Announce Distribution/Co-Production Agreement

[Drtooth]

Ohhh geezz, some members are GONNA ask "whats gonna happen with Sesame Street Old School Vol 2 and 3 etc?" lol

uhhhhh... That is a major concern, actually. If this means that old school is just a one volume wonder, it is a smack in the face to the fans who pressured and pleaded with SW till they finally got them.

Sony Wonder has been doing great things with the license, dispite the fact they could have easily doubled or tripled up importing VHS's to DVD format (I.e. they could have put Sing Yourself silly and Sing Yourself Sillier at the Movies on one $10 disk.) If we wind up losing the prospect of more old school related sets, it will be terrible.

And does this mean SW is running out of money? I thought the TMX Elmo was doing well...

 

[minor muppetz]

Does anybody know when Sony Wonder's contract to release Sesame Street DVDs and CDs ends? I know that the TV Fun Packs were released today, though I didn't see them in stores, and I suspect that Sony Wonder released them. I also hope that this doesn't affect the chances of having new Sesame Street DVDs featuring material with Kermit the Frog. Does anybody know how much controll Sesame Workshop has over it's home video releases?

 

[minor muppetz]

I wonder if all current releases will suddenly go out of print, or if Sony will be allowed to continue releasing certain DVDs up until a certain point, or if the current releases will continue to be released but with different labels and logos on the packaging.

 

[MelissaY1]

I don't know the details of this deal, but I can tell you I work for a photo archive here in NYC, and one of our clients used to be Genius. Now that they've gone big time, they no longer use our services...I would've LOVED to have worked on upcoming Sesame DVDs as I work in the DVD division of my company. Not meant to be I guess...

 

[TotallySpiesFan]

I hope Genius would take over rights to various direct-to-video compilations and "Sesame Street Old School" episodes owned by Sesame Workshop.

 

[Traveling Matt]

Re: Sony Wonder goes under...

I think this explains Sesame Workshop's deal with Genius. Bad news for Sony Wonder:

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=7039

 

[ISNorden]

In the words of Snuffy: "Oh, dear!"

I'm praying that this deal with Genius doesn't put the kibosh on any future "Old School" DVD releases.

 

[Ilikemuppets]

I'm just going to do like it said and "stay tuned".

 

[anytimepally]

I'm praying that this deal with Genius doesn't put the kibosh on any future "Old School" DVD releases.

I don't think this will happen.. though it is a co-production & distribution deal, the co-production aspects will undoubtedly focus mainly on new productions rather than producing dvds of old ones.. much of the work on the Old School DVDs would have been done by Sesame Workshop itself and this seems to me like a simple change in distributors, inasmuch as the old school DVDs are concerned, and not a complete overhaul of productions, so I would expect that if they were going to release a volume 2 at all, that we'll still see it.. it may take a little longer, as they settle in with the new distributor, but we'll get it eventually

 

[minor muppetz]

I don't think this will happen.. though it is a co-production & distribution deal, the co-production aspects will undoubtedly focus mainly on new productions rather than producing dvds of old ones.. much of the work on the Old School DVDs would have been done by Sesame Workshop itself and this seems to me like a simple change in distributors, inasmuch as the old school DVDs are concerned, and not a complete overhaul of productions, so I would expect that if they were going to release a volume 2 at all, that we'll still see it.. it may take a little longer, as they settle in with the new distributor, but we'll get it eventually

By saying "The co-production aspects will undoubtedly focus mainly on new productions rather than producing DVDs of ood ones...", are you saying that you think that most of the newer DVDs will be mostly new material, as opposed to having inserts included with a newly-produced linking plot? It seems to me like a lot of the most recent DVD releases from Sony were 100% new material (though I have only seen a handful of releases from the last three years).