Keep Circulating the Tapes/Live-Action TV: Difference between revisions

== Trope Namer ==

''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]'' is the [[Trope Namer]]. The phrase "keep circulating the tapes" was a line in the credits from Seasons 1-4, inserted to give a winking consent to sharing tapes with others in order to popularize the show; it was removed in Season 5 for many of the legal reasons this entry concerns itself with. During the show's run, the hosts would give a [[Shout-Out]] to fans in places where the series wasn't aired (including a group of tape-sharing aficionados in Paris, France during the third season). Although many of the movies shown fall into the [[Missing Episode]] category and are unlikely to see wide release due to copyright issues, a fair number are available for purchase legally. In this case, the problem is the reproduction rights to the movies since nobody expected there to be such a market for home recordings down the line, so movie rights were only secured for the show's on-air run. Episodes are released on DVD as the rights issues are ironed out. Many episodes were uploaded by Best Brains themselves to Google Video - many others are uploaded to [[YouTube]] at random, with some having been pulled by NBC Universal.<br /><br />One of the creators has actually said "Keep circulating ''some'' of the tapes," meaning fans should buy the episodes available on DVD, but the others are fair game...which is what most of the dedicated fans do anyway. Special mention should be given to ''The Amazing Colossal Man'' and ''Godzilla vs. Megalon'', released but quickly withdrawn due to rights issues.

 

== ABC Television ==

* ''[[Cupid]]'': The original, not the remake. Poor copies can be found and enjoyed, but not even the remake seems to have prompted anyone to put it on DVD.

* ''[[Happy Days]]'': While the entire series has been rerun endlessly for the past 30 years in syndication, only four seasons have – to date – been issued on DVD. Those that have replace the original 1950s rock songs with generic 50s music (because of copyright/royalty issues). If you don't want generic music, you can always try The Hub and INSP.

* Aside from a few VHS releases in the 1990s, the [[Land of the Lost 1991|1991 remake]] of ''[[Land of the Lost (TV series)|Land of the Lost]]'' has yet to see an official DVD release. Still, there's bootleg DVD sets, torrents, and [[YouTube]].

* ''[[Less Than Perfect]]'' had Seasons 1-2 released on DVD, but not 3-4. There ''is'' a bootleg DVD of the entire series (including the Season 4 episodes unaired in the U.S.), but it's over $100 and there don't appear to be any online sources. So fans are out of luck for now.

* ''[[Have I Got News for You]]'' has a compilation DVD covering the first ''[[Long Runners|twenty-three series]]'' (albeit with some extras including a commentary the whole way through with Paul Merton and Ian Hislop, which isn't bad at all for a TV DVD from 2002). Then there's another compilation covering just the next year, but with four extended complete episodes including a double-length version of the first [[Boris Johnson]]-hosted one and some more special features, and a third compilation of the two years after that, with a single but lengthy behind-the-scenes special feature and a nearly ''triple''-length version of the second Boris episode. If they won't put out more than five complete episodes, [[Hilarious Outtakes|they at least know the way to our hearts]]. (And yes, this show too can be found online in its entirety.)

** The same applies to other topical panel shows such as ''[[Mock the Week]]'' and ''8 out of 10 Cats'' (who have similar releases compiling highlights and [[Too Hot for TV]] material).

* ''[[The Phantom of the Opera]]: Behind the Mask'' is an excellent 2006 documentary on the original London production of [[Andrew Lloyd Webber]]'s musical (which had just hit its 20th anniversary). It features interviews with many of the original cast members, creative team, and otherwise on top of vintage rehearsal, show, and news footage, and yet is unavailable on video. In the U.S., it occasionally airs on the cable channel Ovation.

* ''[[QI]]'' is available on DVD in the UK (only Series 1-3, unfortunately), but due to copyright issues for the images they use it will never be shown or released elsewhere. One estimate puts the international image rights for one episode at over £10,000.

* ''Emergency Vets'' was a popular reality/medical series on [[Animal Planet]] that ran from 1998 to 2002 with a follow-up episode in 2005 and a special in 2006. There has never been official video/DVD release of any of it. Very few full episodes exist online.

** Later, a spin-off show, ''E-Vet Interns'', started airing in 2007. It lasted more than a whole season, with only three episodes made in the second season before production stopped. It hasn't been released either.

* ''[[Series/Monster House|Monster House]]'' (no, not [[Monster House|that one]]) vanished off both the Discovery Channel and the Internet with little fanfare and hasn't been heard from since. Which is puzzling, given that its older-sibling series ''Monster Garage'' is available.

 

** That Disney fails to acknowledge its existance is interesting considering that on its original airing it was introduced by none other than Michael Eisner himself with the characters in roleplay (including a guest appearance by Mickey Mouse).

* ''[[Flash Forward]]'' (not the 2009 ABC show), which starred a pre-''[[Firefly]]'' and ''[[Space Cases]]'' Jewel Staite and Ben Foster, and featured a few guest appearances from Ryan Gosling. Not only did the Disney Channel stop rerunning episodes around 2001 when ''[[Lizzie McGuire]]'' took off, it's nigh impossible to find any clips of it anywhere online.

* ''[[Johnny and the Sprites]]'', a puppet/live-action hybrid featuring [[Avenue Q|John Tartaglia]], only ever received one DVD release and one music album. It still airs in some non-U.S. markets, but has been off-air in the U.S. for a couple years now.

* ''[[Kids Incorporated]]'' on DVD would be a fan's ''nightmare'' — '''every single song''' (barring the original ones) would have to be cut; that said, since all the songs are performed by the kids and aren't the original recordings of the songs, so it'll be easier to clear rights. There's one other issue, though — the rights are split between MGM (the show itself), Disney (holders of the physical tapes), and 20th Century Fox (MGM's DVD distributor).

* ''[[So Weird]]''.

* ''[[Lizzie McGuire]]'' did get a season box set release, albeit ''after'' its target demographic forgot about it.

 

== FOX ==

* Interestingly, despite its immense popularity and a surge of nostalgia thanks to old fans reaching their twenties, ''[[Power Rangers]]'' DVD releases are very hit or miss. They did have them for a while, usually five seperate DVD's of five episodes each (covering 25 episodes of a season that stretched anywhere from 32 to 40 episodes.) Full season releases never happened outside of Europe (Germany and the UK, to be specific). All 700+ episodes are available on Netflix, however.

** It has been recently announced however that Shout! Factory purchased the rights to create DVD season sets for the first 17 seasons (Mighty Morphin through RPM) and possibly the Mighty Morphin recut in the US.

* ''[[Masked Rider|Saban's Masked Rider]]'' has had very few episodes released on DVD. What's surprising, though, is the lack of online availability. For a series that debuted in the mid-90s and was a spin-off of the phenomenally popular ''Power Rangers'', the fact that a good chunk of it has only recently seen widespread circulation is unbelievable.

* ''[[So You Think You Can Dance]]''. The legal issues surrounding the music involved make a DVD release next to impossible. Fortunately, most of the individual dances, if not full episodes, can be found on [[YouTube]].

* ''[[Globo Loco]]'', a childrens game show from CITV, regarded as much as to be nominated for the 'Best Kids Entertainment Show' award. There's one episode on Youtube from its second series and a snippet or two, but that's it.

* ''[[Knightmare]]'' came to an abrupt end in 1994, and probably will never see the light of day again. A terrible shame, given how much fun it was and how important it was for its pioneering use of [[Chroma Key]] and virtual-reality technology. It reran on Sci-Fi Channel (UK) during the 1990s after it went off-air from CITV, and on Challenge TV in the early 2000s. It has never been released on video or DVD, except illegally.

* ''[[Police Stop]]'', which kicked off the police genre in [[The Nineties]], was a VHS-only release between 1993-1995, and then aired on television 1996-2002, before returning on [[ITV 4]] in 2008. Now, you can't get it '''at all''' unless you get the first episode via illegal downloading. Old worn VHS tapes can be found on eBay, but no digital copies.

 

== MTV ==

* ''[[Human Giant]]'' got a DVD release for Season 1, but Season 2 has yet to be released. It stopped being re-run quite some time ago and season 3 is in [[Development Hell]], so the only way to watch it ''at all'' is the "sneak peek" bits on the season 1 DVD. You'd think a series that stars a veritable [[All-Star Cast]] of comedians would be a little higher up in the release queue.

 

 

* ''[[Saturday Night Live]]''. Season sets finally saw the light of day in 2009, with the music rights sorted out for each episode to air uncut. However, the boxsets have stalled at Season 5 (with no word on how they'll handle the next couple of seasons, which constitute [[Old Shame]] on NBC's behalf) and Lionsgate released a (now sadly out-of-print) massive compilation of the best musical performances that originally aired as a quartet of specials for the show's 25th Anniversery back in 1999.

** Every episode of every season is currently available to "Watch Instantly" on Netflix. It'll cost you at least eight bucks a month, but that's a small price considering the entire set would cost hundreds of dollars anyway.

* Seasons 3-6 of ''[[Third Watch]]''.

* If you're looking for a DVD of most of the [[NBC]]'s ''TNBC'' Saturday Morning lineup, you're going to be waiting awhile. While ''[[Saved by the Bell]]'' and ''[[California Dreams]]'' eventually got releases, ''Hang Time'', ''City Guys'' and several others haven't. (It doesn't help that most of the shows were canned after one season.)

 

== Nickelodeon ==

** Its spinoff, ''[[Kenan and Kel]]'', also hasn't seen an official video release yet.

* [[Animorphs (TV series)|Animorphs]] only had 12 episodes released on VHS, and nothing else. Fans have taken to uploading the rest of the series online, even though most consider it a bad show.

* ''[[Square One TV]]''

** Same for ''[[3-2-1 Contact]]''. Broadcasters actually encouraged taping of the show. A handful of episodes were commercially released on VHS, but they're [[Crack is Cheaper|very expensive]] now. Worse, the first season is older than VHS, so many of its episodes, especially those that weren't rebroadcast later, have been [[Missing Episode|lost forever]].

* ''[[Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?]]?'', and all of the original tunes by Rockapella that its episodes included. Ditto its successor series ''[[Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?]]?''

* ''WonderWorks'' was a joint PBS/Disney series that created short made-for-TV movies based on acclaimed children's books, such as ''Jacob Have I Loved'', ''Bridge to Terebithia'', and ''The Hoboken Chicken Emergency''. It also brought several BBC miniseries adaptations of classic kidlit to the U.S. Despite most of the films seeing release on VHS (some were also fixtures of [[The Disney Channel]] in [[The Eighties]], such as ''The Boy Who Loved Trolls'' and ''How to Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days''), only a few have seen the light of day on DVD, and never under the ''WonderWorks'' banner. (These include the first two titles mentioned and the BBC adaptations of ''A Little Princess'' and ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]''.)

* The YTV series ''Catwalk'', about a group of young adults trying to establish themselves as a musical group. The show was notable for starring a pre-''[[Party of Five]]'' Neve Campbell, and the episodes dealt with mature subject matter and themes, and was very progressive for its time. Despite the success of the first season, the show was cancelled in 1994, and half the episodes were never broadcast. It's never been released on DVD, likely due to a lawsuit arising between the show and a Connecticut-based band (also named Catwalk) regarding the name of the show.

* ''[[wikipedia:Maniac Mansion (TV series)|Maniac Mansion]]'', the Canadian television spinoff of the Lucasarts game of the same name, hasn't been seen in North America since it stopped airing in syndication in Canada on YTV in 2002. Despite the level of critical acclaim the series received when it first debuted, the fourth-wall breaking humor, and a cast made up of alumni from the Second City Theatre Company, none of the three seasons have ever been released in their entirety on DVD (two Season 1 episodes were released on VHS more than a decade ago). You can find the complete series through torrents.

 

== Soap Operas ==

* Australian company Shock Entertainment are bucking the trend by actually beginning to put [[Neighbours]] to DVD - so far, DVD releases have been of the type that are collections of special episodes, but on April 4 2012 Shock released "Neighbours: From the Beginning Vol 1" which comprises the first 56 episodes (of nearly 6500 to date). Vol 2 is expected in November 2012, and will probably be of a similar length.

 

== Other ==

* There have been Best Of compilations of ''[[American Bandstand]]'' <ref>(and good luck finding a decent copy these days)</ref>, ''The Midnight Special'', ''Don Kirshner's Rock Concert'', and ''Soul Train''...but aside from the last show being rerun on Centric, seeing full-season releases or full-show reruns doesn't seem to be in the cards, mostly because of the cost and effort involved in securing the rights of musical and (in ''Midnight'' and ''Concert'''s cases) stand-up comedy performances.

* Mostly due to the fact it was a local (Seattle) show and the station that created it is now part of a larger station group, ''[[Almost Live]]!'' has also never seen the light of a DVD box set...despite the fact that you could probably convince half the city to [[Must Have Caffeine|give up espresso for a month just to get one]]. For those outside Seattle, ''Almost Live'' was what established "Bill Nye the Science Guy", and his ''Almost Live'' colleagues made appearances on the show. Also '''well''' worth it to see the "Science Guy" in some amusing but definitely-not-for-kids stuff like "The Street Walking Lawyers of Aurora Ave" and "Ree-bok Cross-dressers".

* ''[[Baywatch]]'' only had the first three syndicated seasons (1991-1994) released on DVD in America, and the "River of No Return" two-parter wasn't included in the season 2 set because it got a standalone release which has long been discontinued. The sets featured music edits too (including the iconic theme song!). [[Germans Love David Hasselhoff|The entire series got released in Germany, though.]]

* ''[[Young Blades]]'' has not been released on DVD, which is unsurprising due to its lack of popularity and its being on PAX. There are a few unofficial DVD copies out there, however: after one fan lost all her taped episodes during Hurricane Katrina, she wrote to the production company and they sold her all the episodes on DVD, '''including missing scenes'''. Several other fans followed her example.