Now that all Lucy fans have their DVD copies of the complete series of "I Love Lucy" as well as "The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour", how can we get Lucille Ball's other TV Series released on DVD?
You can help out by voting for the release of the remaining series, The Lucy Show, Here's Lucy, and Life With Lucy at TV Shows on DVD. Other sites to make your voice heard is the Internet Movie Database and Sitcoms Online.
Although, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr. are on the Board of The Lucy-Desi Center and Museum in Jamestown, NY they do not own the rights to any of these shows and can do very little for their release.
It is only you - the fans - that can make your voices heard by continually petitioning for their release. Currently Paramount Home Entertainment owns the rights to all the remaining TV series.
According to TV Shows on DVD, The Lucy Show (1962) the DVD rights are owned/licensed by BCI Eclipse and Paramount Home Video. BCI Eclipse has only released 30 Public Domain shows from The Lucy Show in a variety of combinations - but they are still only the same 30 episodes and not the complete series.
Here's Lucy (1968) is owned/licensed by Paramount Home Video and Shout! Factory. The only release by Shout Factory is the "Best Loved Episodes" DVD which contains 24 episodes of the series and not the complete show.
Life With Lucy (1986) is owned/licensed by Paramount Home Video. No official DVD has been released to the retail market on this series. The Lucy-Desi Center does have all the original releases of this show as they were donated to them by Aaron Spelling who produced the show. There are only 13 episodes filmed and only 8 of them made it on air. You can find the complete series from individuals that have taped the show back in the 80s and have made copies onto DVD format but alot of these shows are not the best of quality. If you are a huge Lucy fan, this may not matter much - contact "Everything Lucy" on how you may be able to obtain copies of this series on DVD.
The voting stats for each of the shows as reported by TV Shows on DVD as of this story (June 5th) are:
The Lucy Show
Unreleased Rank: 315th
Overall Rank: 699th
Season Set: 692 (98%)
Best of: 129 (18%)
Individual Episodes: 103 (15%)
Total Number of Voters: 703
Here's Lucy
Unreleased Rank: 452nd
Overall Rank: 912nd
Season Set: 522 (97%)
Best of: 104 (19%)
Individual Episodes: 78 (15%)
Total Number of Voters: 537
Life With Lucy
Unreleased Rank: 753rd
Overall Rank: 1299th
Season Set: 361 (99%)
Best of: 78 (21%)
Individual Episodes: 74 (20%)
Total Number of Voters: 366
As you can see from the number of voters, it doesn't look like many Lucy fans are voting for these shows. I don't believe it's because we aren't passionate, it's just that the web site may not be known or is ranking well in search engines. So, now that you do know - register with TV Shows on DVD and let your voices be heard!
You may also contact Paramount Home Entertainment, which was previously known as Paramount Home Video. Maybe if they hear from enough Lucy fans, they will start to consider releasing these remaining series on DVD.
Let's work together and get these remaining Lucille Ball TV shows out to the retail market!
Actually "Here's Lucy" is distributed by Paul Brownstein -- not Paramount. He doesn't seem to want anything to do with the rest of Lucy's titles, considering he has had distribution rights to HL and the Lucille Ball Specials for quite sometime now. HL is owned by Lucie Arnaz and Desi Jr though. The TV distribution rights are through Warner Brothers. Shout Factory doesn't own them at all, they had to go through Brownstein to get them released.
ReplyDeleteIf you would like to write to CBS go to www.TheLucyShowDVD.com for contact information.