adam12 Season 2 dvd in September 30,2008

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=9730

THANK YOU!! This and "Dragnet" have been at the top of my most wanted abandoned titles, and I always wondered why Universal after licensing so many unstarted titles to independents, couldn't start doing likewise with so many of their abandoned ones.

This is the list of currently stalled Universal shows

Baretta (S1 released back in 2002!)
Leave It To Beaver
Dragnet
Night Gallery (may be restarted in October)
McCloud (S1 botched with combined episodes instead of original 60 minute ones)
McMillan And Wife
Kojak
Quincy M.E.
Simon And Simon
Amazing Stories
Columbo (ABC revival, stalled after one release)

"Baa Baa Black Sheep" and "Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew" were also stalled but got a second release last summer. Both series need just one more release to be finished, but that's uncertain at this point. I do expect Universal to keep releasing the rest of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "Emergency!" on the slow as molasses once a year timetable they've been doing with them.

I bought the entire series of A-12 from I-Offer about 2 years ago. I guess Universal will just be up the creek as for getting money from me. They shouldn't have jerked around for 3+ years between dates. That is so stupid of them. I have watched A-12 and Dragnet 1968 on line at www.hulu.com though and enjoyed them there. What's a real shame is that the bootleg set of A-12 that I bought plays better than the legit set of Season One from Universal. That one won't even read in my dvd player anymore and when it did play it would freeze constantly and just lock up. Universal can go jump in the creek as far as I am concerned.

I just hope that last Sunday's fire which destroyed all of Universal's old video masters that they use for their DVD releases of TV shows (as well as what they loan out to other labels) doesn't end up derailing the "Adam-12" release, and that Shout! already had possession of the elements, or could get a duplicate set from elsewhere. In the meantime, I took the step of transferring 26 uncut S2-7 episodes from Columbia House VHS releases of a decade ago to DVD (couldn't transfer the one where the "Emergency" cast appeared alas). Even though I have the Deja boot set, the audio is really low and I can only hear fine when playing those on my portable DVD player with headphones, so this transfer job on better quality episodes was a must with me.

I emailed Gord of Tvshowsondvd.com here what he said

They were digital copies, and there were backups elsewhere, so it won't affect anything :D


also here what Mr. Ron Meyer CEO of Universial studio said on CNN.com website

"Fortunately, nothing irreplaceable was lost," Meyer said. "The video library was affected and damaged, but our main vault of our motion picture negatives was not."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/01/studio.fire/

I e-mailed Gord too and got the same reply (he said "shouldn't affect" though) but the next day Brian Ward at Shout said that "We're working with the folks over at Universal to determine what was lost in regards to our future releases. So far, you're right that nothing was permanently lost. But we will need to re-evaluate our titles, once we know what was affected. I don't think we'll really know that for some time."

So until we see the official announcement from them that the release is still on, I won't consider it a done deal yet. And Meyer's comment was really worthless from a TV on DVD standpoint since Universal never uses the negatives for new releases, whether they do it themselves or license them out ("Battlestar Galactica" in 2003 I think was the only vintage title remastered from the original negatives).

Have you try contact Universal Home Video at

http://www.universalstudios.com/contact_form.php?email_id=10

I found a news article in on latimes newspaper at

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-universal4-2008jun04,0,5996006.story

Universal home video would have nothing helpful to offer (especially since this isn't even going to be a title they're doing themselves). I've read the article and similar ones and this gets back to another reason why there should be concern because yes, there probably are duplicates out there, but the question is, would Universal management give priority to getting duplicates assembled for new DVD releases? Especially since they're also going to have a lot of headaches making new 35mm prints of classic movies to replace what was lost there.

I know our ability to one day see "Adam-12" on DVD and other Universal titles is not gone forever. It's mostly a matter of timing. What I *do* think you can really forget about seeing on DVD are a lot of lesser Universal titles that have not been on cable for a decade or so and hence likely do not have duplicate video masters out there.