The Last Newhart

[StusCheesecake]

Does anyone know if The Last Newhart is included in the syndicated package? I've been watching the series on FamNet awaiting the airing of the last episode. Chronologically, it should have been scheduled to air on Monday, April 2, 2012. However, "In The Beginning..." is scheduled for that date.

Between the wait for Fox Video to release the series and now this, I may never see the second greatest finale in TV history again.

[ajgenard]

Originally Posted by StusCheesecake

Between the wait for Fox Video to release the series and now this, I may never see the second greatest finale in TV history again.

I know, isn't it disgusting the way Fox has handled BOTH of Bob Newhart's landmark shows? Pretty sickening to think that 99% of all garbage trotted out as series television is available on DVD, yet the show with one of the greatest finales IN HISTORY won't ever see the light of day. I hope Shout Factory gets hold of the DVD rights and finally brings justice. It took Oprah for Fox to get off their fat asses and release the remaining Mary Tyler Moore seasons. Maybe if Letterman got involved...

[Lisa_Eva]

Originally Posted by ajgenard

I know, isn't it disgusting the way Fox has handled BOTH of Bob Newhart's landmark shows? Pretty sickening to think that 99% of all garbage trotted out as series television is available on DVD, yet the show with one of the greatest finales IN HISTORY won't ever see the light of day. I hope Shout Factory gets hold of the DVD rights and finally brings justice. It took Oprah for Fox to get off their fat asses and release the remaining Mary Tyler Moore seasons. Maybe if Letterman got involved...

Oprah, really? Can you tell us more about that? I also wish that they would finish releasing both shows, especially The Bob Newhart Show. For now, you can watch most if not all of Newhart's finale on Youtube.

[ajgenard]

Here is a great article from The New York Times in 2008 about the long road to DVD release for The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/31/ar...se&oref=slogin

Wanted: Mary Richards, All of Her
By MARK HARRIS
Published: August 29, 2008

FANS of one of the greatest sitcoms in history, you finally have cause to rejoice: Chuckles the Clown is, once again, going to bite the dust, and this time he’s doing it on DVD.

If you’re drawing a blank, you either weren’t watching CBS’s fabled lineup of comedies in the 1970s, or you missed one of the funniest and most groundbreaking episodes of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” a half-hour that boldly went where no sitcom had gone before. It not only killed off a minor character in a freak accident but also explored, with vivid and hilarious accuracy, the WJM news team’s compulsion to make morbid jokes about it. It’s a true before-and-after moment in the history of sitcoms, and one that, amazingly, still isn’t for sale on DVD.

Between 2002 and 2006, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released the first four seasons of the show on DVD, and then ... dead air. Radio silence. And not a word about when, or whether, fans might see the final three seasons. In a marketplace that has made room for all 11 seasons of both “M*A*S*H” and “Frasier,” the untimely interruption of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” at first felt like a temporary anomaly. But as the months turned into years, as the full seven-season run of “The Dukes of Hazzard” became available, and as plans were announced to roll out everything from the complete “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” to, for heaven’s sake, “Jake and the Fatman,” the snubbing of Mary Richards and friends started to seem downright cruel. Consumers of TV on DVD have their wish lists. (If anyone’s listening, some more “Maude” and the complete run of “The PJs” would be nice.) But the full “Mary”? That’s an obligation to pop-cultural history.

What knocked the series off the fast track, according to Steven Feldstein, senior vice president for corporate and marketing communications at 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, was a glutted marketplace. “We looked at the landscape of the TV-to-DVD business and stepped back,” he said. “The other studios were dumping stuff that nobody wanted onto DVD. I mean, ‘What you talkin’ ’bout, Willis?’ Come on. People were dumping everything.”

Frustrated “Mary” fans found one another, communicating on Web sites like Television Without Pity and sitcomsonline.com, and trading information and rumors via review posts on amazon.com. One of them even found Mr. Feldstein’s number and called him. “It was a conversation like you’d expect from a fan of ‘Mary Tyler Moore,’ ” he said. “Very polite. But he wanted to understand the perceived injustice and talk about how it could be remedied.”

That remedy turned out to be the combination of a marketplace that started to settle down, the persistent interest of fans (“There are financial realities, but feedback is absolutely a factor,” Mr. Feldstein said) and a bit of divine intervention from Oprah Winfrey. Ms. Winfrey, who began her on-air career at a local news station in Nashville during the initial run of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” has often spoken of Ms. Moore’s portrayal of a woman in the workplace as inspirational. This May she devoted an hour of her show to a reunion of the entire surviving original cast, complete with a replica of the WJM set. During the show Ms. Winfrey wept with joy.

Fox got the message and has now committed to releasing all three remaining seasons, covering episodes from the fall of 1974 to the spring of 1977. They were significant years for the series. With the departures of Valerie Harper (as Rhoda, Mary’s best friend) and Cloris Leachman (as Phyllis, her not-best friend and landlady) for their own spinoffs, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” which had always split its attention between Mary’s home life and the office, moved its focus to WJM. In its later years the show became television’s first great workplace sitcom, with an expanded role for Betty White as Sue Ann Nivens, “Happy Homemaker” and all-purpose frenemy, and an understated but unmistakable nod toward Mary’s growing assertiveness and feminism.

All three of the final seasons won Emmys for outstanding comedy series — a prize it had never previously taken — and in each of those years the series also won the Emmy for writing. Besides “Chuckles Bites the Dust,” the honored episodes were “Mary Richards Goes to Jail” (a rare if gentle foray into Norman Lear-style topicality in which Mary landed behind bars for refusing to reveal a source) and for the show’s final episode, which still stands as the high-water mark for how to wrap up a sitcom in style.

“It’s the right opportunity for us to come out with the full series,” said Mr. Feldstein, who is currently awaiting a final release schedule. The groundswell of support represented “a fantastic example of the zeitgeist in rare form.” And Ms. Winfrey, he added, can expect a copy of the DVDs in the mail as soon as they’re ready.

Now can somebody find a phone number at Sony Pictures Home Entertainment? We’re still waiting for the last three seasons of “All in the Family.”

This proves the decision-makers at Fox aren't TOTALLY inept and can take a hint if its large enough. Also, it was just announced that Lionsgate is finally releasing the final season of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, another TV phenomenon lost in the tides of time, after starting the series 8 years ago. So anything is possible. Fox may get a wake-up call and finish releasing Bob's shows.