Shout Factory! need to continue release more DVD Box Sets of The Electric Company. Give what the die hard fans want.
"SG"
Moving out in a new way! - The Electric Company (1975)
Yes, and get the rights to everything you don't own before releasing altered episodes, too, Sesame Workshop! There's no excuse for that shoddy DVD version of episode 60A! Peace.
The everyday happens every day.
Also, they should add more:
Short Circus songs like TILT!, POISON, LICK A LOLLY, SMILE, READ A LITTLE EVERYDAY, FEELINGS ARE FUNNY THINGS, I NEVER GET A LETTER, the new version of PUNCTUATION, THE MUMPS and others.
Spider-Man stories and those that were cut from Vol. 2 like SPidey Jumps the Thumper, The Birthday Bandit, Spidey Meets the Bookworm, Queen Bee, etc.
More skits with Otto the Director, Valerie the Librarian, J. Arthur Crank, Easy Reader and many others that we fans would love to see again.
Out with the new and in with the old AND better-movies, TV shows and music
Yes, they should reissue Volume 2 with uncut episodes (à la the Star Wars movies) or provide us with a way to get a bonus disc with the unaltered versions of the altered episodes! Wishful thinking, eh? Peace.
The everyday happens every day.
Why were the episodes altered? Is it because some segments would have been repeated several times on the DVDs? Some segments were repeated anyway. Also it is obvious that some of the episodes from the first 2 seasons had segments from later seasons inserted into them (the quality of the tape is poor for those first 2 years then all of a sudden in the middle of one of these shows we get a sketch or a cartoon that is crystal clear). In one episode from year 2 they stick in a segment with Luis Avalos with his moustache and Morgan Freeman as Dracula with a perm that looks like it was from year 5). The weird thing is I watched this show from 1972 onward and remember some of these segments and the exact seasons they were produced. The Six Dollar and Thirty Nine Cent Man segment and the claymation character Clayton's segment in episode 60A are both edited in from episodes from the last season. The year 3 episode with Judy Graubart as Sally Simple was the first episode to originally feature the film with Greg Burge as the "hot shot", but they edited it out. Another giveaway that they stuck segments into episodes that weren't there originally is that they tended to focus on certain letters or sounds. When they stick in something like the silent e song in an episode that makes no other reference to it (especially in the later seasons) you have to wonder.
Anyway if I had to choose between these doctored episodes and nothing I'll take these. If they release another volume I suspect the episodes will be doctored even more than these were as it seems from tv.com that there were only 65 episodes shown on the Noggin Network.
BTW, as for the actors Judy Graubart looks ancient. I would've guessed that she was in her 30s in the 70s, so why does she look so old? Rita Moreno was the oldest one in the cast (she was born in 1931) and she has aged gracefully. Luis Avalos was the youngest adult cast member (25 in 1972) yet he looks and sounds older today than she does. What happened to Hattie Winston's right eye? Skip Hinnant and Morgan Freeman have aged the most gracefully of the adult males.
I believe episodes were altered for three reasons:
1. Spider-Man is owned by Marvel Comics, and if you look carefully, a brand-new, factory shrink-wrapped copy of the first DVD boxed set has an advertisement for several Spider-Man-related toys that was slipped under the booklet on a separate sheet. Even though Marvel Comics is credited correctly for Spider-Man on the second DVD boxed set, there is no advertisement, and, probably, Marvel Comics wanted there to be another advertisement for more toys. Sesame Workshop, being a non-profit company devoted to education, probably refused to let them include one, and therefore, it had to keep the Spidey Super Stories segments down to a bare minimum. Since Spider-Man was featured in the sketch-of-the-day teaser of this episode, it had to be excised and replaced with something that Sesame Workshop owned directly.
2. Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner are owned by Warner Bros. Entertainment, but the ownership of these characters is not reflected anywhere on either of the boxed sets. Keep in mind that Chuck Jones, who created these characters for Warner Bros., was given carte blanche to do anything he wanted with them, which is why they appeared on The Electric Company free of charge and without credit given. Since Jones died in 2002, it is in Warner Bros.'s interest to clamp down on what they could consider unauthorized usage. Therefore, since Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner appeared in abundance in the first boxed set, Warner was probably upset by this and did not grant permission for the usage of the characters in the second boxed set, which is why, once again, that characters that Sesame Workshop owns directly appear instead. If you look carefully, these two do not appear at all in the second boxed set.
3. In order to compensate for the 28-minute running time of each episode, clips that were removed were replaced with longer clips, so additional material had to be removed—even ones containing properties that Sesame Workshop owned.
Note, however, that Sesame Workshop licenses the DVD release of the show to Shout! Factory, so the latter has no say in any of the content.
I do agree with you, though: Judy Graubart looks terrible! Is she sick? What about Hattie Winston and Luis Avalos? Peace.
The everyday happens every day.
I thought I read somewhere that Road Runner and Wile E. Coyotie only appeared in three sketches. I could be wrong, but I'm not sure. Though I do not own a copy of either box set, I find it weird that Road Runner was mentioned on the packaging and included in the trailer for the first set (this trailer can be found on such DVDs as The Super Mario Brothers Super Show Vol. 1, The Weird Al Show: The Complete Series, and Sesame Street: Old School Vol. 1), but the appearances by the Sesame Street muppets are not mentioned in the packaging or shown in the trailer (and they are owned by Sesame Workshop).
Wikpedia's article on The Electric Company states that Marvel comics gave The Electric Company permission to use Spider-Man for free, but is it actually known that Road Runner was used for free? If Spider-Man (or Road Runner) appeared for free, then shouldn't that apply to all types of showings (TV broadcasts, DVD, screenings, etc)?
I wonder if the various cartoon characters who made appearances on Sesame Street (Batman, Superman, The Pink Panther, etc) appeared free-of-charge, too (same with C3PO and R2D2).
At the time of production, some 30 years ago, home video and such didn’t exist. These things have to be negotiated for—piece by piece—these days, which is why many old movies and TV shows are still not on DVD. Notice how much negotiation had to take place for the first season of Saturday Night Live to appear on DVD completely uncut. The music-rights credits are enormous!
Read my paragraph above about the Road Runner and Warner Bros. Chuck Jones could do what he wanted with the characters he created, and he could choose where he wanted them to appear. Jones died in 2002. Peace.
The everyday happens every day.
If Chuck Jones could do whatever he wanted to with the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyotie without WB's approval, then i wonder why he didn't make new Road Runner cartoons when he worked for MGM (unless warners wouldn't allow it since Warners was still making new Road Runner cartoons at the time, without Chuck's involvement).
Simple: the characters are owned by Warner, so Jones would have had to release anything involving them through Warner, as he did in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Keep in mind that Sesame Workshop is non-profit. Peace.
The everyday happens every day.