Science guy on DVD
I'm really disappointed. I used to watch Bill Nye with my eldest daughter, and I thought it was one of the best kids' educational shows ever. So, when looking online for some good educational DVDs for my younger sons, BNSG was one of my first searches.
Unfortunately, if you want the complete series on DVD, it's only available in an "Enhanced Classroom Edition" going for US$3249.00! (Check out: http://dep.disney.go.com/educational/search?form.keywords=Bill+Nye ) Furthermore, individual episodes are priced at US$49.95 each! I understand that this pricing is so that institutions like schools and libraries can show episodes to audiences, which constitutes a "public performance" under US copyright law, but what about the home user market?
From a purely capitalist viewpoint, it seems to me that, Disney or KCTS or whoever, would make a lot more money if units were affordably priced full season packages. The smaller profit per unit would certainly be offset by a substantially larger number of units sold. I know this was a public television show, and maybe profit isn't the most important factor for the producers or (less likely) the distributors, but even from a "public service" persepective, I think that BNSG would be seen by a larger number of people via the exploding TV-season-on-DVD market, rather than via classrooms and libraries.
Who made this decision? It's true of many other PBS broadcast programs; the BBC's production of The Shakespeare Plays form the eighties springs to mind.