The news that Time Life is preparing 4 different DVD releases, mostly at retail stores, on
September 25th for
The Carol Burnett Show has made fans very happy, and very excited. But it's also left them with a number of questions, and we've passed them along to Time Life in an attempt to get the answers. While the studio couldn't answer every question right away, we did find out a number of new things about their home video plans for this show.
In the late-day update to our original story earlier this week, we said that our contact at Time Life assured us that "there will indeed be new-to-DVD/long-unseen content on their releases, along with previously-on-DVD material." A number of people asked us if this would possibly include episodes from the 1967-1972 era of the show, when it was produced under the "Burngood, Inc." shingle. We thought at first that the answer could be a "yes," but Time Life cleared this up with us and explained that their first releases will NOT include episodes from those early seasons, after all. There will indeed be new-to-DVD episodes on these releases (combined with previously-on-DVD episodes)...it just won't be from any of those first five seasons.
However, the answer to the question "will there be other releases later, beyond these four titles?" is that YES, there are indeed plans to release additional episodes. Season sets are NOT part of the plan, but you could indeed see additional rounds of hand-picked releases on DVD, similar to the ones on this first round that Time Life is putting out. But what about Blu-ray Disc? As unlikely as it seems that a 45-year-old show shot on tape could be done effectively in high-def, the folks at Time Life aren't ready to entirely rule it out just yet. BDs for
The Carol Burnett Show are officially in the "TBD" (to be decided) category for now. Because, of course, as with every other release they've made (such as
Get Smart, Six Million Dollar Man, etc.), the folks at Time Life are making every effort to have the masters look as good as possible.
Two final tidbits: there has been some confusion about whether the single-disc release announced this week would consist of "loose" skits, or actual episodes, as the press release was a bit vague on that score. The answer is that it will actually consist of 3 episodes, per Time Life. Also, the studio wanted to clarify the "at retail" info: the 1-DVD, 2-DVD and 6-DVD sets of
The Carol Burnett Show will be available at participating brick-and-mortar stores near you (and online sellers, such as Amazon), and when more releases occur at general retail in the future they will be the same disc counts. However, the 20-DVD "Ultimate" set will ONLY be sold directly through TimeLife.com's online store. Full details (content and so forth) about all these releases will be coming, along with pricing and package art, just as soon as all the hurdles are cleared and everything is finalized. Stay tuned for updates!
