From our friends at TVSHOWSONDVD.COM
This will be great- Maybe now we can get classic TV that are not public domain episodes from Burns and Allen and many more

TV Guide magazine - a name we're sure all of you know! - has decided to jump into the TV-on-DVD game. Their licensing company has arranged a deal with the Falcon Picture Group to release numerous old televsions shows in the DVD format.

Here are selected portions of the press release issued yesterday, which can be read in its entirety by clicking here:

TV Guide Publishing Group Inc...announced today it signed a new licensing deal with Falcon Picture Group, bringing its powerful brand and expertise in on-screen entertainment to the fast-growing genre of TV shows on DVD.

Under the multi-year deal with Falcon Picture Group, the Schaumburg, Ill.-based maker of DVDs, TV Guide will license a variety of TV Guide brand assets for use in the products and packaging of Falcon Picture Group's newest line, TV Guide brand classic television shows on DVD. Targeting all ages, these DVDs will utilize TV Guide's brand leadership and expertise for a line of digitally remastered classic television shows.

Through its exclusive distribution agreement with Genius Products (OTCBB:GNPI), Falcon Picture Group is developing the first collection of 12 TV Guide brand DVDs, which will include "digitally remastered" classic television programming featuring The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Lucy Show, The Milton Berle Show, The Burns & Allen Show, You Bet Your Life, The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, The Red Skelton Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Bonanza and others. TV Guide brand DVDs will also feature famous Christmas episodes from a variety of series; Unaired Pilot episodes from series including The Munsters, Sea Hunt and others; the best in Sci-Fi and Western programming; and others to be determined. Genius Products will work with major retail outlets to distribute the first collection of 12 DVDs to retail stores in September 2004.

...Falcon Picture Group will license television programs and work with public domain series to generate the content and package the DVD collections, using TV Guide's logo and magazine cover design art as part of the packaging. The DVDs will also contain an enormous amount of "Value Added Material" including TV Guide crossword puzzles, trivia questions, nostalgic advertisements, related feature articles from the magazine and commentary from TV Guide Magazine's Editorial team.

"Each DVD collection will contain two disks with six television programs on each disk -- a total of 12 classic television programs in each collection with a suggested retail of $9.99. We plan to bring the line to retail in September in time for holiday gift-giving," said Mike Meader, president of Genius Products. "At a retail of under 10 dollars for 12 television programs -- six hours of programming -- we expect this to be a huge success. Future TV Guide collections will include The Lone Ranger, Dragnet, The Jack Benny Program, The Cisco Kid, One Step Beyond, Gangbusters and many, many others."

The TV Guide DVDs will be sold via major retail outlets and will be promoted in TV Guide magazine and at www.tvguide.com. TV Guide DVDs will also be sold through the TV Guide Store (http://shop.tvguide.com), which provides licensees with the ability to sell directly to TV Guide's weekly audience of 100 million entertainment enthusiasts.

I wonder if these will be any good or if they'll be sort of along the lines of the recent AMC-branded DVDs (i.e. not very good).

Sounds like they're just slapping the TV Guide "brand" onto the same old public domain prints we've been seeing for years.

angryyoungman is right on the money. This will be EXACTLY like the AMC situation.

Brentwood has a 20-episode (2 disc) DRAGNET set that has very acceptable picture quality at a MSRP of $9.99, and I recently picked up a 2-disc Ozzie & Harriet box set from Platinum that has the same list price, and also has 20 episodes - again, acceptable picture quality. SO all in all, this TV Guide thing doesn't seem like earth-shattering news to me.

Doesn't "Falcon" do porn?? Not that I would have any idea about such things...

Sounds to me like a rebadging of the WalMart $5.50 Bin PD shows.

Whatever.

For me, unless it is season sets, I will avoid.

I agree. This is the same old PD crap with TVG's logo on it. I wonder what they hell they're thinking. Probably just the licensing company whoring out the name for the $.

It may the same old Public Domain prints we've seen before - but with commercials, commentary and extras, the discs are an improvement. With the other discs, you'd be lucky to get a menu, let alone a commentary. That and who knows - we might get some classic TV shows not yet out - like Sea Hunt.