No More Simpsons on DVD
 

Al Jean tweeted that FOX has discontinued releasing complete Simpsons seasons on DVD. This would most likely go for BD as well.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>.<a href="https://twitter.com/TheSimpsons">@thesimpsons</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/EverySimpsonsEver?src=hash">#EverySimpsonsEver</a> I personally am v sorry to see DVDs discontinued We did them purely for the love of hearing ourselves talk</p>&mdash; Al Jean (@AlJean) <a href="https://twitter.com/AlJean/status/585822651651727361">April 8, 2015</a></blockquote>

Re: No More Simpsons on DVD
 

Fuck you FOX. I've got every season so far and two of every season once the head packaging was released. And now I'm going to have an incomplete collection? They could've at least finished out the rest until Season 20 since they've already released that one. This is nonsense.

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Both formats for this show are done and over with according to Al Jean as of Season 17...but hoping Olive or Shout picks this series up and continues onwards with it, much like what Olive Films is doing with King of the Hill.

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I agree someone at Fox is all round dumb - even the recent Emmy winning Bob's Burgers is relegated to DVD-R status .... cheap Fox, really cheap.

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That's really too bad. I have about 12 seasons on DVD. I never bought any when they went to blu ray, but I was going to eventually. I enjoyed all the special features. I wonder if they didn't sell well?

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I love the commentaries on these! Damn it!

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I've bought ever Simpsons release on Day 1, even the "best-of" discs with redundant episodes. I switched to Blu-Ray when those started being put out (and was surprised they did that with the shows that weren't produced HD) but thought about still buying the regular DVDs of those just for OCD-completeness sake. Hopefully there'll be enough backlash that the rest get put out eventually, at least in Japan (which is still getting Glee on Blu-Ray despite its being dumped here.)

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<---Waiting for complete collection. :D

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I've just been buying them on DVD when cheap but I also have so many unwatched seasons. I probably would have stopped buying them sooner if I'd been watching them as I got them. I would have liked to picked up the blu-rays instead of dvds but the price is always too steep for me, considering how awful the episodes are for those seasons.

Anytime I've watched in the last decade, I get Poochie stuck in my head because everything they made fun of with the survey in the episode is what they're doing now but not as a joke.

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They have a new annoying character in the newer episodes? (Latest one I've seen was "Steal This Episode" which was pretty funny, had a nice jab at Hulu Plus in it.)

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I was thinking more along the lines of them saying they wanted realistic stories but zany unrealistic antics.

The annoying character could really be any celebrity though.

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Re: No More Simpsons on DVD
 

This really upsets me as I've talked about in the thread in HD Talk. I've bought every set plus the movie twice and now to have an incomplete collection blows big time. A complete set would be cool someday but I imagine it'll be crazy expensive plus for fans like myself who've bought all the releases it would suck double dipping on that many sets. Fox can fuck themselves.

Re: No More Simpsons on DVD
 

And for some of us it would be a triple-dip because we already own two versions of most of the seasons thus far. This is a huge blow to me as a collector as The Simpsons was always one of my favorite shows and favorite parts of my collection.

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I think they will eventually release some kind of complete set but that is a low-blow for people like me that have faithfully been buying them for years and years.

Fox could have easily kept pushing out a token release once a year with no supplemental features. It's a pretty nasty business move which isn't fan-friendly at all.

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(On a tangent).

With these turn of events, wonder if this means Family Guy will go dvd-mod (or dvd discontinued altogether) for the next season set release.

So far, only an amazon placeholder has showed up for the next (hypothetical) season set of Family Guy.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00T6KIIWW


(Bob's Burgers, American Dad, Cleveland Show, etc ... have already went dvd-mod).

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This is more proof that the economic principle of supply and demand doesn't apply when it comes to home video.

This is total bullshit, FOX.

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This is one of the main reasons why this along with so many shows are being discontinued, sold via MOD or strictly on DVD.

I know most who are "collectors" are budget conscious and can't afford to buy every season of their favorite shows at new release prices. But, the studios also can't afford to continue to make the product and sell it at a loss when many here wait for 60-70% discounts. There is physical production costs along with promotional and advertising costs associated with making The Simpsons and any other show and movie on DVD/BD. It's not as simple as transferring the discs and assuming that FOX or whatever studio is already making money on it because it already aired on TV.

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Let's be realistic though, Fox started releasing these sets in 2001. After fourteen years they should have a relatively good idea of what sales will be like for these sets. If they don't I'm not sure what to say to them. I have a hard time buying that the drop in sales for the sets went down so much recently that they couldn't justify releasing them at all anymore. It isn't like they released two or three sets and they were failing and they quit. They put out eighteen fucking seasons, that's a good bulk of the show. I truly believe that the faithful fans like myself were buying the one release a year. I'm sure there may have been some drop off in sales over the years, but you don't put out eighteen sets because they aren't selling at all. It's pretty common sense. It seems very coincidental to me that this happened right after the launch of The Simpsons World app.

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I think that Fox really screwed up the releases of The Simpsons by limiting them to one per year and not releasing the current season.

The way they trickled out onto the market, they were always going to be two decades behind. They should have been released at two per year until they caught up with the current season, or at least released the current season alongside the catalog releases. This strategy made The Simpsons a perpetual deep catalog title, which meant that as demand for catalog titles shrank, The Simpsons lost retail shelf space and consumer interest.

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I'm not sure why they stopped releasing two a year to begin with in all honesty. They did two a year for a while (seasons 6, 7, 8, and 9 plus seasons 13 and 20) and then went back to the one a year schedule. It would have made a lot more sense to keep them coming out at two a year and catching up. If they had done that we would have been caught up long ago. They fucked it up and now the fans who bought all the sets are paying for it.

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This is a more systemic situation than just The Simpsons not being released.

Studios *hate* physical media. They've maintained an uneasy relationship with it for decades, knowing they could make a buck. But, now streaming offers them the opportunity to supplant physical media once and for all. This gives them 100% control over the product (outside of piracy).

Want to watch Alien? That'll be a fee for one viewing. Want to watch Tootsie? That's another fee for one viewing. Want to *own* Alien and Tootsie? You can own a digital copy that they can deactivate at their whim--and there's nothing you can do because you signed signed your life away with the Terms and Conditions.

Just remember: streaming and downloading makes things more convenient than physical media!

Re: No More Simpsons on DVD
 

Hoping Shout or Olive Films will secure the licensing rights to this show and release the remaining seasons for the mass audiences, but I agree, FOX HE committed a huge error here and they better rectify this and fast.

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I think it'll be hard for a company like Olive Films or Shout Factory to license it though even if Fox was willing to let someone do so. I imagine they'd want a bunch of money for licensing.

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I fully agree with all your points. The great undercurrent going unmentioned is that retailers are shrinking the space available for physical media. The section getting hit hardest are television releases, it's harder than ever to find a DVD or Blu-ray of hit shows at retailers like Target.

Fox's home video department was rolling in the easy sales afforded by the early Simpsons' years which everyone with half a brain knew were going to be the biggest sellers. They should have been far more aggressive a decade ago with the show's release schedule before the market imploded. They had a misguided notion they would wait around for Blu-ray and hopefully re-release the earlier seasons in the more expensive format, getting customers to double dip. The studio waited too long and now we have come to this terrible predicament.

If people weren't aware, Fox's home video division has gone through massive lay-offs the past three years. There is practically no one left to release anything, one of the driving forces behind this decision.

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The thing is though while it probably is true that the earlier seasons were going to be the best sellers it seems like everyone has a different opinion as to what point in the show's history they think it went downhill. It seems like a lot of people (not including myself) dislike the show after season ten or in some instances before that. So they still went a long ways with releasing the so called unpopular seasons and actually the ironic thing is that they released a lot of the unpopular seasons and were getting close to when a lot of fans think it went through a rejuvenation (seasons twenty and beyond).

Some people had to have been buying the seasons for them to keep coming as long as they did. The sales may have been less for the later seasons but I'm guessing they were decent enough or I don't see why they would have kept them going as long as they did. Either way though I definitely agree that Fox really screwed up and fucked over the fans by going with only one release a year rather than getting them out quick and capitalizing on people making impulse buys.

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I think FOX is fine with the massive amount of money they got for putting it all on streaming recently.

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The international customers are going to be screwed by this since we have no access to the app. Another DVD set I no longer will be buying.

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I'm sure they are but at the same time it is kind of a fuck you to fans who have been buying the sets all along. A lot of the diehard fans like myself wanted a complete collection someday.

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No studio is ever happy. They always want MORE money.

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I agree that they should have released more seasons earlier, when TV on DVD was a huge business. Just a few years later, the TV-watching business dramatically shifted, and now physical discs are considered an albatross by some consumers and many retailers.

I agree that digital has a lot of advantages for studios, but it's not all related to conspiracy theories about rebuying and altering content. :sarcasm: Fact is, multi-disc sets are expensive to replicate, ship, and store. If you end up with too much stock, you might run into a Big Lots-like situation (and that was back when DVD was popular).

For all we know, Fox could've wanted to pull the plug two seasons ago but didn't do it until now. :shrug:

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I don't think it's a conspiracy against consumers but fourteen years is a long damn time to devote to something that isn't working out. If the sets weren't selling well and they kept churning them out its on them. I'm still pretty stuck on thinking that if they couldn't come up with realistic sales expectations over that amount of time and that many releases the people in charge at Fox aren't the brightest.

I don't understand why more studios don't go the route of something like the Warner Archives Collection truthfully. It seems like a win-win model as the studios can sell product to consumers who want it without having to mass produce and risk products not selling and consumers who still want physical media copies of shows/films get what they want as well.

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That's entirely possible, but wouldn't you agree that the market has changed drastically over the last few years? I'm certainly no fan of Fox and some of their decisions, but it may not be entirely on them. Their major retail partners (outside of online like Amazon) just don't want to stock this stuff anymore.

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Well, at least the best seasons made it out.

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There are still ways to release the sets if they'd think outside the box a bit and adapt to changing times. Release the sets exclusively through their own web site or partner with someone like Amazon. Satisfy your base of fans who have bought the product being sold for years and utilize online services. Instead just pulling the rug out from under their fanbase seems like their way of saying it was good while it lasted but screw you.

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Not on Blu-ray...

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That was true ten years ago.

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Who knows. After the show is canned and they're looking for a few extra dollars maybe they'll release a complete series set. How many discs would that be? Yikes!

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This seemed to be one of the better-selling shows, plus they started putting it out on Blu-Ray, even the seasons that weren't produced in HD originally! I'm betting this is just because they want everyone to subscribe to that SimpsonsWorld thing- the first thing I thought of when I heard of that coming out was "why would I need that when I've got all the shows on disc?" If anyone's subscribing to that now, they should cancel as a matter of principle, unless they like having that be the only way to see it.

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Well The Simpsons World app is free that's the one benefit. Still sucks for those of us who've been buying the seasons all this time. Also that's another good point about the series being released on Blu-ray. Fox has shown in the past that they'll abandon the Blu-ray releases of a series at first sign of seasons of a series not selling well. They released seasons thirteen through seventeen plus twenty on both Blu-ray and DVD so again it points to the fact that the sets must have been selling somewhat. I just don't entirely get what sparked this decision.