Since his death, it look like people been buying the Ultimate Johnny Carson Collection box set here in my town. I was'nt planning on buying it but I did overheard a guy complaining to his wife that he can't seem to find it when I was out at my Best Buy yesterday, I could'nt find a copy either, the guy was pretty frustrated in not finding a copy there. So is it selling out quickly now he passed away? I checked out at Amazon and they do have copies available and it's the number one top sellers right now.

Yes, it's selling out and you better get it now...because...as we all know...there will NEVER be a re-issue of a DVD collection. Never.

Please don't feed the Monster.

Now is the worst time to buy Carson DVDs. Give it a few months and prices will be back to where they were. I ask myself whenever a popular person dies, "If you weren't going to get the collection before, why now? This person's death is not going to change anything, except for increasing prices and making sure you get ripped-off and rimmed when checkout."

Yeah, Amazon had it for $50.....which is the LIST price I believe.

*sniff* *sniff* Do you smell that? That smells like sarcasm.

Is that monster a big green ugly one that typically lives under bridges?

While I agree, high prices shouldn't deter someone from buying a set if they can find one. Although, I can never understand why prices flucuate on items like this depending of supply and demand. While that may sound stupid in the normal sense of "supply and demand", these are just DVDs after all...not "Tickle Me Elmos".

THe video store I work in puts dvd's on sale when someone passes. Brando and Janet Leigh come to mind from last year. I think the reason people rush out to get them is, they want a way to celebrate their life. We may not know the person well enough to merit a funeral, but we know the actor well enough to merit some closure.

With carson, i doubt most stores kept more than 2 copies of this title in stock at a time. THey could still be sold out from Xmas. Not a top seller, so they may not have reordered quickly. I assume by the weekend store shelves will be filled.

Where do you shop?

Got it at Costco about a year ago for $34.99. I believe some Costcos may still have it, as it wasn't a popular title untl now. Great set.

What is pretty sad is that many of Carson's best moments from his early years from the show will never be seen again because of colossal error by an unknown NBC technician, who looking for space to record new material accidently taped over hundreds of hours of old Tonight shows. Carson was so upset about it that he himself would alone control his work.

Not surprising this is #1 on the Amazon charts. It looks like a good DVD, too.

Death will do that.

I bought the Carson DVD about a year ago. It is an excellent DVD. Highly recommended. But, it's far too short.

how long is it in total? and is it good for just a casual fan?

The Ultimate Collection is available for $39.95 from the official Carson website, as well as other titles of interest.

https://www.johnnycarson.com/carson/...collection.jsp

https://www.johnnycarson.com/carson/shopping/dvds.jsp

just picked up the set for $32.49 and can't wait. i have always wanted to see his last 2 eps!!

Where did you pickup the set from?

Total Cost with 7.99 shipping from the Johnny Carson web site is 47.98

I bought it at a local used CD store Sunday morning, and the final cost to me was pretty much $0, nada, totally free. The store has a "buy 1 get 1 free" sale going on, so I bought the Johnny Carson set (the one I bought also came with Animal Hijinks, so I think they just tossed that in for me) for $25 + tax, and picked up M*A*S*H Season Three for free. I have put that M*A*S*H set up on eBay, and it's already going for around $25, which in my eyes sorta makes that Carson set free to me, woohoo.

DDD, baby! Although I sometimes see a "deal" at the local mart. Most of my movies came from Columbia House, but DDD gets a few orders here and there.

Not sure if this still works or not... but if this is your first order then enter the special code GET20 and you might save 20% on your entire order.

To those that don't already own it, I would give this set my highest recommendation. I would also HIGHLY recommend purchasing the following:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...v=glance&s=dvd

Same here!

IT's avaialable at The San Diego library. Maybe it's at other libraries also?

But it wasn't an accident, NBC did it on purpose! In the '70s, NBC, like many other TV networks worldwide (ABC in the US and the BBC in the UK for example) were running short of space in their videotape archives, so these networks decided to "purge" (destroy or, in the case of then-expensive videotape, erase and re-use) the parts of their archive that they deemed as "unexploitable."

In the case of the BBC, it basically meant everything that was more than five years old, as repeat fees would have to be renegotiated, etc. In NBC's case, this meant their back catalogue of daytime (game shows, soaps) and late night (Carson, for example) programming. They felt there would be no demand for reruns of this material.

NBC did this "erasure" around 1978. One story specific to "Tonight Show" is where an NBC executive saw all these old videotapes in storage and someone pointed out the Carson "Tonight Shows" and the guy said something like, "why would we want to keep these old things? They're in black-and-white!"

I don't recall exactly how Carson found out, but I think it might've been that his company were wanting to compile another anniversary special and they found that the stuff they were looking for had been destroyed. Carson was livid and when contract renegotiations came up, one of the sticking points (which he won) was to get ownership of not only the then current day-to-day production of the show, but of the videotape archive of his old shows.

The only reason we have the B/W clips we now have are that those were sourced from Carson's old anniversary shows, which still exist. If he hadn't had the anniversary speicals, there would be much less B/W "Tonight" material existing than does now.

I don't think anyone has done any checking, but it's probably safe to say that Steve Allen and Jack Paar's runs of the show were mostly destroyed, too.

okay, so what all is out there? I know of the 3-disc 'Ultimate Collection' set, but there appears to be an 'Animal Hijinks' disc, and 2-disc 'Comedians' set, and another 6-disc set from the 'Carson Club'. And there appears to be a 'best of' single disc of the aforementioned 3-disc 'Ultimate Collection'. anything else?

http://www.johnnycarson.com/carson/shopping/dvds.jsp

I'm sure there will be "MORE TO COME" (inside joke for those who remember the original Carson show.

The destroying of the original tapes was a huge loss. Several years ago there was a well publicized effort to locate a tape/kinescope of Johnny's first appearance in the hands of private collectors. To the best of my knowledge, although audio has been located, the video has not.

One thing you missed out was "Johnny's Favorite Episodes: Return to Studio One", which is a color kinescope (made for Armed Services TV) that was discovered of a 1960s episode with Bob Hope, George Goebel and Dean Martin. Unfortunately, the disc is only about 30 minutes long. I think that the kinescope itself was cut down from the original 90 minute show. It is noticeable, though, that the original opening/closing of the show was left off and replaced with a generic "for video" one (like the opening seen on the "Carson Club" releases).

I don't understand why they chopped out the original opening, unless it was for some sort of music rights issue (i.e. if they use the same recording of "Johnny's theme" on all their releases, they only have to negotiate with one set of musicians).

With Mr. Carson's death, maybe his family will be more keen to exploit the archive than Johnny was.

Suddenly buying this now just because he died is stupid.

If you thought this was a funny set, why wasn't it funny enough to buy last week? Last month? Last year?