The Muppets

[Dacey]

Not even the official Sesame Street DVD releases have the theme anymore. So bizarre.

[Ben]

Not surprised about the Langham show, but such a shame I'm Five and There's A New Sound are gone. At least we have the album versions to enjoy. Weird some of those other episodes are completely missing too.

[EricJ]

Panel was great yesterday! Here's a tentative list of what's missing:

Season 2:
Bernadette Peters: "They Call the Wind Maria" and "I'm Five"

Season 5:
Tony Randall: "Ti-Pi-Tin"
Hal Linden: "If I Ruled the World"
Brooke Shields: episode completely absent

...Okay, now that's collectively just plain WRONG.

(And thanks to music rights messing up syndication, I've tried searching for a few classic SNL sketches from 1988 on Amazon/Hulu, in vain.)

[Daniel]

Supposedly the Kaye Ballard episode is on the UK site. Spike Milligan and John Denver's are missing however.

[Ben]

Oh, pants! ;(

[Daniel]

Kaye Ballard's episode is now on there!

[Randall]

We have John Denver here in Canada.

[Dacey]

On that note, since I've been curious on this for a while, I'm going to guess Disney doesn't have the rights to the John Denver Christmas special? Or that the rights for that one are all over the place? We have it taped off of Disney Channel (on SLP, unfortunately), but I have no idea where our copy is.

[Randall]

That special never hit DVD, either, though Rocky Mountain Holiday did. I would assume there are rights issues. Though, a number of other Muppet specials that were on VHS never got to DVD, either.

[Daniel]

The Crimbo special is not included in what Disney now claims ownership of. Such a shame. The whole thing is up on Youtube. Great album, too!

[Ben]

If nothing else, we also need the two Hollywood/Movies specials too. They’re essential to the original Show series (can’t believe they were never offered as extras on the home video releases of Movie and Caper), although both up on YT too. Piggy singing Over The Rainbow, Casablanca spoofs, etc...both are amazing. The Fantastic Miss Piggy Show, basically the last original Show era special, isn’t anywhere as good, but it would be neat to think all the Show and its specials were available.

[gaastra]

No brooke shields? The wonderland episode. Why? Good thing i have it on dvd.

Man that sucks. They add songs back to season one and remove songs and full episodes in later seasons?

Did they leave this dark song in!

[Daniel]

Music rights. Although not perfect, it's way better than we had for the longest of time. Frankly, they're more intact than I imagined they would be. That's the beauty of streaming, (and ugliness) episodes can easily be updated and they can right their wrong. I'm sure more specials will be added.

[EricJ]

It's just as bad for SNL, where music rights have permanently expunged entire sketches from the classic late-80's catalog. (If anyone's seen an online trace of the "1960's Movie" sketch with Leslie Nielsen from 1988, please let me know. )

And yeah, I managed to get the Brooke Shields Wonderland episode too, back on one of those early pre-boxset "Best Of" disks, not realizing it would become so valuable.
(Fozzie dressed as the Tin Woodsman: "I thought we were doing Peter Pan!")

This emphasizes why catalog maintenance has to be two-pronged, with streaming AND disc: Unlike Digital VOD, Streaming's not supposed to "replace home video", it's supposed to replace cable-TV channel-surfing, and we're used to seeing broadcast movies or TV reruns chopped up a little, if it means we can still get them complete somewhere else, if we have to.

The Fantastic Miss Piggy Show, basically the last original Show era special, isn’t anywhere as good,

Oh. You don't THINK so?

(I remember seeing that aired, and wondered WTH we were watching. I later figured out the special was trying to plug Piggy's comedy/novelty "Aerobique" LP album, but I wondered whether it was supposed to be in character, of the Muppets' usual bumbling acts, that the special was such a steaming mess, and that we'd get some huggy message at the end where Piggy realized she couldn't go it alone without her friends. Um, I don't recall any, but I may have given up early.)

[Daniel]

Here's that SNL episode. It's actually from 1989. After a few clicks and annoying ads it does play. "The 1960s Movie" sketch starts at the 52-minute mark. Pretty funny! Enjoyed the randomness.