Yesterday our friend Thomas K. Arnold posted a
Hollywood Reporter story that was
picked up by Yahoo about TV-DVDs. The topic was the different routes studios will go when a series has finished it's season-set run on DVD, and whether they would go the "complete series" route that many go, or if they would just leave it "as is" with the season sets.
With
Dawson's Creek, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment was said in Arnold's story to be going the "leave it as is" route, and Sony VP Marc Rashba explained why in Arnold's story. Here's a quote from that article:
Now "Dawson's Creek" is nearing the end of its DVD life cycle. The sixth and final season is coming April 4. But don't expect an elaborate "complete series" gift set.
"You don't want to do something that might alienate the people who were with you all the way," said Marc Rashba, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment's VP catalog and television marketing. "By coming out with a gift set that has all these extras that weren't available before, you're forcing them into a purchase of multiple hundreds of dollars."
Instead, Sony is packaging "Dawson's Creek: The Complete Sixth Season" with a scrapbook filled with trivia and photos. A similar strategy was employed when "Sanford and Son" finished its DVD run after six season sets, Rashba said, "sort of as a thank you to fans who had been buying the seasons along the way."
A completely understandable position, and certainly one that will make fans appreciate that they don't have to scramble now to eBay off the sets they've bought so far in order to make room for a "complete series" set promised for later that will have goodies that you can't get any other way. We're sure this, combined with the
M*A*S*H news in the same article, will be a cause for much fan debate over which is the best way for studios to go!
For now, we'll simply sit back and wait to bring you the official announcement for
Dawson's Creek - The Complete 6th Season.
As we've said, the release date is
April 4th, so we should get the formal announcement from Sony early next week. Stay tuned! Our thanks to all the readers who e-mailed in to tell us about the Yahoo news post with Arnold's story.
