We've had a bumpy ride, of sorts, with info about the contents of
The Girls Next Door - Season 4 on DVD. At first,
retailers were told in mid-October to expect the release in late January, on three discs that had extras which included commentary tracks by Holly, Bridget & Kendra. A week later the media was sent
a press release with the same 1/27/09 street date, but it didn't mention any commentary tracks among the extras! We looked into it, and were shown a document that had been sent to retailers alerting them to expect not only the commentaries on selected episodes, but deleted scenes as well. And, of course, we
updated our readers about that the day after posting the press release.
That didn't last long, though. The following day
we reported that the commentaries and deleted scenes wouldn't be present after all. Stacie Hougland, the Content Editor at Fandango.com, had informed us that her sources at Playboy and Fox had let her know that plans for those supplements had changed, and those wouldn't be found on the 4th Season set. Our own studio sources confirmed that info within a couple of days, so by the end of October we were telling our readers that the January release wouldn't contain those particular extras.
Several weeks later, though, as we were gearing up for the Thanksgiving holiday in late November, we found out that
the release was delayed, and that the new street date would be
March 10th. That was per an early heads-up confirmed by retailer info, including the pre-order listing at Amazon (see button link below). But no reason was available for the change, and in fact the studio hadn't officially passed it along to the press at the time...just retailers.
Yesterday afternoon, though, the folks at Fox sent out an e-mail to the media with the subject "NEW STREET DATE - Girls Next Door Season 4 on DVD March 10." The contents of the e-mail was an updated press release, identical in most ways to the one we originally posted (so we're not going to bother to re-post the entire new one). The date had changed to the new one, of course. But what really got our eyebrows up was that the second paragraph had changed to read this way:
Featuring all 16 original episodes from the fourth season in a sexy
three-disc set plus hilarious commentary from Holly, Bridget and Kendra
on every episode and over an hour of deleted scenes not show on television,
"The Girls Next Door" Season Four DVD collection will be available for
the suggested retail price of $29.98 U.S. / $43.48 Canada.
The revised press release had also changed the disc-by-disc breakdown to reflect that there are "Commentary on all episodes by Holly, Bridget & Kendra" and "Deleted Scenes" on each of the three discs in this set. We checked with Stacie Hougland over at Fandango.com, and she confirmed that her contents at Playboy had been given the same information: the title was delayed to March to add the commentary tracks and deleted scenes.
Conclusion: the home video industry is a funny business, isn't it? But kudos to Fox for getting the bonus material on there, so that the fans can enjoy it. That's always the very BEST reason to delay the release of any DVD title: to make it better for the people who are buying it!
