Yesterday we
brought you word about CBS DVD's plans for
The Lucy Show, thanks to an in-the-know post made earlier this month at the Home Theater Forum website. According to the info at the time,
Season 2 DVDs were planned for release on March 30th. If sales of that were successful, the studio would then follow up with a June 15th release of the third season, and perhaps by September would could see the fourth year of the show (out of six).
Overnight we've received an e-mail directly from one of our own industry sources, who read our story and sent over a note, updating us on the situation. That source confirms that the info we posted had indeed been the planned schedule for the series...but that it actually changed right at the end of October (just a few days before "Gary 16" posted it over at the HTF, so there's no fault on his end since his contact apparently hadn't updated him about the change). But unfortunately for all of us fans, the studio has had to shift the schedule around, and push each of the dates back several months.
The new planned release date for
The Lucy Show - The Official Season 2, according to our own contact, is now
July 13th. Appropriately, the schedule plan for the third season is also moved back, to
October 12th. A point we failed to empasize thoroughly with our previous report (but that our contact thought we ought to have!) is that the follow-up DVD releases are NOT guaranteed yet, just because the tentative dates are scheduled: the
Season 2 set MUST have good sales numbers before CBS/Paramount will commit to releasing the third season set in October (or at any other time). Our contact asked us to make that perfectly clear, and rightfully so. Still, if you folks are buying, then the studio is perfectly willing to keep making these, and is already planning ahead.
Unfortunately circumstances are simply that the production team needs more time than had been previously planned. This not at all abnormal for this industry, especially when working with preparing older materials. We know fans who were excited about yesterday's post are going to be a bit upset with the studio now (and with us for reporting it), because they have to wait longer than they thought after yesterday's story. But keep in mind that the plans are always to try to produce the best possible release...especially when a named star as big as Lucille Ball is going to be on the cover. So thank you for your patience, and we'll bring you further updates. We give thanks to our close-to-the-situation friend for making sure we - and you - are now fully up-to-date. Stay tuned for further developments!
