Vintage Country Television Finds

Vintage Country Television Finds New Life on DVD
By Crystal Caviness

The number of Country Music television shows now being issued as DVDs, particularly from the 1960s and '70s, is rising faster than Martha White biscuits.

Sony Legacy's "The Best of the Johnny Cash TV Show, 1969-1971," for example, earned Platinum status by topping 100,000 sales just four months after its release in September 2007. Other titles from 2007 included MPI's "Dolly Parton and Friends" and Time Life's "The Best of Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters Show" and "Time Life Presents Glen Campbell: Good Times Again." The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, in partnership with Shout! Factory, released "The Johnny Cash Christmas Special 1976" and "The Johnny Cash Christmas Special 1977" on DVD for the 2007 holiday buying season. The Museum also issued four volumes of "Best of the Flatt and Scruggs TV Show" in partnership with Shanachie Entertainment. And an eight-DVD collection of Grand Ole Opry highlights from the institution's archives was released in late November 2007 under the title "Opry Video Classics" by Time Life.

The patriarch in entertainment marketing, Time Life, anticipated this trend five years ago when it released past performances from a classic Country Music variety show. "'Hee Haw,' with the comedy and the guest artists, was the perfect model for us," said Jeff Peisch, head of Time Life's video department in Arlington, Va. "The show was something we felt would be successful for us because of our success in selling Country Music CDs for so many years."

With more than 1.5 million units sold, the "Hee Haw" collection exemplifies what Peisch sees as an essential element in the appeal of most popular DVD reissues. "Nostalgia is probably at the heart of all our successful products - but we don't ever use the word 'nostalgia,'" he explained. "It's 'remember this?' and 'isn't it a great memory?' As you get older, you think back fondly to that music."

From the corporate standpoint, there are plenty of other reasons to dust off old Country Music television shows and make them available on disc. "It has a lot to do with the record business imploding the way it is," said Sandy Brokaw of the Brokaw Company, the Los Angeles-based publicity firm whose accounts include the Campbell and Mandrell DVD reissues. "A lot of the revenue stream comes from repackaging things. I liken it to having gold nuggets locked away, and every now and then you bring them out to have more gold nuggets."

"Other copyright owners will be looking to see what they have to be viable in today's market ... and will think more about video," added LeAnn Bennett, Director of Special Projects, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. "

The popularity of the DVD format helped make this possible. In 1999, according to Ars Technica, an online site dedicated to monitoring relationships between art and technology, one or more DVD players could be found in 6.7 percent of households in the United States. By the end of 2006, that number had risen to 81.2 percent.

"Everybody now has a DVD player, so we're realizing there is a market there," said Alan Stoker, Curator for Recorded Sound and Moving Image, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

While acknowledging Time Life as pioneers in the practice of releasing Country Music TV footage on DVD, Stoker maintained that his organization's archival DVDs go beyond simply following a trend. "It serves our mission," he said. "Getting these programs transferred and out to the public meets our mission of education and preserving the culture."

This can be a laborious process. For their "Flatt and Scruggs" project, Stoker and his colleagues spent almost 20 years from concept to product for this series, which aired originally as 36 half-hour programs from 1956 through 1962.

"I knew the shows existed," he said. "But I always heard the tapes had been erased. Tape was so expensive [at the time], they would use and erase and record over it. For distribution, they would make film prints out of them and send those films out to TV stations for syndication. And then all the films would return to the source."

In 1989, William Graham, an executive with The ShowBiz Company, which was involved in producing "The Flatt and Scruggs Show," arranged with Stoker to donate the 24 episodes of the program that he had to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. And then, against all odds, another donor, who remains anonymous, contacted Stoker with the 12 remaining episodes.

"We went from thinking there were no copies to having all 36 episodes in six months," Stoker recalled, who described this acquisition as "a miracle."

Over the next two decades, Stoker and others worked out agreements with Earl Scruggs and the Lester Flatt estate, finalized releases and did restoration work for the video and audio. This stage of the process can significantly raise production costs.

"People who buy DVDs are collectors," Peisch said. "We want to give them the best quality package. It starts with making sure the masters are remastered and cleaned up, the audio is cleaned up and then to supply as much additional material as possible. In this world of digital downloading, if people are going to pay to own something, it should be of the highest quality. People should get a lot of material for their money."

Time Life addresses this issue by offering bonus material with its DVDs, such as current footage of key people recounting tales of specific guests or production elements interspersed with original performances from the TV series. "Glen Campbell Good Times Again" features segments of Campbell taking his own walk down Memory Lane before each song.

Remembrances from son John Carter Cash, hairstylist Penny Lane, The Tennessee Three bassist Marshall Grant, the show's music arranger Bill Walker and Hank Williams Jr., preface performances on "The Best of the Johnny Cash TV Show" DVDs.

Marty Stuart hosts the bonus footage on "Opry Video Classics," which features 120 Opry performances from the 1950s to the 1970s. And at Stuart's suggestion, Porter Wagoner was brought in to offer commentary for this collection, which he filmed just weeks before his death.

Marketing dollars also can add to the costs of DVD reissues. Additionally, royalties for "secondary performance" must be paid to players and artists featured on the DVDs, or to their estates. "If you're doing it right, you have to get all the permissions from the songs," Stoker said. "If a musician can identify that he played on that record, he gets paid for secondary use."

"That's part of what makes [the releases] so hard," observed Cash. "There are numerous licensing fees. Performers have to be paid [Musicians] Union scale again. There are obligations to be filled and rightly so, of course, but that does make putting out something like this harder."

Despite these complexities, more Country Music shows are likely to hit the market in 2008, including episodes of "Bobby Bare and Friends," which are being prepared for joint release by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum with Shout! Factory. Bottom line, according to Glen Campbell, is that the quality of these classic shows ensures sufficient demand to make the efforts worthwhile.

"It's good TV and family entertainment," Campbell said. "The names on the DVDs are the biggest names in music of that day and are still big names today."

Or, in Peisch's succinct words, "They don't make TV like this anymore."