“I was actually working with Shout! Factory to license the rights from Sony for the DVD set,” Corin [Nemec] said. Sony wasn’t willing to license the rights because the[y] didn’t want to share the profit. My excitement was to be able to work with Shout! Factory and be hands on making the extras and be the actual guy to interview the producers, the writers and the cast members. We couldn’t get the nod from Sony so now we’re in a holding pattern.”
"They didn't want to share the profit" is a pretty good summation of why companies don't give independent distributors the rights to distribute shows they're not releasing themselves. There was a brief period where they seemed a bit more willing to do this -- Fox licensed out Doogie Howser and a few other titles to Anchor Bay a couple of years ago. But now it seems that while companies are willing to license out older features, especially to Criterion, there's an extreme unwillingness to let a company like Shout! Factory handle TV product. (To take another company, Fox has almost completely given up releasing shows from the MTM catalogue -- leaving a bunch of shows half-finished -- but has taken no steps to let an independent distributor complete the shows.)
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Well, I don't know how successful the sets have been, but Universal recently licensed BANACEK to TV Guide/Arts Alliance and the first season of IRONSIDE to Shout! Factory.
Season 1 of "McHale's Navy" was recently licensed to Shout!Factory as well.
A Similar situation played out when Media Blasters acquired the DVD rights to Invader ZIM! from Paramount/Nickeldoeon, since Nick thought the show wouldn't do well enough. However, MB's Zim DVD's did extraordianrily well in sales, which brought out the "share the profit" reluctance in Nickelodeon. Which means that Nick's not licensing out anything else to that company and shows that COULD'VE been released by Media Blasters (Like Rocko's Modern Life and Angry Beavers) are now in DVD limbo for no reason.
And of course, one can't help but wonder what might have happened if WKRP had been licensed to a company like Shout!
Aww, that's too bad. I've been hoping for a DVD release of Parker Lewis Can't Lose.
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