AVS Discussions
Movie and TV Discussion => TV series => Topic started by: Barry on March 27, 2026, 04:17:16 PM
-
Since I was 15 I worked in Adult Education. First as an office boy, then a teacher and then an administrator. We “took over” the local public school at 6 PM and gave classes until 10 PM for adults. So for most of my life I could not see broadcast TV.
So when DVDs came out featuring TV shows I got a few. Many on sail and many free from my friends at A&E. Sadly those were mostly DVDs, blu-rays were not yet invented.
But, eventually I did get a bunch of Blu-Rays TV and thought that reviews would be interesting.
Desilu
The first thing that stands out is how many series I have that were either produced by Desilu (Mission Impossible, Mannix, Star Trek etc) and how many were filmed there.
When Lucy and Desi started “I Love Lucy” and Desilu, Desi was one of the first to put TV shows on film, inventing the rerun!! I actually think that “The Life of Riley” was filmed first, with most other shows being live. But Arnez hired professional movie cinematographers, who were losing their jobs as the movie theatre attendance shrink and the TV viewing grew. He also stored the film properly and that stands out, even 70 years later. They just put “I Love Lucy” on Blu-Ray.
Desilu also integrated their shows before anyone else. There were Black characters on Star Trek, Mannix and Mission.
Sadly, Desilu was too successful not to fail. I will get into the details for each show, but the networks only paid about 80% of the cost of an episode, the studio paid out the rest, but made it up during syndication, which, at that time, only occur when the show was cancelled by the Network. With four successful shows (Lucy, Mission, Mannix and Star Trek) Desilu was losing wat today would be over a million dollars a week. So the studio was sold to Paramount, which did not keep up the quality.