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It's still been real...
Ben
Koch Entertainment and the Archive of American Television have banded together to launch a new series of DVD's called The Archive of American Television Presents. The first release is a box set called The Studio One Anthology, which contains 17 episodes of the landmark live drama series Studio One. The set came out last week, on November 8th. Their next release will be the 1959 TV adaptation of Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run. Click on the link above for the AAT to see more about these and to watch a trailer for the Studio One set.
Also in the works is a DVD box set of Ernie Kovacs programs. I have been hired to curate the set, which will contain 15 hours of Ernie Kovacs shows, plus bonus extras.
I've been involved with the project for about a year, although things have become more official and in motion in the last few months (that's why you're only hearing about this now). I've screened a lot of material, visited Edie Adams' film/tape storage facility in L.A. and inspected kinescopes, done research at the Paley Center in N.Y., and looked at rare Kovacs materials found by private collectors.
There is no "street date" slated for the DVD set, but the release will happen sometime during 2009, possibly as early as the middle of the year. It's a little early to talk about specifically what will be on the set at this point. I will post updates here and on my site erniekovacs.info as things are remastered, confirmed and locked in as DVD content.
Edie was to have had a creative hand in helping select the programs on the set, and I was really looking forward to working with her on this. I miss her and hope that the set does justice to all the hard work she put in (since the 1960s!) to save kinescopes, videotape masters, scripts et al of Ernie Kovacs' amazing work.
-- Ben Model
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The only items that were sold directly by this blog and its parent site are from The Vision Of Ernie Kovacs retrospect; we had the inventory and we shipped it but it has sold out (you can click the link to learn more about these items in case you'd like to purchase them from other sources). We also offer "The Ernie Kovacs Collection" DVD set through our sites but we are not the shipper; the set is shipped to you directly from Shout Factory Video. You can buy this wonderful set with confidence and we fully endorse it.
This goes for audio too: recordings of novelty songs, music from the Kovacs shows and various EK sketches, some of which are available on CD or LP. I understand that sometimes these items are hard to find but I am not going to provide links to free downloads.
With all this in mind please do not contact me asking for copies of videos, DVDs, CDs, LPs, or to ask me to stream video. I will not post ANY links to file sharing sites which are sent to me nor will I respond to any emails regarding same.
I can offer the following: The Museum Of Broadcast Communications in Chicago has their archives listed online so you can view the list. Some of these listings have a digital file accompanying them for viewing and ⁄ or listening. Sign up is free and there are some very interesting EK files available to watch and listen to online. My assumption is that a broadcast museum is not just putting up clips without permission which is why I’m willing to list the link.
While they don't have online viewing, you can visit the Paley Center For Media in New York or Los Angeles to view shows in their massive collection. The link will take you to a listing of everything they have regarding Ernie Kovacs so that you can plan your visit; you're limited as to how much time you can spend in the museum library and how many shows you can view on your visit so you wouldn't want to spend all of it searching the database. Write down the catalog numbers and titles of the programs you wish to see, which will make finding them easy once you arrive. Contact the museum for more details.
If your question is about a specific post on the blog you can place a comment on that post and we will answer your question by posting a comment in return. We moderate all comments so you will not see yours posted immediately. Generally you can expect to see it, along with an answer, within 24 hours.