The Extras - Remix - A Brief History of the Warner Archive

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

We celebrate the 14th anniversary of the Warner Archive with a special REMIX episode piecing segments from two previous episodes into one coherent history of the Warner Archive.  Started on March 23, 2009, the Warner Archive has been an industry-leading boutique group within Warner Bros Home Entertainment.  George Feltenstein provides background on his work with Rhino Records and how that informed the development of the early concepts for DVDs on Demand.  He then tells the story of the launch of the service and some of the developments of the Warner Archive in the ensuing years.  If you're a fan of the Warner Archive, you'll find this story an informative and entertaining tale that also provides great insights into the mission and focus of the Warner Archive moving forward.For more podcasts on George Feltenstein and his career, be sure to check out the three part series "CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD with George Feltenstein," episodes 6, 7, and 8.  George provides a fascinating look into his career and how it has spanned the majority of the Home Entertainment industry.The Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify MovieZyng Affiliate The BEST place to buy all of your Warner Archive and Boutique DVDs and Blu-raysDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and their release on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host. Today, we're celebrating the 14th anniversary of the Warner Archive. And to do that, I've gone back in our podcast archives and taken the two episodes from late 2021, where George Feltenstein went through the history of

the Warner Archive and created a remix into one episode. So while some of you may have heard this story before by putting the episodes together, you now get the full story in one episode. Also, we do have a lot of new listeners since these podcasts were released. So for many of you, this will be the first time you've heard this story. This is a continuation of our current celebration of the Warner Brothers 100th year anniversary, which we are celebrating here in March and April and really throughout the year. And now here's our remix episode, A Brief History of the Warner Archive. Well, one of the topics we didn't have time to get to was the history of the Warner Archive.

So I'm excited to talk about that with you today. The Warner Archive has been a huge success in the home entertainment industry and one you are rightly associated with. So to tell the full story, why don't you take us back to the very beginning? very exciting story in the sense that it was revolutionary in how it changed a business that when we initially contemplating it, we couldn't contemplate the changes that were ahead. And we were just dealing with what was in front of us. And it really goes back to somewhere around, what was in front of us. And it really goes back to somewhere around, I'd say probably 2002, 2003. And I was working in catalog marketing for Warner Home Video. It was the, I won't say early days of DVD,

but I guess now that the DVD format is 24 years old. Right. Yeah. I guess I have to say it was the early days. The early days. Yeah. Yeah. It certainly was the early days of classic films on DVD because we had just started to

mine the library, started to put together collections and so forth. And it was really a very, very golden time. In the meantime, I have always worn many hats at the company, most official, some not official, but always with the blessings of colleagues and management because of my unique interest in and passion for the library and having worked in so many aspects of it, I'd often be called upon to do things that were out of the realm of justeing a soundtrack album joint venture that we had. It was branded at the time, Turner Classic Movies Music, Rhino Movie Music. It was a joint venture that started between Turner and Rhino, Turner and Rhino built on classic films from the Turner Library a year before Time Warner bought Turner Broadcasting. my move from being at the company known as MGM, which at the time was the home video distributor of the Turner-owned classic MGM library, and my move to work for Time Warner overseeing the marketing of the Turner Entertainment Company library

with different divisions of Warner Brothers and of Time Warner. And so not only was I in an advisory capacity for classics at Warner Home Video, had not joined the staff of Warner Home Video immediately. There's a little bit of a break there. I was the senior vice president of marketing for Turner Entertainment Company, which is the subsidiary that owned what was MGM. And that subsidiary also owned the pre-49 Warner Brothers Library and the RKO Library. So from those three libraries, Turner put together a soundtrack deal with Rhino Records. And after the first year, I was no longer working at what we used to call New MGM.

It gets very confusing, so I have to clarify all this. I had moved to Turner Entertainment Company and was working for a legendary, wonderful executive by the name of Roger Mayer, no relation. And I was given the responsibility of oversight from the Time Warner slash Turner side of the joint venture with Rhino of soundtracks drawn from the infusion yet of Napster and piracy. And, you know, the only piracy we had to worry about were people pirating our discs overseas. And that was a worry. Believe me.

of this soundtrack joint venture was to take advantage of this amazing library of music that had never properly been put out in definitive editions and so forth and so on. So I had the business responsibility along with the people at Rhino since it was a joint venture, but I also produced most of the albums myself. And I very often wrote the liner notes. Then as the years progressed, we did start to see the music business start to fall off a cliff because of piracy. And what eventually happened in the video industry about a decade later, you know, digital use of music and iPods and so forth and so on were reducing shelf space or floor space for CDs in big box stores and places where people could go buy music. You had, of course, Tower Records and you had other music chains and book chains like Borders.

These are all long gone establishments that were big customers of ours, both for Warner Home Video and as well for Rhino Records. So I was really working both sides of the business and enjoying it. I was really doing the soundtrack work also in synchronicity with some of the home video classic work. And it was around 2002 that Rhino started to come up with a reaction to the change in the music marketplace. They came up with a new line of limited edition CDs that you could only get on the internet, not available in stores.

They were priced at $26.98, which is a high price for a CD. And they were limited editions of $2,000 or $3,000. And when they're gone, they're gone. And I think the first thing they did, they owned the, and they still do, they owned the Monkees catalog of music. They owned everything. They owned the Monkees TV shows. They owned everything but television rights to the Monkees TV show.

And they owned the Monkees movie head, and they were big Monkees fans, the guys that own Rhino. So they did a complete collection of all the recording sessions from the monkeys headquarters album, which was the third monkeys album. It was like nine CDs. And I apologize if I'm getting any of these facts wrong, because I was not directly involved with that project. I wasn't involved with that project at all, actually. I just knew about it.

Right. So I hope I have my numbers right. But it was a huge success. And they sold out that set virtually overnight. Wow. And so Rhino Handmade, as the division was called, had a small sub-staff. So here you had a little boutique division of the Warner Music Group that specialized in reissues and cool stuff. Rhino was a great company at putting together cool music collections. And they were just the biggest company.

I will tell you, I have to say this, their original office that I went to when I first started dealing with them was on Santa Monica Boulevard in West LA. And the walls in the offices were not traditional flat square walls. They were all shaped differently and everything was nonconformist. And the floors were linoleum with crushed pieces of 45 singles built into the linoleum. It was the coolest place and people could bring their dogs to work there. I mean, it was just awesome. And delightful, wonderful people who were there because they loved music. And you can't ask for better than that. So I loved working on the soundtracks we did there. And I produced soundtrack albums of things like Gone with the Wind and Singing in the Rain and so on.

things like Gone with the Wind and Singing in the Rain and so forth and so on. And as we began to see the market start to shrink, we were looking at the possibility of starting to release soundtrack albums from our library library using the Rhino handmade model within the Rhino, the TCM Rhino movie music joint venture. We started to do that and it was very, very successful. And it allowed us to bring albums out of music from movies that were not Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, singing, you know, the most famous, famous, famous. But things were, if we sold 2,000 units and we kept the cost low, it was a big win for everyone. And most importantly, we were getting the music out there and preserving it. So that was a whole new layer to keeping the music going because the joint venture for music started in 1996. So now we're six years into it.

Most of the big titles had already been released, which also included some more at the time, modern and recent films, things like Poltergeist, you know, it wasn't just, you know, really old movies, but it was from that part of the library. So we started to release these. They were very successful. And I went to a Warner Home Video meeting with a bunch of these CDs under my arm. And I ran into Jim Wetherich, who at the time was, I think his title was that he was the executive director or VP of online, Warner Brothers Online, and, you know, which was a, you know, the internet was still very nascent for transactions and so forth and so on. Jim is now, of course, the president of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment and has been for many years and is an incredible individual, both professionally and personally. He's an amazing man.

Right. But he was fascinated by this business model when I explained what these CDs under my arm were. He said, I've got to come up with a way that we could do something like that for DVD. Because at the time, about 4,000 movies and other programs had been released by Warner Home Video on VHS and beta. had been released by Warner Home Video on VHS and beta, but the DVD number was far smaller and was going to grow. But around that time, somebody had written a book, and maybe it's more than that. I don't claim to be an expert on these things,

I don't claim to be an expert on these things, but the term of the long tail, long tail marketing, the deep library, the stuff that is very, very specific in interest. How do you market the long tail? This phrase was very much a hot button thought at the moment. And Jim said, I've got to find out a way to really where we could do something like that. That would allow us to take advantage of our library since it's the industry's largest. Right. And I said, I'm with you all the way. I think it's a great idea.

Whenever you figure out how you're going to do it, I will provide you with the programming. So that was around 2002. And over the next, I'd say, three or four years, I would run into Jim in the hall, you know, or at meetings and whatnot. Or he'd be having lunch and whatnot. And he said, I'm still trying to figure this whatnot. I'm still trying to figure this out. I'm still trying to figure this out. He was obsessed because, and this is while in the meantime, he was doing amazing things, growing in his executive portfolio within the organization. It was probably, I think, 2006 that he gave a demonstration of using a manufacturing on demand model where DVDs would be made on demand based on a consumer ordering them. And at the time we had an online shop, WB shop. And the concept was the consumer would see

the film available. They would order it. WB shop would ship it to them. And it was basically, basically custom manufacture. The other thing that made this very, very attractive to us, The other thing that made this very, very attractive to us, aside from it being a good business model that could bring in some incremental revenue, we really didn't have any idea what it would grow into becoming. of people both in the industry and talent as well as you know joe smith usa wanting a specific copy of something on dvd that wasn't available you know if you've got a filmmaker or an actor that desperately wants a copy of something on dvd and we're sorry it's not available. Isn't there some way that you could make one? And I was like, well, it's very complicated. You just can't do that. So we basically were looking at this idea that Jim had

and how to do it. Management gave it in the thumbs up and said, go for it. At the time, I think we had just split off the organization into Warner Home Video and Warner Brothers Digital Distribution. So this was a project of the digital distribution portion of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment. Okay. The digital distribution team was a whole different group of people. They were exploring what was brand new with movies on iTunes and things like that. So in a sense, we were creating physical products, but using the infrastructure of the digital division. division was very nimble and creative and excited to be changing things, making things differently and finding new ways to solve old problems and to do so profitably and efficiently.

So from that, you know, you've got a green light in 2006. We were planning to launch the business in 2008. And I had selected 100 feature films that had never been available on DVD before. Some of them, I'd say probably half had been out on VHS before. But I basically had two qualifications. The first qualification is that the master had to be in the proper aspect ratio for the widescreen film. It had to be presented widescreen. And then the other strata was that we had to be able to provide good quality. And that is not that easy to do if you're using masters that are just sitting around on the shelf. There weren't a lot of them. So I was going through looking at hundreds and hundreds of titles to see if the masters would qualify.

And I finally came up with a list of 100 titles. And we were going to get ready to launch in the summer of 2008. And we didn't know what we were going to call the business. We were even going to call it, you know, Warner Vault. And that sounded a little bit too much like Walt Disney. So we didn't pursue that route. And we finally came up with Warner Archive Collection. I don't remember exactly who came up with the name. It wasn't me. I wish I could take credit for that. But that was the name that we came out with. And we tried a lot of different companies were in this business of manufacturing on demand.

And we tried a lot of different partners and had samples from about 21 companies. And most of them were not very good. But we found one company that was really exceptional. And they were ultimately who we decided to go with. By the time we were ready to launch, the holidays were approaching. And our launch date was March 23rd, 2009. And indeed we did launch on March 23rd, 2009, but not with a hundred movies, but 150 movies, because at the last minute, you know, I was told we need to make this offering more robust. We need another 50 movies. we need to make this offering more robust.

We need another 50 movies. And I had a lot of late nights, you know, going through and finding the right things and also trying to not, there couldn't be any cannibalization. They had to be all new to DVD things that had never been out before and things that would have an audience. Right. And we had some limitations. These discs that we manufactured on demand could only be movies that were less than two

hours long because the process at the time could only use what is known as a DVD5. The process at the time could only use what is known as a DVD-5. If people are listening and they're not familiar with this term, a DVD-9, a dual layer disc that could hold basically twice the amount of content. So there wasn't a way for us to use DVD-9s when we launched the business. That came, I'd say, probably within the first year. It wasn't a possibility when we launched. So we had the 150 titles and we were ready to launch on March 23rd. We were all set with the WB shop ready to promote. We hired a good friend of mine who I miss very much, the late Debbie Reynolds. miss very much the late Debbie Reynolds. We hired her to be our spokesperson and to go on the Today Show with Hoda and Kathy, I think it was at the time. It was 2009. Since Debbie had starred in

three or four of the movies among the 150 that we released, and I have known her or had known her at that point for probably over 10, 15 years. We were good friends and it just worked out wonderfully. And that same night that we announced, you know, with Debbie on the Today Show during the day, we hit the wire with the press and lots of articles were written. During the day, we hit the wire with the press and lots of articles were written. And I went back and looked at some of those old articles just the other day. And I got a kick out of how revolutionary this is going to be because it would provide another factor that we haven't discussed. And that is that one of the problems, whether it be video cassette, DVD, Blu-ray, or any kind of physical product, this goes for books and records as well. You have to estimate what you're going to ship into the store and hope it all sells through. You don't want returned product that didn't sell.

And returns were always the bane of my existence in my career in home video. I remember, and this is a complete diversionary story, but it's funny. In my days at MGM, about three years into my days at MGM, MGM had been bought and sold so many times. MGM had been bought and sold so many times. And in one of those transactions, and this is the time I was the head of MGM Home Video, our distributor was none other than Warner Home Video. And that's how I got to know a lot of people at Warner Home Video. And I remember when the Michael Keaton Batman movie was going to have a sequel. And when they found out the title was going to be Batman Returns, the gentleman who was the head of sales at the time

just was horrified in a humorous way because he was dealing with so many returns of Batman video cassettes. Not that that wasn't a huge hit. Of course it was. But people always would ship out too much. So you didn't have a problem with returns with this business model. If someone ordered a title, we would make it, we would ship it, we would sell it, and that's the end of it. And you don't have to worry about returns. So that night, the 23rd of March, I was on a chat on the Holmes Theater Forum, a wonderful website that I recommend to everybody.

They're still roaring strong. But at the time, we had previously done a chat every year. It's something that has been basically made antique by social media and whatnot or Reddit and things like that. But basically, we would do a chat on the home theater forum once a year where consumers would ask us questions and we would answer them. And that night we announced the whole program and it was a surprise to everybody and people didn't know what it meant. And people were trying to get their arms wrapped around it. And there was a lot of excitement. There was some trepidation from certain people who thought it was like the way you make a DVD or would make a DVD on your computer, you know, when you burn a DVD or whatever. The technology was similar, but the media used was far more complex and sturdy and durable.

And the irony of it is, now I'm looking back, it's 2021 now, this is 2009, we had far more problems with people having defective discs that were replicated and pressed than we did people getting defective discs that had been burned. However, the burned disc was looked upon as a second-class citizen by a lot of people. And we needed to overcome that. However, that was the small part of the reaction. The majority of the reaction was joy and what could be made available and what could we do. That was very, very exciting.

And so we had a release schedule where we were releasing like 30 titles a month. And we were a staff of three. And then I had my own regular full-time job, you know, as head of catalog marketing for Warner Home Video. So I was really running two shifts. And I will clarify that by this time, the Rhino TCM Soundtrack Joint Venture, it hadn't ended yet, but we had not produced any new CDs in many years by that time. So I didn't have that to deal with. And I and, and I was full time at Warner home video, you know, after those few years at Turner that I was referring to, just to keep the story straight for everybody.

Yeah. And I came on in 2007, which is kind of like the heyday, you know, it's like the peak. You came at the pinnacle. I came at the pinnacle. Right. And part of that is the reason was, is they were, you know, you guys, you were mining the catalog, whether it was TV or kids in animation, which I did a lot of, we were doing the old Jetsons. We were doing, you know, all of the old catalog television animation. I mean,

there was just so much that was being done at that time. It was just a wealth of content and trying to figure out, you know, how to get it out there to the fans. It was a great time to be working at Warner Brothers. That's for sure. And you just had your hands in so much. And what was interesting as well was that we started out with 150 feature films and then we added 30 the next month and 30 the next month. And it's very funny because I think we ended up in that first year releasing probably about 700 movies, maybe. 700 movies, maybe. But in August of that year, we had a subset of releases that were built on made for television movies from the 70s. And I was unfortunately and painfully aware that these were very popular in bootlegging circles. So if there's a demand,

why not make the real thing available legitimately instead of some kind of homemade, made in the basement, copied off of television, that kind of thing. So by the end of our first year, we had expanded not only to made for television movies and miniseries, but we had also started to add some animated programming. And we were on the precipice of where we could go if we got more creative we started to do double features we started to do i'm trying to remember the exact month but sometime in the middle of 2010 we had perfected

the ability to release movies uh it might have been at the very end of the year, I believe, we had perfected the ability to release movies on a dual layer disc, a DVD 9. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner archive and Warner brothers catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. So George, in our previous discussion of the origins of the Warner Archive,

you took us through the very successful launch with the spokesperson, Debbie Reynolds, and then a very well-received first year where you launched literally hundreds of titles. But then you started to run into some issues in that second year. Tell us about that transition. Well, the whole way that we were building the business was to try to fill in the holes and blanks of things that had been released on VHS, but weren't available on DVD. And where there were good quality masters in existence that were on the shelf that we could make available to the consumer through this new mechanism and bring incremental revenue into the company.

And more profits is always a good thing. So the first year was more of a success than anybody could have ever dreamed. And as we're heading into year two, we were in a little bit of a bind. And that is that I had made a commitment with this business that we would never release a film that wasn't in the proper aspect ratio. If a film was widescreen, we would certainly not release a pan and scan version. And we wouldn't release a non-anamorphic four by three letterbox version that basically creates like a postage stamp on a 16 by nine television, if you know what I mean. Right.

Because you got black on the top and the bottom and the sides and doesn't look good. We needed anamorphic 16 by 9 masters. And Warner Brothers started mastering in the 16 by 9 format in the mid nineties. I'll say around 1994, 1995, when 16 by nine television were basically just starting to appear in the market. They were not high definition, but they were 16 by nine widescreen. So they were really set for the future, but they weren't catching on. However, the Warner folks, and I was not with the company at the time, were starting to think ahead to the need for 16 by 9, but not thinking that far ahead to when, by definition, it would come along.

thinking that far ahead to when, by definition, it would come along. Now, conversely, Turner, which had not yet been bought by Time Warner, was not doing any mastering in 16x9. This is in the mid-90s. If a film was widescreen, they did it in a 4x3 letterbox, and that served the market as it was then. I, years later, questioned an executive who was with Turner and moved to Warner Brothers. And that was at the time that I was arriving at Warner Brothers. And I said, why was there no mastering done at 16x9? And he said, we knew high definition was coming.

So why have to do it twice? Let's wait until the high definition is here. And that's when we would make the move to 16x 9, which I thought was a very wise business decision. either MGM or RKO to a small degree, that were in the Turner Entertainment Company library, which became part of Warner Brothers as of October 1996 with the purchase of Turner Broadcasting. There were all these films where there were no 16x9 anamorphic masters. If a film was in Letterboxd for, let's say it was a 2-3-5 aspect ratio letterbox, it would be a letterbox inside a 4 by 3 square.

So if you're watching it on a 16 by 9 television in 2010, it wouldn't look very good. So I didn't know how we were going to solve this. And we made an arrangement with Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging to start remastering these films for DVD release. We were very proud about that because it was a big step. It was a big financial commitment. And looking back retroactively, I wish we had had the support to be able to do these masters all the way to Blu-ray perfection.

But we didn't have the budget to do that, and we couldn't even think about Blu-ray at that point. And ironically, there have been films where we have remastered them twice because we did a remaster to DVD specs. We did a remaster to DVD specs. That was acceptable, but the masters still had, we cleaned them up a little bit. We spent a very significant amount of money on them. And those masters were done, quote unquote, in high definition. But they were not intended to be viewed that way.

They were intended to be viewed only on DVD and standard definition, not unlike the compression when you're streaming something or watching something that's beamed up and down from a satellite that can hide a myriad of things. All right. So these masters, they were not perfect, but they were a huge step up from what had been available previously. And that was something that we were very, very happy about, very proud of. And we put a little red band at the top of the packaging

saying new remastered edition. So this initiative was very successful and people were really, really excited to be able to get these films. And meanwhile, this is really at the same time that Blu-ray was starting to make more of an impact in catalog. So it was kind of like a double-edged sword. We thought we were doing a favor for the consumer by making all these films available, making them available in the best aspect ratio.

And they were available on DVD. At that point, the Blu-ray market was still very high end and very, very expensive. Right. So, George, how did you then decide what to release next? Since I started in the video business, I've been getting, and of course it changed with the move away from snail mail to email and then social media. Consumers were always requesting, when will you release this? When will you release that? This is still

happening today. It's just they express it through social media or, you know, our Facebook page, so forth and so on. But at the time, people were sending in letters and doing things like that. So we started our Facebook page in 2010 and gave consumers an opportunity to voice what they thought they might want released. And I had a pretty good sense of what I thought would do well. And if we were going to be remastering movies, that was going to add a pretty hefty expense to our activities. So we needed to be very careful that the films that we remastered were going to sell so we could continue on. And in fact, that's exactly what happened. Things continued to do well. And at the same time,

we also were successful in our ability to be able to use dual-layer disks so that we could have a DVD-9 which can hold comfortably. I say that comfortably because I like a good bit right and not having the image compromised. We could handle, you know, over three hours and change of content on a dual layer disc. So that meant the programming of television series was much more practical. And then we started to add collections of films

we put together like cowboy collections of Saturday morning matinee movies that kids in the 40s and 50s used to go to the movie theater before television, you know, and see Tim Holt and Johnny Mac Brown. So there is a fan base for these movies. And the fan base was a lot older than the fan base for some of our other product. But we wanted to be the source for everybody. Whatever your particular interest was, we were going to provide that. So we also then started releasing television series,

whereas the theatrical catalog had already been very deeply mined. The television and animation catalogs had only been skimmed on the surface to the very, very most famous things. Obviously, the Flintstones were out, you know, and the original Jetsons and Top Cat and so forth and so on. But things like, as an example, Speed Buggy or Goober and the Ghost Chasers, you know, these kind of barbaric shows that lasted one season. Well, people wanted those and they became part of our mix. And then we went into cult shows like Time Tracks, then even some major series, like we did all seven seasons of Medical Center with Chad Everett and all nine seasons of the FBI

with Efrem Zimbalist Jr. Meanwhile, we're coming out with these great movies, great TV shows, and really going deep into the library. And of course, imitation is the highest form of flattery. It actually took, I think, a year before another studio tried to do what we were doing. And within two years, every studio, I think with the exception of Disney and Paramount, every other studio had some kind of program like we had, but they did not have the same reach that we had. And they did not have the direct dialogue with consumers that we had. We were very proud and remain that way of our ability to, you know, listen to what the consumer said. And the consumer could write a question on our Facebook page and find out why a certain title wasn't available or if it was in the works. And, you know, we would

occasionally run into something where we'd start on something and find out there was something wrong with the film and then not be able to come out with it. And then people would get all angry and say, but you promised, you know, well, you can't keep everybody happy. But now talking about the business, as we're getting six months away from the 13th

anniversary, there's over 3,500 releases available from the Warner Archive collection. And the biggest thing for me personally, aside from getting all this content into the hands of people that wanted it, was when we tried and succeeded to do what I thought we'd never be able to do at the time, and that was Blu-ray. Because when Blu-ray was introduced around 2006, 2007, the motto of Blu-ray was the look and sound of perfect. And the idea was that with standard definition, if there was like dirt on the master or scratches or damage, standard definition could hide a myriad of sins. High definition exposed those flaws without taking any prisoners. So if we were going to put movies out on Blu-ray, just as I insisted that we put things out in

proper aspect ratio, our Blu-rays had to be top notch, highest quality, no dirt, no speckles, no scratches. And we started in 2012. Our first three releases were Gypsy, The Hudsucker Proxy, and Death Trap. And we moved very slowly into Blu-ray because we had to find the right masters. And we didn't have the budget at the time to master from scratch and give the consumer a class A master with the very, very best quality from the beginning. What we were doing at that time was taking what were ostensibly A-level masters that had been done for DVD, and they were in high definition, and they were done with substantial budgets, but they needed to have additional cleanup work done. And we did that work. And our Blu-ray business really, really started to take off when we started to reinvest in the business. We always reinvested in the business.

We always reinvested in the business. But we started to remaster from original film elements from scratch, from the get-go, and create beautiful masters. And the title selection also broadened. And our ability to bring films out that I didn't think would be possible became possible. So 2016 was kind of the breakthrough year for Blu-ray. And we released Hitchcock films in Blu-ray, Count on the Hot Tin Roof with Elizabeth Taylor, John Wayne in John Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, an outstanding restoration.

It was just some of the films that we released in 2016. The one thing I didn't mention is that when we started, we had not particularly attractive templated packaging. And we had no menus and we had templated labels. And now we probably for the last, I'd say, close to 10 years, the covers are the original theatrical key art, which I'm very particular about because people love seeing the original campaign. And we have four color labels and we're very proud of our presentations and we want to give the consumer a high quality product. George, the whole Warner Archive initiative has been quite different from how other studios have gone about releasing their catalog. Maybe you can tell us a bit about that. Whereas most studios have chosen to sub-license their catalog titles to little boutique companies, Warner Archive is the little boutique company that Warner Brothers owns.

Right. Well, I call it the boutique within the behemoth. And because we had developed various efficiencies of process, we kept learning. And eventually, we were even able to do animation and do things like we put together a tech savory collection of restored cartoons that blew people away. We also did the same with the color Popeye cartoons and we went back to the original nitrate negative. And we have done a great deal more of releasing Blu-rays where the source element is a 4K scan of the original camera negative because we've been synchronizing our efforts with the preservation and restoration department. So if they were scanning the original negative and working on a restoration, original negative and working on a restoration, I was there by their side guiding it through. Only we would take it to the next step instead of a raw scan. We would do the color and the cleanup work and the audio work to create a wonderful release. So now as we approach the end of 2021, we have, I think, over 350 Blu-ray

releases. And they've really been a good representative of the gamut of what our library represents and all the cool stuff that's in it. And each year has been better than the year before. We've always been profitable and profits increase every year. And this is in an era where people are saying, well, physical media is dying. Well, for these kinds of films and short subjects and television shows or whatever it is, we have found the audience and been able to connect with the audience. And it is beyond gratifying to me when I read the reviews and people are talking about the wonderful quality of the work that is represented in these discs. And I have to give credit where credit is due. The reason for this are what I call the wizards of ours.

And they are the colorists and scanners and all the other employees at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging, who are so expert at their craft that they help make these masters so beautiful. And the discs are really something I'm extraordinarily proud of. Another thing that I think is worth mentioning is how the Warner Archive has had such a significant impact with such a small team within Warner Home Entertainment. This has really been kind of the shocker. I remember when someone from a competitive studio came to visit us for lunch, you know, and at the time we were up on the eighth floor of our building and they thought that the floor underneath us was where our, you know, several dozen employees were. And they realized that there are basically three of us. We've always had a tiny team, but dedicated and passionate and really listening to what the fans want.

And it's both gratifying and frustrating. Gratifying because we've made so many people happy. I myself am a rabid disc collector and I know what I want. I myself am a rabid disc collector and I know what I want and I know what other people who have different interests than I want. And some of our very best special releases have been films that aren't things that are my personal interest, but it's never been about my personal interest. It's about what do the people want and how do we please the most broad group of people and also still stay within our lane of not interfering with the main business. And the reality is, it was sometime about five, six years ago that you stopped seeing older films on Blu-ray in stores. Very, very few of them were available in stores. They're available on Amazon, they're available in mail order. And that's a

really important part of the whole Warner Archive story that frankly, I should have mentioned earlier. And that is we started distributing our product only through the Warner Brothers shop, which is now long out of business. But within the first year, we were doing business with almost every dot-com e-tailer that there is, whether it's Amazon or BestBuy.com, Walmart.com, Barnes & Noble.com, Bull Moose.com, Via Balik.com, Moviesunlimited.com. I should mention everybody, right? You know, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to shortchase it. Shop TCM.com and Critics Choice Video. All the dot coms lined up and became customers of Warner Archive. And it's been run totally separately from the main mothership business. But we also provide benefits to the rest of the company because when we create these new

masters, they eventually also are seen on HBO Max or TCM or both, or on other streaming services or on other television outlets. I mean, these become new assets in modernizing our library. And this is a critical thing that needs to happen. And it's something that I'm fiercely devoted to because film preservation is at the core of my being. And making sure that these things become available is equally as important. Well, I hope you enjoyed this remix episode on the history of the Warner Archive. And as a reminder, we do have a number of archived podcasts with George Feltenstein

talking about his career in the home entertainment industry. So I will have links to those on our website at www.theextras.tv. Or you can go through the podcast episodes and look for episodes six through eight, which I'll start with the title Classic Hollywood with George Feltenstein. If you're on social media, be sure and follow the show on Facebook or Twitter at The Extras TV or Instagram at TheExtras.TV to stay up to date on our upcoming guests and to be a part of our community. And you're invited to a new Facebook group for fans of Warner Brothers films called the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog Group.

So look for that link on the Facebook page or in the podcast show notes. And for our long-term listeners, don't forget to follow and leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast provider. Until next time, you've been listening to Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed. The Extras is a production of Otaku Media, producers of podcasts, behind the scenes extras, and media that connects creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals at www.otakumedia.tv or look for the link in the show notes.