Car 54, Where Are You? comes to DVD, and TV Shows on DVD was there fir--uh, sec--uh, well, at least fourth or fifth

Great, great news came yesterday in this TV Shows on DVD item about one of the great sitcoms of all time finally hitting DVD. Only, it was not a secret that "Car 54" was coming in 2011, nor even what company was releasing it. If you only read TV Shows on DVD, yeah, this item was news. But the "rumor" (it seems demeaning to call it that now since it was true) was out there at places like Home Theater Forum for months.'

TV Shows on DVD is great at reprinting press releases, and lately it's been giving credit to the readers who do the legwork of finding tips on Facebook or whatever. But as far as digging out material on the more obscure shows that interest me, well, the site is useful as confirmation when the company wants to give it the official info, but many of the really cool releases of the last several years have leaked out long before TV Shows on DVD reported them.

On Home Theater Forum, there is a contentious poster who has a way of getting under people's skin sometimes, but you know what? He has great info, particularly about the smaller DVD companies like, say, Timeless, and he shares it when he can. When he posted that "Car 54" was coming, albeit based on secondhand info, I knew it was true.

The reason I bring this all up is because of this paragraph TV Shows on DVD appended to the press release of the "Car 54" Season 1 set:

NOTE: The formal press release posted above is ALL of the official information now available about this upcoming release. In past months readers have pointed us toward many rumors printed online about this item, and when we've turned to the studio to confirm such info, we were informed that they gossip was, by and large, not correct. For that reason we aren't going to point more readers to the wrong info that's floating around, but instead wholly concentrate our news posts on the factual information provided directly to us from Shanachie Entertainment. - TVShowsOnDVDTaken from: http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/news/Car-54-Season-1-Press-Release/14743#ixzz16k6evzgX

Maybe I am reading too much into this, but this strikes me as a bit self-righteous considering all the site did was run a press release. And what exactly was this "gossip"? Maybe I had read somewhere the whole season would come in one swoop. Well, this is only one season, so, yeah, that's sort of disappointing. But the fact is, people said the set was coming, and it IS coming. This is the only item listed on the site about this particular show. If TV Shows on DVD was getting tips about "Car 54," why did it run nothing? Maybe some bits of info were incorrect, but still, TV Shows on DVD didn't even confirm that at least the show was on the way.

It doesn't strike me as much of an accomplishment that now we get to read a press release directly from the company, and that the site spared us from harmful "gossip" for so many weeks. I didn't really want gossip, but an item on the status of this show would have been nice. You'd think that when the site was asking Shanchie about this "gossip," it might have asked something like this:

"Hey, uh, so is this show coming out next year?"

I get that TV Shows on DVD wants to make its official sources happy. The problem with that is, there are a lot of sets that we don't hear anything about until the producer wants us to hear about them. That approach works well for the manufacturer, maybe, but if you want to know what's coming up, you have to look elsewhere, even if you risk coming across some gossip.