Talk:Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

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It's quite bizarre that this show has never been re-broadcast in its entirety, especially considering how wildly popular it was during its initial run, when it was a pop-culture phenomenon. Since it went off in the air in 1978, however, it has only returned to the US airwaves four times.

1) 1980? A few episodes were shown by ABC in the 11:30 PM time-slot. However, the kidnapping of American hostages in Iran resulted in the creation of "Nightline" (called at that time "America Held Hostage"), which took over the time-slot and then stayed on the air forever.

2) 1983 The show was offered in syndication, and was broadcast by a number of major-market UHF stations, but it was treated like "filler", much the same way old shows like "Hogan's Heroes" were used. It was generally broadcast in the 11:00 or 11:30 PM slot, and not promoted very well. Consequently, the ratings were mediocre, and most stations dropped it after a few months.

3) 1992? The cable channel Lifetime started showing two episodes a night on Saturday nights, but since the show was designed for five-episodes-a-week, it was difficult to keep audiences interested with just a few shows a week, and they dropped it after a few months.

4) 2001? TV Land created the "Kitschen" format, and showed the first 30 episodes, but then stopped. When fans complained, they were told by TV Land that Sony (which owns the show) was charging more for the subsequent episodes, and the ratings they'd gotten didn't justify the commitment of programming or $$.

So, it seems that Sony is pricing the show out of the budget of most cable channels. One can only wonder why they're holding onto it, instead of allowing the episodes to be aired and then to build up a new audience.

It will probably also be a very long time before Sony puts the show on DVD, since there's no audience clamoring for it, and it would be difficult to market it, given that there are 325 episodes, and no real "seasons" to cut it up into chunks.

Alas, I suspect that those of us who love and treasure MHMH will all die out before it finally sees the light of TV again.

It was on Bravo (the Canadian channel) for a while in the mid-90s, along with Fernwood 2-Night and Soap. Really great shows all -- glad to see MH2 is going to be on DVD (but all 325 episodes? -- that'll be a big collection).The Invisible Man 18:06, 13 March 2007 (UTC)