Product Description

Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 09/20/2005 Run time: 660 minutes Rating: Nr

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9944 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2005-05-24
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Portuguese
• Number of discs: 3
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 659 minutes

Amazon.com
With its shaky five-season tenure (1995-99) including a dozen different time slots and only one major Emmy nomination, the outstanding NewsRadio is the atypical sitcom of its age. While most of the '90s sitcoms were based around a single big name talent (Jerry Seinfeld, Candice Bergen, Drew Carrey), NewsRadio came from the same stock from earlier shows Taxi and Cheers: a relatively unknown cast that rarely ventured away from the place of business. These first 29 episodes (7 as a mid-season replacement the first year), deliver a consistently hilarious show about the day-to-day life with the eccentric staff of New York radio station WNYX. Creator Paul Simms (The Larry Sanders Show) built a talented cast relying on expert delivery and character traits instead of goofy situations. The most famous cast member, Saturday Night Live's Phil Hartman, went against the grain of most SNL veterans and gleefully took a supporting role, the pompous, silver-tongued anchor Bill McNeal. The lead--the glue--of the series is Kids in the Hall member Dave Foley as the earnest new station manager, Dave Nelson. Soft but eager, Nelson plays lion-tamer delicately maneuvering around staff to keep the station humming along. This is complicated from the get-go when he falls into a secret, but very cute affair with Lisa (Maura Tierney), the ace reporter.

The station, like Mary Tyler Moore's TV crew two decades earlier, has a good balance between funny folks and just plain whackos. The former includes Stephen Root as the rich yet time-crunched owner, Joe Rogan as the fix-it man, and Khandi Alexander as Bill's tart co-anchor. The latter is embodied in Andy Dick as the helpless Matthew, a sublime airhead whose comic highjinks are often the show's hardest laughs, and Vicki Lewis, continuing the famous TV tradition of the lovable ditzy secretary that knows all. But the legacy of the show belongs to Hartman who tragically died after the fourth season. His comic bravura is balanced with the ability to play the fool. In one perfect scene, Lisa walks by with only a bra on (don't ask) and Bill doesn't move, reading his newspaper. Lisa returns to slap him anyway, shocking him. "I didn't say anything." Lisa retorts, "You were thinking it" and walks away. Hartman eases into a juicy, soft smile and returns to reading, "Well, that's fair."

If you're not a fan of commentary tracks, you won't find the love and care that went into this DVD set. There are commentaries on 20 of the 27 episodes with the cast and crew rotating duties. The nice thing about a cast full of comics is that the commentaries are very funny and rewarding for fans. We hear about the casting of the show, Foley's uncanny ability to memorize a script, the art of the archaic reference, and how the fix-it man was--for the half the pilot--Ray Romano. But if you don't have time for the commentaries, watch and laugh hard at the 10-minute (!) gag reel. --Doug Thomas

Customer Reviews

Hysterically funny and underrated.
NewsRadio was part of NBC's Must See TV on Thursdays, and Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, and Sundays. Basically, if there was a hole in the schedule this workhorse was plugged in. Unfortunately, that also led to quite a bit of viewer frustration since it was hard to find the series at times.

This set brings together the first two seasons. It starts off with Dave (Dave Foley) being hired as the new Program Director for a New York all news radio station. First, he has to fire the old PD, and make nice with the reporter (Maura Tierney) who wanted the job.

Some of the early episodes only hint at what the characters would become. Jimmy James (Stephen Root) starts out far less wacky than the character became by the fifth season. Phil Hartman's Bill McNeil was brilliant out the blocks. Matthew (Andy Dick) was annoying right from the beginning. MIA from the pilot is Joe Garrelli (Joe Rogan) who joined in the second episode.

Overall, NewsRadio was a great show that never got the recognition it deserved from NBC. Fortunately, it gets a new lease on life thatnks to a very reasonably priced DVD set.

The release date has been changed. The creator of the show heard about the DVD set and called the company to make sure that he was able to add extras to the discs. Now, instead of a bare-banes compilation there will be commentary tracks, out-takes and other extras.

An Update on the DVD release Part 1
According to something posted to the newsgroup

[Excerpted from the latest NewsRadio Newsletter message.]

I know you're all wanting an update on the forthcoming NewsRadio DVD release, and while I don't have a release date for you, I can tell you that 20 episode commentaries for the set have been completed with a mix and match of participants, including Paul Simms, Dave Foley, Stephen Root, Maura Tierney, Andy Dick, Vicki Lewis, Joe Rogan, Khandi Alexander, Josh Lieb, Brad Issacs, Joe Furey, Lew Morton, Brian Kelley, Julie Bean, Kent Zbornak, Tom Cherones, Brad Grey, and yes, former NBC President Warren Littlefield.

Kent Zbornak, one of NewsRadio's producers, had the job of coordinating it all, and the show's erstwhile script supervisor, Robert Spina, sat in on the sessions and took photos

Paul Simms has promised some additional musings on the recording of the commenataries, but right now he'll say, "In short? It was incredibly fun."

An anonymous member of the NewsRadio team adds, "It was a reunion and a revisiting in the purest sense. The commentary was funny and twisted, just like the show itself."

The NewsRadio Newsletter"

update. .sell sorta
On October 18th Dave Foley was on The Screensavers on G4TechTV. He stated in the interview that they just got done with the final touches on the series release and should ship before the end of the year. He also mentioned that he doesn't have a whole lot to do with the release date, but mentioned it was coming. Man I just cannot wait to see this show again. I watch it everynight back to back, that's right an hours worth every night, when they showed reruns on one of the odd stations. Anyways I just thought I'd throw that out there. Oh and i check the show note and they didn't put it in there, but there was a little blurb about The kids in the Hall.