What I've been doing all month in anticipation for this release is watch one Sesame Street News segment at sesamestreet.org per day since the first of january. It's been a bit fun. And of course I've put a note about it in my signature, altering it slightly as the release approaches sooner (and once it's out I'll probably make a note of that in my signature for a week and then remove it).
I have seen a number of Sesame Street DVD releases in stores a week before the offcial release date (among them The Street We Live On, Let's Play Games, Imagine with Me, and Elmo Loves You... I feel like there's another release I found an early copy of, but I'm not sure). Most of those releases I found at my local best buy (the only early copies I bought were Let's Play Games and Imagine with Me). So for pretty much every day this week I'll be visiting some stores to see if I can find early copies of this. But if any of you find a copy early (or if you ordered the DVD and your copy arrives before tuesday) will you please let me know what news segments appear on the DVD?
I've said it before, but I find it odd that Kermit appears on the cover in his trenchcoat if the segments are just bonus features. I saw a press release that mentioned it, though, but I wonder if maybe one or two will be part of the main program and the others among the bonus features. I'm sure this will be available for download on iTunes, but does iTunes include the bonus segments that appear on its releases of Sesame Street DVDs? Makes me wonder how people would think if they see the cover at iTunes, get excited about Kermit being in it, and then get disapointed because the Kermit segments don't appear on the iTunes release.
Louis Henry Mithcell, one of the people responsible for getting permission to use Kermit on the cover, thought it was important to get Kermit on the cover. But The Best of Kermit on Sesame Street is the only Sesame Street video from the era when Henson owned all the characters that included Kermit on the packaging. Big Bird's Storytime and I'm Glad I'm Me would have been appropriate releases to have included Kermit on the cover, but he wasn't (it makes sense that he wasn't on the cover of Big Bird's Story Time, but then again, Big Bird wasn't on the original cover, either, unless you count the illustrated Big Bird that held the main image on the original "My Sesame Street Home Video" releases, and that part of those covers was dropped in later Random House releases).
I think that Mitchell said in his MuppetCast interview that when Disney initially rejected they told him they could use any existing Kermit photos Sesame Workshop had but Sesame Workshop was using digital photos for its covers and they didn't have any digital photos of Kermit. I think that if they couldn't get a new Kermit photo they could have had put an existing Kermit image on the book Elmo holds in the cover. Maybe show Elmo reading a newspaper instead and have the front image be of Kermit interviewing a fairy tale character or characters.
While it's great that we're getting a DVD release of Sesame Street News segments (I hope all of them are new-to-DVD), it would have been great if it were to also include other classic storytime sketches from the show. Like Mosnterpiece Theater, any of the various segments where one of the humans would read a story acted out by the Muppets, the sketch where Ernie (as Robin Hood) looked for Merry Men, the sketch where Snow White counts dwarves, or the three-part "The Boy, The Girl, and the Jellybeans" (not sure whether that one had a human narrarator). But I'm fine with Sesame Street News being the only classic element of this. I hope it can lead to more similar releases, with multiple additions of classic recurring segments as bonus features (if not DVDs themed around the recurring segments).
Finally, I'd like to point out that in addition to Sesame Street News, the bonus features will include an animated short called Grover Makes a Wish. I wonder if maybe that will be the book-and-DVD I've seen in stores called A Wish for Grover. Or if maybe it existed in Sesame English or one of those other short-form international animated Sesame Street shows.
EDIT: Oh, and shameless plug time: In honor of this release I wrote a Muppet Mindset article on the top 15 Sesame Street News segments. I wonder if any on my list will be included.
http://themuppetmindset.blogspot.com/2011/01/sesame-street-saturdays-top-15-sesame.html