Where's Dick Clark When You Need Him?

My recent searches for good music to use in an EFL classroom got me thinking a bit this morning, and I came up with what I think will be a good lesson to use with teenagers.

This lesson would begin by finding an old picture of kids dancing on one of the eight zillion dance shows that have been on TV over the years. My preference would be to use a picture from the Ur of all these shows, American Bandstand itself, because the kids would no doubt be dressed in outfits teenagers don't wear anymore, and it could be used to practice or elicit the form "used to", or at least a past-tense form that could be used to teach the form "used to".

From there, I could find (or make up) some kind of short text about American Bandstand--things about when and how it started, how long it was on TV, how many people watched it, etc. This could be a good reading comprehension activity.

This would then segue into a writing activity. I would explain that there's going to be a new American Bandstand (I could weave this into a text I wrote myself), and that they were going to compete to be on it. I could match up boys and girls and have them write a letter saying why they want to be on Bandstand. Or it could be an individual activity. Students would eventually present their letters to the class, followed by critique by me and their peers. At the end, I could announce a winner.

With this lesson plan in mind, I went looking for a picture of kids dancing on American Bandstand and couldn't find a good one. What pictures I could fnd were all too small and grainy to used in the classroom. I'd also like to find a picture in color (kids and teens don't seem to respond well to anything in black and white), but that may be hard if I wanted to use authentic period images of Bandstand.

Which made me think of another possibility: using still pictures from American Dreams, a show that was on NBC a few years back that centered around a teenage girl who was an audience member (and I think eventually a dancer) on Bandstand. This idea led to the possibility of using a video clip from the show, so I decided to look the program up on Amazon and see what a season set would cost.

This is not the first time I've looked into buying a season set of American Dreams. The last time I did it, three or four years ago, I wanted to buy it as a birthday or Father's Day gift for my father. But I thought the cost was outrageous--nearly $100--and so moved on (eventually I gave him the series set of Freaks and Geeks, which was almost as expensive).

From looking at Amazon today, I realized I don't understand at all how TV DVD sets are priced. At the time, I figured the American Dreams set was so expensive because the show had modern bands perform actual hits from the 1960s, and the show was probably spending a small (or large) fortune getting the rights to "Leader of the Pack" or "Soldier Boy" or whatever. But when I looked at the season set today, it was a mere $19.98.

Something is wrong here. If a show can be profitably sold for $19.98, I don't see how the market could ever have supported a price of $100. There seems not to be much rhyme or reason to the price of DVD season ( or series) sets.

For instance, as of this writing, The Mary Tyler Moore Show is being sold on Amazon for about $22 per season set. So to buy four seasons (so far, only seasons one through four, out of seven, have been released), a hard-core Mary Tyler Moore fan such as myself would pay about $90. At the same time, a single season of I Love Lucy goes for about $35--or you can buy a complete series set (comprising six seasons) for about $190.

This makes absolutely no sense. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was actually withdrawn from syndication in order to promote sales of the DVD sets. I Love Lucy, on the other hand, has never been off the air since it premiered in 1951--yep, that's right, every day since then, someone somewhere has gotten to see Lucy try to say "Vitameatavegamin." One would think, given these two facts, that Mary Tyler Moore sets would be more expensive than Lucy sets, since Mary Tyler Moore fans don't have other means of getting their fix.