Why did it take so long for the Adam West Batman TV show to come to home video?

The Home Video Release Adam West Batman TV Show in 2014

I remember seeing, in the days of VHS, that people paid hundreds of dollars (likely the equivalent of $400–$500 today, accounting for inflation) for taped copies of the complete Adam West Batman TV show, recorded off Canadian TV broadcasts. Tied up in a complex web of rights issues for nearly five decades, the show finally made it to official home video on November 11, 2014.

The primary obstacle to its release stemmed from the fact that the show was produced by Greenway Productions and 20th Century Fox Television, broadcast by ABC (owned by Disney since 1996), while the character of Batman is owned by DC Comics, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. These separate entities disputed who held the home video distribution rights, delaying any official release.

Additionally, securing clearances for the guest stars and their estates who appeared in various episodes was another legal hurdle.

Further complications arose from music rights, other production elements, and the technical challenge of digitally converting the original filmed episodes into a high-definition format. By 2014, however, everything finally came together—albeit decades too late to capitalize on the peak home video buying era of the 1980s-2000s, which generated hundreds of millions for production companies that could sell off copies of their back catalogs of TV shows and movies. Nevertheless, the release arrived just in time—before the rise of online streaming and piracy brought the home video revenue boom to an end.

Adam West - Batman for all time

Batman Adam West the Complete TV Show