It’s only going to cost Disney the price of a new film scan and Lucasfilm may have done it already in the past decade.
Chances are good that they have. I’m not even sure what the hold-up would be, other than hesitation about the two TV movies not being considered good enough. They’re certainly better than a lot of the, say, B-grade 70s-80s Disney movies they’ve put up there (which I’m still happy to see made available!).
Dare I even ask what could be in The Muppet Show Disney feels they have to slap a disclaimer on?
Well, there are apparently some skits containing racial and/or cultural stereotypes that could be considered problematic. That was kind of standard fare for the time period, but as far as I know (I’ve only watched 2-3 episodes so far) there isn’t anything extremely bad - Marty Feldman in drag playing an Arabian Nights harem girl isn’t particularly culturally sensitive by today’s standards, but it’s not exactly blackface either. I think they’ve handled it the right way for today’s critical eye by not censoring the episodes and instead offering the disclaimer. I’m totally fine with that.
Disney did opt to leave particular episodes out: in particular, one episode featuring Chris Langham is missing. When you Google what he was convicted for in 2007, you will see that it was probably wise not to make it currently available for children to watch. I have to agree with this decision, despite my general feelings about censorship and desire for completeness of material. I believe the episode is/was available on DVD, so that satisfies the completeness aspect - but Disney+ is a more “living” sort of medium, and kids might tune in unsupervised. Again, I think they made the right call.
I guess copyright clearances are preventing other missing episodes from showing up, but they are working on that, and I expect they will show up eventually. That’s good news.
Overall, I think Disney has done well on this. It would be easier I’m sure to just say no to having The Muppet Show on there at all, so I applaud them for taking the more difficult road.
–SKot