Forgot to include one bit of coping that I’d dreamed up, because it’s already been thoroughly dashed. I too was thinking about a Buffy revival, some sort of reboot or franchise-ification™ of the property. Not because I was excited about what they’d do with the Buffyverse (meh), but because it would improve the odds of a studio cash-in on the originals.
The thinking was Veronica Mars. That has got the be the g****mned easiest show on Earth for such a cash-in. It’s already available in HD, so just have an intern mock up some disc art, press some discs and bam. Minimal effort going in, and it’s like printing money at that point. And then something actually happened, they made the movie! That was the surest, easiest, product tie-in possible… except they didn’t. The movie came, the movie went, and you’re still stuck with DVDs for the series. And Buffy is a considerably harder property to do an HD remaster for than that.
Yeah that was a shame. I know some of those involved with the show wanted it done too and also hoped that that time might make it ripe, but those with the power at the time at WB were just simply not interested at all and fed similar kind of nonsense reasons even to those deeply involved in the show itself. Now I do believe there has been some good deal of turn over at WB, so who knows now… but back at the time you mentioned, those with the power were almost bizarrely not into putting it out in HD.