Originally posted by: Gaffer Tape
Wait. Why would they show the sequels and not Star Wars itself?

I don't know, but I'm pretty sure I'm remembering it correctly.

The possible reasons I can think up, given what I know now, are:

-tv rights issues ensuing from ANH being owned by fox and the sequels being owned by LFL

-the "incredible shrinking ratio" problem on ANH, although I find this unlikely because scifi channel's been around since not too long before when the DC laserdiscs were made.

-so that scifi could show the two movies back to back in prime time. All three movies would be a little much.

I also seem to recall years earlier, circa '93, seeing a commercial on scifi channel saying they were going to show both the pan n' scan and letterboxed versions of all three movies, but I might not be remembering that commercial correctly.

See why I finally decided to join after lurking for the better part of this year?