Yeah that's why I asked earlier if there's a full WMAR dvd still out there. I'd like to compare the commercials to the ones off groups, because these while pretty damn good do seem to have been re-encoded after being taken off the dvd.

I haven't read the new McQuarrie stuff yet, but from the big article in Filmfax the main issue that seems to have been the kiss of death for the special was not too much a money thing but time. GL's original story and most of the initial planning was for the thing to be 1 hour, but to get more time for more commercials the TV producers painfully padded it with crap to make it 2 hours.