Original Broadcast and Home Video Releases
The film originated as two sequential projects. Part one, six hours long, was shown on PBS in early 1987 as Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years (1954–1965). Eight more hours were broadcast in 1990 as Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads (1965–1985).
It was quickly released to home video (in VHS and Laserdisc). By the mid-1990s, both rebroadcasts and home video production were halted for several years due to limits on the licenses of the copyrights of the archive footage used, and increasingly higher rates imposed by the copyright holders. Grants from the Ford Foundation and others enabled Blackside to renew rights. To date, PBS has rebroadcast the first six hours on three consecutive Mondays in October 2006, and rebroadcast the second eight hours in February 2008.
PBS reissued an educational version of the series in the fall of 2006, making it available on DVD for the first time. It is now available to educational institutions and libraries from PBS on seven DVDs (ISBN 0-7936-9262-8) or seven VHS tapes. A consumer version of part one (1954–1965) was released in March 2010. It is unclear whether any footage has been changed to appease rightsholders.
The licensing issues from 1993 to 2006 generated what was called Eyes on the Screen, an effort to disseminate the series by file sharing networks without regard to copyright restrictions.
Read more about this topic: Eyes On The Prize
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