As I remarked several times here last year — and Dave Kehr reiterated recently in an excellent piece — new classic releases seem to be increasingly relegated to manufacturing-on-demand programs like the Warner Archive, except for the handful of high-profile titles never available on DVD (“The African Queen” and “No Time for Sergeants” are finally expected on the format this year) and Blu-ray upgrades of cash cows. In fact, virtually all of the major studio new-to-DVD titles on the first quarter release list below are from Sony, which has bucked the trend with much activity in the past year. The oft-criticized Universal started a new classics line last year, the Blacklot Series, but it’s still unclear whether this will continue now that Universal has joined in a MOD partnership to release burned discs through TCM. The first two TCM releases, a horror set and “Remember the Night,” turned out to be traditional pressed discs. We’ll see if the next set, due Jan. 22, are actually MOD discs. Universal’s only first-quarter classics release does not carry the Backlot Series designation — it’s Paramount’s 1933 all-star “Alice in Wonderland,” whose belated bow is evidently a tie-in with the new Tim Burton version with Johnny Depp. The rest of the traditional pressed discs of classic titles are coming from the Criterion Collection, Kino, VCI and that prolific public-domain purveyor of long-ago indie obscurities, Alpha Video. Fox, at least, has recently dipped its toes into the MOD waters, distributing a handful of MGM titles through Amazon’s MOD program, the likes of Sidney Lumet’s “The Group” and Carol Reed’s “Circus” — so there’s hope that some of the classic titles Fox restored before it abruptly exited the field at the end of 2008 will turn up here eventually. God know what’s up with Paramount, which has apparently abandoned its Centennial Collection line launched in 2008, well ahead of the studio’s actual 100th anniversary in 2012. Don’t even ask about those Republic library titles that Paramount has licensed to Lionsgate, which dribbles them out at an agonizingly slow pace (much to the annoyance of people like Cass Warner; many of her father Milton Sperling’s titles, among many others, are caught in limbo). Warner Archive, meantime, continues its torrid release pace, with a new set of titles due next Tuesday. George Feltenstein, senior VP of Warner Home Video, candidly discussed the brutal economics of classic titles in this lengthy interview, in which he reveals the studio spend $1 million on its most recent, six-title “Forbidden Hollywood” set a year ago — and will see better returns on the $6 million it spent last year for Blu-ray upgrades, including “The Wizard of Oz,” “Gone With the Wind,” “North by Northwest” and “Woodstock.” The only new-to-DVD titles George is definitely promising for the first half of 2009 are WHV’s long-awaited fifth noir set, and a fourth Errol Flynn box. Here’s the list, with a tip o’ the hat to Classic Flix:

Jan. 26 — Cary Grant the Early Years: The Eagle and the Hawk with Fredric March; The Devil and the Deep with Tallulah Bankhead, Gary Cooper and Charles Laughton; The Last Outpost with Claude Rains (Universal/TCM); Island of Desire with Tab Hunter, Linda Darnell (VCI)

Feb. 2 — The Wolf Man (1942) Special Edition (Universal); The Music Man Blu-ray (Warner)

Feb. 9 — Bad Girls of Film Noir (Two volumes) — Night Editor with Janis Carter, One Girl’s Confession, Women’s Prison, Over-Exposed, all with Cleo Moore; The Killer That Stalked New York with Evelyn Keyes, Two of a Kind, Bad For Each Other, both with Elizabeth Scott, The Glass Wall with Gloria Grahame (Sony)

Feb. 23 — Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow (Criterion) with Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi; George Bernard Shaw on Film: Major Barbara with Wendy Hiller and Rex Harrison, Caeser and Cleopatra with Vivien Leigh, Androcles and the Lion with Alan Young; No Orchids for Miss Blandish with Linden Travers and Jack LaRue (VCI); British Film Noir — Twilight Women with Laurence Harvey, the Slasher with Joan Collins (VCI); Forgotten Noir — Breakdown with William Prince, Eye Witness starring and directed by Robert Montgomery (VCI)

March 2 — Alice in Wonderland with W.C. Fields, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Edna May Oliver, Edward Everett Horton, et al. (Universal)

March 16 — Norma Talmadge — Kiki (1926) with Ronald Colman; Within the Law (1923) (Kino); Constance Talmadge — Her Night of Romance, Her Sister From Paris both with Colman (Kino)

March 30 — Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life (Criterion) with James Mason; Raoul Walsh’s Sea Devils with Rock Hudson and Yvonne DeCarlo (VCI)

Undated but expected in the first quarter: Rita Hayworth: Tonight and Every Night, Miss Sadie Thompson, Salome and remasters of Gilda and Cover Girl (Sony); Columbia Noir 2: Pushover with Kim Novak and Fred MacMurray, The Brothers Rico with Richard Conte, Nightfall with Aldo Ray, City of Fear with Vince Edwards and a remastered In a Lonely Place starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame.

Update: “Cary Grant: The Early Years” has been postponed to Feb. 2. VCI has pushed the much-awaited “Orchids For Miss Blandish” to June 1 to take advantage of a new promotional initative with Turner Classic Movies, which will show a restored print at its first Turner Classic Movies Festival.