It must be a stock phrase for authors whose work gets turned into films. Stephen King hates Kubrick's The Shining despite the fact it has made his work one of the most recognizable just about anywhere.
As with the film and Susan's Book.

Awsome! Why didn't I think of that? I'm downloading it as I write.
I saw the TV film when it was first broadcast and it scared the hell out of me. The dream visition scene near the end made me jump out of my couch-potato position and my beer went all over the place.
The new film version was far better than I'd hoped and looked really good. It'll be interesting to watch them back-to-back.

The 1989 version is on youtube in full, so you can download it and burn it onto a DVD, as I did. Yeah, it's not a Blu-ray like we would want, but it's something.

It follows the book pretty closely. There are some changes, but there are more in the new one - and she's fully endorsed that.
$$$

It was in circulation in the early 2000'sI bought a copy then for around $30 U.S. Unfortunately, my copy became damaged a few years later, and when I went to buy a replacement, it was out of print and a used copy was almost $100!

No. Richard Jackson and Brian Oliver bought the rights over a decade ago and had been trying to get it made at various studios/production companies for much of that time, they found eventual success with Hammer/Exclusive.

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It was stated by Susan Hill on her own website some years back when people were constantly asking her why the 1989 version wasn't available and accusing her of being responsible for it's absence, simply because she'd once mentioned that she wasn't very keen on it.

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"
Probably because it was a made for TV film, using 16MM and a full screen ratio
."
What the hell has that got to do with anything? There are literally hundreds of 16mm 4:3 British television productions from the 1970's, 80's and 90's that have been released on DVD - some have even made the move to Blu-ray (
The Sweeney
,
Robin of Sherwood
,
Agatha Christie's Poirot
etc).
It's also not because of Susan Hill (she couldn't suppress it even if she wanted to) - the real reason is that the producers of the new version (which had been in development for years) also bought the rights to the 1989 original in order to keep it out of circulation to avoid comparisons with their own film and to prevent others commercially exploiting the brand name. Once the fuss over the 2012 production has died down and the film has yielded it's maximum profit, there's nothing to stop them releasing the television version themselves to make a bit more cash -
if
they wanted to.

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Probably because it was a made for TV film, using 16MM and a full screen ratio.