I would like to say that giving that kind of control to TD totally goes against the random seating. Seating a player as far as the dealer as possible like you suggest, mean if you get in the tournament early you will get the seat in the middle of the table, if you wait you might get the end of the table. By this players will be able to keep an eye on the tournament and enter when they want to have the postion on players they want in the tournament (at least have more luck to have the seat they want)
Random seating is part of the poker, everyone have to deal with the position they have at one time in their poker experience. No one has to have the advantage to be able to see everyone by having a better view because he is at the end of a table. I understand the brothers, wife, husband might be a problem. But being able to drag and drop a player in TD is there for that and accommodate the players when needed. But when you play a tournament with low amount of tables. It has to be expected to play on the same table as your friends.
Friendly customer is good... i mean great do to. But at some point the game as to stay the game and rules are there to avoid giving advantage to another player. By experience and thousand of customer every month i can tell you. Customer always have something to complain. They come late, but they want random seating when everything is full, they want to get in right now and they wants full stack. (depend if you blind out or not). You gotta give some fault to the player who is not showing up at the start of the tournament, which is not helping you opening the right amount of table. Seating friends at the same table is not the end of the world, as long as you move them as soon as possible or try to change their seat before they play if you can. Player will understand. 2 tables and 4 friends... kind of hard to help there. But when you open the other 2 tables you move them. Its gonna help you start the other table and they also be happy, or they wont want to move because finally they have fun together.
In resume, my point is, don't give to much to the customer. Don't be too hard on them ether. They wont run away from the place, they will respect the place. The more right you give them the more problem you gonna have when time come to rule something.
P.S. Use the random seating, and make unavailable every odd seat on every table for example. as soon as you have 5 seat sold on every table, open every seat 5 for example. and fill up equally the table and go on and on like that. This will help in randomising your customer even if you have 3 friends in a row. This is the technique use pretty in every big Casino around the world.