“WKRP in Cincinnati” sucks. Not the TV show — that was brilliant, funny, ahead of its time. Well, except for Herb Tarlek’s clothes, which were exactly, tragically, of the times.
What sucks is, although you can get WKRP in DVD, it’s not the real show. The producers used so much real rock’n'roll, no one can put out the show unedited at a price consumers will pay. Not even if those consumers will all Bill Gates. It’s just too expensive — and maybe even logistically icky — to license all those hit songs from all those famous bands.
So you can buy expurgated, bowdlerized, versions. But who wants that? And the real deal? Not a chance.
Then I had a thought. What if a not-for-profit got rights to the show? Would the legal issues go away, or at least get a lot less tangly and expensive?
I need a pro to help me out on this one, I’m blegging you. Because if we lose Dr. Johnny Fever, who will teach the children about Bo Diddley?
I can live with all the rest of the music being replaced, but please tell me they left in “Having My Baby” by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir!!!! (Episode 1)
I don’t think the not-for-profit thing would make a difference.
It sounds like what’s holding the DVD set back are all the licensing fees that would have to be paid to various copyright holders, and that money would still be owed regardless of who was selling the product.
Having a non-profit in the mix changes nothing. You have to get the rightsholders to forego collecting what the law allows to be collected. That’s all that can be done in the face of those who are looking for big profits on forgotten avenues of monetization.
I was afraid of that.
Sigh.
I can do no more than note this post for Rule 5 Sunday.
Yeah, there’s a similar problem with one of my favorite shows ever, Northern Exposure. You can get it on DVD, but for the most part the original soundtrack is radically different from what aired, due to the same issue; the soundtrack being comprised of a whole lot of commercial music that requires licensing to go on the DVD. Because the songs chosen for each episode were in many cases integral to story theme, it’s just not the same show when they substitute some generic score for the original aired songs.
Now I’m all sad.
I remember working at a college library and we were constantly being asked by other colleges if they could borrow our copy of Eyes on the Prize, a PBS documentary series that wasn’t available anymore because the music rights were too expensive. (We didn’t let that one go because it wasn’t replacable.) Scenes with people singing “Happy Birthday” to MLK, Jr. would have been too expensive, while many other songs were featured. There were petition drives, many artists said they’d donate their money right back to the project, and it went on for a long time before some deals were reached.
So unless KC and the Sunshine Band have as much clout as Stevie Wonder and the heirs of Marvin Gaye, I think the prospects for WKRP are pretty dim. Then again, if there’s money in it there’s probably some guy in Russia who could set things up.
Nothing more to add, except perhaps for the single greatest line ever to come out of sitcom land:
“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
I assume the licensing issue is also keeping the show off of rerun land?
Well, as others have said, it’s a quandry between licensing issues at the time of the creation of each episode and the current state of copyright law.
S: What you were trying to suggest was operation of something called “fair use”. The problem is that profit is only 1 part of a 4-part test… and even if the owner of the rights to the show were willing to transfer it to a non-profit (trying to minimize the profit aspect of the test), the other three parts would still probably work to prevent allowing the show to be licensed for DVD use. (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use). In fact, however, the transfer of ownership to a non-profit still wouldn’t even really help the profit issue… unless they were going to be giving away the show to the consumers.
What I would try, however, is to argue for its display on Hulu, iTunes or another broadcast medium. Rather than selling it on DVD, simply keep it in its original form so that the original license agreement from the 70s/80s is in use… sorta’ like a digital re-run.
The true lesson here is to remember that technology always changes… and that if you’re going to do something like create a television show that needs background music licensed from others (or any other IP from others), to craft your license agreement in a way that isn’t restricted in the future. You never know how popular a show will become… or if it will enjoy a resurgence later in time. So plan accordingly for the future and it will cost you a fraction now of what it will cost you later. [Gee, this sounds like good advice on any number of topics.]
Jeff G –
Very interesting stuff, and it works into the WKRP angle even more than you might know.
WKRP was one of the first shows to be “filmed” on videotape. The reason was that, at the time anyway, it was cheaper to license popular music for video than it was to do so for film. I think video was seen as a more disposable medium back then. How little we knew…
We should call this “Blegging for (Bailey) Quarters”.
The “Jennifer Marlowe vs. Bailey Quarters” debate was my generations version of “Ginger vs. Mary Anne”.
It’s not even a question. Bailey, every time.
Bailey and Mary Anne, which makes me just about the same as every other red-blooded American male.
Same problem with season 2 of Malcolm in the Middle. It’s surprising that this problem came up so close to the DVD era, but there it is. Too much music makes it prohibitively ewxpensive to release.
It’s a shame, but as much as I despise the current (unconstitutional, imo) state of intellectual property laws, I don’t see how this problem can be fixed short of confiscation of rights.
I didn’t notice that, I’ll have to watch more closely.
It’s funny, everybody is up there saying Bailey over Jenifer, but notice which pic you used to illustrate the post.
I agree on MaryJane over Ginger, but really. I guarantee Bailey never swung from a chandelier once.
That’s like preferring Bosley to Farrah.