Baby, if you’ve ever wondered…
Ben – who I’m not linking here because he does not, to my knowledge, have a blog – contacts me via Facebook to inform me that ‘WKRP in Cincinnati’ is finally being released on DVD. W00t! I thought they would never pull it off! I thought licensing the music was too expensive! But there it is!
Wait just a son-of-a-goldurn minute…
As you’ve probably guessed, there will be music substitutions when the set comes out, but the studio has been spending a lot of time with a music supervisor to ensure that the replaced songs fit the show. Hugh Wilson, creator of the series, has heard some of the replaced music and thought Fox did a good job.
blink. blink.
Yeah, see, the reason they said before that they didn’t want to release it was because it was expensive to license all the music, and fans wouldn’t accept music replacement. As much as I love the characters that made up the cast of WKRP, the music is part of the show, too. The music was part of the rock station environment and served to make the show feel grounded in reality.
Even so, TVShowsOnDVD hopes fans will keep “an open mind” about buying the show on DVD. But we return to the stifling effects of current copyright law – can we truly say that WKRP has been released as long as the original, carefully-selected soundtrack has to be replaced?
December 14th, 2006 at 11:18 am
I’ve only seen a small handful of WKRP episodes, so I don’t have a lot invested in this—and I do think that it’s possible to exaggerate how integral music is to a show, even one like this where it clearly is integral—but I agree that music licensing restrictions are beyond ridiculous.