"WKRP In Cincinnati" Situation Demonstrates Negative Consequences of Copyright

Wired reported a couple years ago that copyright issues were preventing DVDs of the much-loved WKRP television sitcom from being released. The problem? The show depicted life at a radio station, and at radio stations, music tends to get played. The show's creators licensed the tracks included in the show for the length of its original run, but nobody predicted that there might eventually be another life for the series in syndication or as pre-recorded media, so those licenses expired, making it impossible to release the DVDs with that music included.

The series will finally be released on DVD on April 24th, but fans are already irate. The music originally included in the show has been replaced by generic muzak in order to placate the almighty copyright gods, who would otherwise have prevented the series from being released by (apparently) demanding so much licensing money as to render the whole project unfeasible.

Here's an account of the situation from the guy whose job it was to replace the offending musical compositions in order to pave the way for the series' release on DVD:

"During my years with MTM, I was asked to perform the most painfulduty I have ever had to do in entertainment business. I was given thetask of excising much of the original music from the episodes andreplace it with Muzak-style songs that could be licensed in perpetuityfor a small flat fee. This was deemed necessary in order to keep theprogram in syndication.

"The new music that was inserted into the show sucked ass. Itwas wrong for the feel and attitude of the show. Some scenes relied onspecific songs at particular junctures (i.e., Les Nessman trying on atoupee to the soundtrack of Foreigner's “Hot Blooded”) . Those sceneswere ruined. In many instances, we couldn't even finesse the properaudio levels in order to cut the costs of replacing the music...

"Allegedly, the original producer of the show (Hugh Wilson) was involvedin replacing the Muzak with some other generic songs that are morepalatable. While this is admirable, and Wilson has some great artisticinstincts, it still isn't enough to undo the damage."

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