The Chris Moeller Archives

WKRP: The Incomplete First Season

A persistent blogger has obtained a list of the music and episode changes for the upcoming WKRP in Cincinnati DVD release on April 24th, which has been besot by licensing challenges and high costs. What he's found is not very encouraging.

Nearly every episode, it seems, has experienced cuts or changes in content and music, either because Fox Television deemed a certain song to be too expensive to include, or because they they couldn't gain the rights to use it. It's hard to know who's to blame for this. The music publishing business is in the toilet. Licensed music is readily available for free-- or at least cheaper-- online (legal or otherwise), and you know if you've been to a record store lately that, despite class action challenges several years ago to price gouging in the industry, the price of compact discs has done nothing but climb higher. It's difficult for me not to blame the musical artists and their representatives, though, as well. You also know if you've pursued big-name concert tickets during the last decade that those multimillionaires are sticking it to us also. (And I might add that many of these artists should be paying a debt of thanks to WKRP for part of their professional success.)

I anticipated some cost-cutting in areas where songs were not vital to the action on the show. Often you would hear just the first or last ten seconds of a song just before Venus Flytrap or Dr. Johnny Fever went on the air in the studio, although their dialogue frequently, and quite naturally as radio DJs, referenced the tunes in question. Howard Hesseman (Dr. Fever), it's been reported, has gone back in to over-dub original dialogue, which should be an improvement over some of the dubbing problems in syndication, but it's hard to imagine how well this would even work with the lips of 1979 Johnny Fever still mouthing the original words.

It's asking a lot of the consumer to accept many of these changes, such as the absence of Pink Floyd (from a memorable scene in the turkey drop episode in which Mr. Carlson asks Johnny whether he hears dogs barking on the spinning record) or James Taylor singing "Your Smiling Face" at the end of the episode "I Want to Keep My Baby." The original press information for the DVD implied that many tunes would be replaced simply by licensed songs that were available, but Jaime Weinman's blog reveals that a lot of generic music has been substituted. The quality of these substitutions will be staggeringly important. If the doorbell of Jennifer Marlowe's luxury apartment does not play the first few bars of "Fly Me To the Moon," as it did originally, something appropriately elegant has to be incorporated. Which tunes from the public domain (i.e., expired copyrights from around the late 19th Century and before) would suffice? "I've Been Working On the Railroad" or "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" won't quite hack it.

I'm torn between my disgust for this whole predicament, and my loyalty and support for the WKRP cast and crew who are trying to make the best of a bad situation. As Weinman suggests, strong sales for the first DVD could conceivably result in a higher budget for the three subsequent seasons of the series. Important decisions may still have to be made on the retention of Earth, Wind & Fire's "After the Love is Gone," Supertramp's "Goodbye Stranger," Elton John's "Tiny Dancer," Johnny Mathis' "Chances Are" (the only record Les Nessman owns,) The Carpenter's "We've Only Just Begun," and preferential background tunes by Bruce Springsteen and Steely Dan. Entire episodes were build around songs like "Tiny Dancer" and George Gershwin's "Someone To Watch Over Me."

To conclude on a positive note, so many of the great scenes and moments from WKRP are in no danger of being butchered. Hoyt Axton's country songs were poignant and funny, when his character from Jennifer's hometown in West Virginia came to Cincy to woo her back, and that hilarious radio jingle the KRP staff recorded for Ferryman's Funeral Home will be safely intact. And of course, the great writing and comedic performances that made WKRP quite possibly the greatest television show of all-time will be better than ever thanks to digital technology. We'll still experience the brilliant design of creator Hugh Wilson, and terrific actors like Frank Bonner, Gordon Jump, and Richard Sanders. There's no danger of Fox replacing Loni Anderson with Cheryl Ladd.

posted by CM @ 10:58 AM