WKRP on DVD: A Review

Cafe Society
1

I know we spoke about this some time ago, in this thread. Rather than resurrecting that old thing to give my impressions of WKRP on DVD, I’ll start this new one. Anyway, I’ve now had the chance to see some of the WKRP episodes on DVD, and can comment on some of the music issues we discussed earlier this year in that thread.

First of all, yes–much of the music you expect to hear isn’t there. It’s been replaced by fairly generic music. The music itself isn’t bad, to be honest–if you’re expecting Johnny to play some, say, hard-rockin’ Foreigner; then you’ll get hard rock, but it won’t be Foreigner. This isn’t so bad and can be excused, even when Johnny announces the name of the record–in (I think it was the Ferriman funeral home show), Johnny announces Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” except it’s been replaced. The replacement isn’t bad, to tell the truth, which (IMHO) excuses it in spite of it not being Blondie.

So the replacement music gets, in my mind, a passing grade.

What is surprising is what has been either (a) replaced, or (b) deleted. This would consist of musical yet non-musical things that occurred, and that I was expecting–but they weren’t there. That’s a little confusing, so I’ll explain. Remember Jennifer’s apartment doorbell? In the original airings and syndication, it played “Fly Me To The Moon.” It’s been replaced by a similar (that is, that kind of doorbell “bonging”) rendition of Stephen Foster’s “Beautiful Dreamer.” Of course, “Fly Me To The Moon” must have been one of the songs that the DVD people were unable to get rights for, but I didn’t expect to hear it replaced.

The same thing occurs in the episode where Little Arthur return from military school. Instead of the theme from Patton, we hear a generic trumpet fanfare.

The deletion(s) are most surprising of all. Remember when Herb and Venus were asking Bailey to sing an audition for Ferriman’s Funerals? The dialogue went something like this:

Venus: Bailey, sing. Sing a song.
Herb: Yes, Bailey. Sing out loud. Sing out strong. [beat] Sing of goo–mmph! (As Venus clamps his hand over Herb’s mouth)
Bailey: (sings) Amazing Grace…

All of Herb’s lines except “Sing of goo–mmph” have been deleted. It’s a little jarring to miss those lines, but it’s doubly jarring to have the camera cut to Bailey as she begins to sing “Amazing Grace,” because the uproarious laugh track (coming from silence for Venus’s “Sing a song” statement) cuts in too.

Overall, though, no bad, and nearly as much fun as I remember. Certainly, the memorable lines are there (“Booger!” “The turkeys are falling like sacks of wet cement!”) and Hoyt Axton does sing “Della and the Dealer” in the “Jennifer marries Johnny” episode. In spite of my remarks in the earlier thread, I have to say that if we had to put up with music substitutions, they didn’t do too much harm. I won’t go so far as to say that they enhance the shows, but at least they don’t subtract too much from them.

Your thoughts?

2

This isn’t surprising at all, seeing as the gag plays on the lyrics of a Joe Raposo song from Sesame Street. Obviously, they couldn’t pay for this one, either.

3

Agreed. The music replacements weren’t as much of a distraction as I feared. Now maybe they will be in the later seasons, but for the first season, it was okay.

4

I haven’t looked at the WKRP DVDs yet, but I plan to. I’m glad to hear the music changes aren’t as jarring as they might have been- one of the show’s producers okayed the replacements, IIRC. I just hope Fox is able to get the rights to Tiny Dancer when the season with The Americanization of Ivan comes around so Ivan doesn’t end up saying “Hold my order, terrible dresser” as he does in the version without the copyrighted music.

5

Apart from the audio changes, let’s talk picture.

WKRP was recorded on videotape, not on film (like most same-era shows). That considered, the picture here is better than I expected.

There is one episode with some weird yellow lines running through the screen for most of the time, but overall I was pleased.

It’s also good (as with just about all releases) to finally have the first-run edits rather than the syndication re-edited-so-we-can-fit-in-more-commercials.

Oh, and the commentaries are few & far between, but entertaining.

6

Spoons, what is the most surprising musical retention? Something that was the same as you remember, and made you think “Damn, I can’t believe they scored the rights to that!”?

7

I was watching disc one last night. We watch the ‘Turkey Drop’ without and then with commentary. Still a great episode. One of the best of all time.

You are correct the music change barely hurt the show.

However, in the episode where Les takes Jennifer to the Award show and he is trying on the hair piece, the change in music was jarring in that scene. (I think this is on disc 2 or 3)

I suspect the show with the Russian defector will be similarly distracting with the loss of “Tiny Dancer”.

Jim

8

Mmmmm… Bailey…

9

I recently read an article about WKRP and the rights issues that mentioned why the show was done on video rather than film (as all the other MTM sitcoms of the era were). It turns out that there was a clause in the music rights licensing agreement that programs on video were accorded a lower fee than filmed shows. This was to accommodate the variety shows of the era–which were mostly a dying breed but there were still one or two like Carol Burnett or even SNL. Hugh Wilson, the producer of WKRP, was quoted in the article saying that without that clause they wouldn’t have had those songs in the first place.

10

I haven’t really noticed any, but I haven’t made my way through all the episodes yet, so there may well be a surprise. Certainly, I was pleased (though not really surprised) that the show featuring Hoyt Axton playing and singing his own songs was left alone–but Axton’s music is so integral to the plot that any changes would have killed the episode. Perhaps that’s why they left it alone, and likely negotiated something with Axton himself to allow the episode to remain as it was, musically.

One thing I did wonder about–and perhaps someone with a better memory of WKRP can help out with–is in the show “Mama’s Review.” This was a sort of clip show that aired a few months after the show started its run. There weren’t many episodes from which to take clips, but they used what they had. Anyway, the clips didn’t seem to me to be quite the same musically as the episodes themselves–they may have some of the original music, although not all the clips used music. But I was surprised to see that some of the clips didn’t seem to be exactly the same as the episodes I’d watched a little while earlier.

True. IIRC, the original was “Hot Blooded” by Foreigner (there’s the Foreigner I must have been thinking of in the OP). Expecting Les to wiggle into his wig while “Hot Blooded” plays, and getting generic music is jarring indeed. It takes away from the comedy of the scene.

11

I *believe *that is mentioned int he pilot’s commentary as well…

12

You mean they were edited differently from a story point of view, or some of the music was replaced?

If the latter, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that some of those rights were bought for the original episodes, but not for when they were re-jiggered into a clip show. ASCAP can be funny that way.

13

I had heard all the comments about the DVD before watching it, including those that said, “Don’t touch, it’s awful what they did to the music!” But after watching it, I don’t fall in that camp. It’s barely obvious most of the time that the music was replaced, although it seems that they hired some band to play “heavy” rock to match the beat, and all the replacements sounds the same.

Fly me to the Moon being replaced by Beautiful Dreamer was jarring, but if you didn’t know the original, it’s almost as good. One place Johnny is mouthing the words, but the music is instrumental, and the wrong tune, so that stood out.

Anybody know if the 6 tunes cut into very small segments for the “impossible” name-that-tune contest were changed?

Overall, while as a purist, I am dissapointed in what was done, I applaud the DVD creators for tackling the project in the first place and making available what they could. It’s better than having no WKRP at all except thru underground tapes.

What were those lyrics – I don’t remember enough detail about that scene just before Bailey sings Amazing Grace?

14

They were. They’re definitely something, and some do include lyrics, but they could well be just made-up songs done by the generic rock band. They’re definitely snippets of songs edited together though.

The titles, as stated by the callers, are different too. You expect to hear the caller say, “‘Timothy’ by the Buoys, ‘Tumbling Dice’ by the Stones,” and so on down to “Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key,” but the callers are obviously not the originals, though with the exception of the song titles, they follow the original script. For example, the caller Mrs. Kleppner tells Johnny, “Well, I usually listen to another station anyway,” in the same place during her call, and the caller who wins is coughing into the phone. At any rate, although the rest of the titles are different, the final song stated by the callers remains The Star Spangled Banner.

The first stanza of the original song is:

Sing
Sing a song
Sing out loud
Sing out strong
Sing of good things, not bad
Sing of happy, not sad…

Complete lyrics can be found at the top of this page.

15

Sorry, I should have addressed this. It was the music in the clips I was referring to. The clips themselves are fine; they seem to have been taken directly from the episodes. But the music in the clips doesn’t seem to be the same as even the replaced music in the episodes. I could check them, I suppose. You may be right with your ASCAP guess though.

16

I still think that they should have just released them as originally aired. I GUARANTEE you that the person/s owning the rights would contact them REAL quick.

(maybe run a disclaimer at the start of each DVD, stating that “we are looking for the owner of the rights - if you know who it is, please contact us so they can get their check to them”)

17

It isn’t that hard to figure out the current rights holders to a song- all you have to do is go to ASCAP or BMI’s website. I’m sure Fox has a legal department in charge of all that- they probably didn’t do it because they would lose money if they didn’t sell enough DVDs to make back the money it would have cost to get the rights to all the songs.

18

The scene when Andy unrolls the Kiss Poster, did that survive?

Seriously, how much money are the artists losing out on by not playing the original songs? I think that by hearing them again it could stimulate more sales of the old music because of the nostalgia for the show.

19

That in a nut shell describes how silly and short sighted the music industry really is.

20

It did. No changes seem to have been made because of a poster or an album in a scene. The posters of identifiable musicians and bands are still in the background, and identifiable record albums are still carried, put on desks, picked up again, and so on.