"Maybe You And Me Were Never Meant to Be..."

Sigh.

So Jaime Weinman got ahold of the DVD release for WKRP: Season 1, and it's a hack and slay job with nearly all of the music replaced.

Since this is a show set in a radio station, this is a lot more significant than you would normally think. Like The Wonder Years (which also is MIA on DVD) 'KRP used music not as wallpaper (a la the dewy "montage" shots of shows like Dawson's Creek, and the O.C.,) but as a character -- underscoring and informing many of the scenes. Since there are no original elements, and the tracks are mixed, this sometimes means the elimination of entire scenes. It's a terrible stitch up job. Click the link above and you'll see how.

Over on his Maclean's blog, Weinman gets into more of the why; why FOX did what they did, and why maybe shows like this really belong on smaller labels with larger price points -- like SHOUT! factory.

What we're really facing here is the fact that big companies are essentially hopeless when it comes to non-current TV shows on DVD. It's not because the people who work there are big meanies; they're not, and many of them are doing their best. But a DVD set from Fox or Paramount or Warner Brothers has to be mass-produced and mass-marketed. For the most part, they don't do limited releases or special collectors' editions; everything has to be priced and sold at Wal-Mart level prices. The only way to do WKRP or The Wonder Years or a similar music-heavy show is to pay for the music and then make up the costs by jacking up the price of the set, but that's against company policy.

Also, big companies have a heavy amount of overhead, meaning that it's tough enough for a set to make back its cost even without paying for music. Which is why shows with even fairly decent levels of sales get abandoned after one or two seasons.

This is why most of the best TV on DVD releases come from independent or semi-independent companies, like Shout! Factory (which did Freaks and Geeks, SCTV, and the Electric Company best-of sets among many others) or Image (The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Twilight Zone). They can charge more to make back the costs, market the products to collectors and fans rather than trying to break into Wal-Mart, and put people who are actually familiar with the series to work on it.

In the post on Macleans, Weinman shows a clip that fully illustrates what's been lost. And it's heartbreaking.

I'm so torn about this DVD. I know it's not what I want. I don't want to support this kind of butchering, but at the same time, there's the reality that the set doesn't sell, and there won't be any more released. No matter what happens, it's a bad deal for the consumer.

WKRP is one of the shows that made me want to go work in the media. The other was the movie Broadcast News. The thought that it is now IMPOSSIBLE for me to experience the show that was so important to me growing up the way I saw it then, seems unseemly, somehow. Even out-of-print books can be found in a library. Commerce really gets to dictate the repository of cultural memory? Is that really the way we want things to go from now on?

This may seem trivial -- and it is. It is trivial. But remember, too, that music rights kept the greatest documentary made about the Civil Rights movement -- Eyes on the Prize -- out of print for several years. That's a disservice to education as well as to cultural history, and history itself.

Part of what's happening with the internet and the brave new world of content is a discussion that changes what we think of as content, and what we think of as the audience's rights when it comes to that content. So far, corporations have kicked arts' ass on this score. Mickey Mouse is killing the public domain, just as remixing and mashing and a pastiche culture demand flexibiilty.

In Canada, there's much whining about a new copyright act. And when it's tabled, it will inevitably be retro and biased toward the corporations and against the consumers.

When's that pendulum gonna swing?

And do I really have to pay 30 bucks for this piece of KR(a)P?