Month: September 2003

On the one hand, any time you file a huge flurry of law suits, you’re bound to get a few erroneous targets in it. Of course, maybe that’s why shotgun and ill-researched suit-filing like that — especially by a powerful industry group, backed by outrageously broad laws, against private citizens — is probably a bad idea.

Blather has its own humorous observation, which I would quote here, but I’d end up quoting the whole thing, and that’s hardly fair use …

Every now and then you run across something that makes no sense. Absolutely none. It’s something that in a sane world would never happen, because it makes no sense.

Okay, I’m not talking about axe murders and torture chambers and other acts of cruel insanity. Those are ubiquitous enough, today, in the newspapers, and in the history books that, well, they are part of the sane world. Just not part that we care to dwell no much.

No, I’m talking about changing music and dialog in a two-decade-old TV show because of licensing fees.

Is just plum crazy, or what?

If you’ve watched “WKRP In Cincinnati” on the Comedy Network in Canada, or on TNN in the United States, or on the commercial videotapes released in 1998, then you may have noticed that some of the music has been changed. You may have also noticed some dialogue changes, as in one episode that now has a nonsense line (“Hold my order, terrible dresser”) replacing a quote from Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.” This page will try to explain what’s happened to the music on “WKRP,” and why. Originally, nearly all the music played on the show was real rock music by real artists, both in “WKRP”‘s CBS run and in the subsequent syndicated reruns. But in the last few years, a new package of “WKRP” episodes has been distributed, and much of the music has been replaced by generic instrumental music from a music library, or by sound-alike “fake” songs. Also, some of the dialogue has been redubbed by voice impersonators, usually when the actors were speaking over the music, but sometimes to remove references to songs that have been replaced.

Why, you may ask?

The simple answer is: Money. The reason WKRP was shot on videotape (unlike the other MTM sitcoms like “Bob Newhart” and “Mary Tyler Moore,” which were on film) was that it was the only way they could afford to use a lot of real rock songs on the show. At the time, ASCAP had a different licensing arrangement for taped shows than for filmed shows; licensing the music for WKRP cost something like half of what it would have cost had it been filmed.
Well, the music licenses expired by the time the show was being prepared for re-distribution in the mid-’90s, and by then ASCAP no longer had a “discount” for videotaped shows. Also by then, the cost of licensing songs had skyrocketed across the board. So it would have been prohibitively expensive for the distributor to re-license all the songs used on the show. They certainly could have done a better job of replacing the songs they couldn’t pay for, but it was inevitable that some of the songs would be gone due to rising costs, and that’s all there is to it.
Strangely enough, sometimes music has been replaced even when it was generic music to begin with! Generic music was occasionally used on the show, mainly for fake commercials, but since the new distributors probably no longer knew exactly where some of that generic music came from (and since even stuff from a music library has to be paid for), they frequently replaced it with generic music from their own music library. This of course is not as bad as replacing real music, but I’ll note it when it happens.

Did you know that TV shows pay fees to ASCAP when they have “real” music playing in the background? Did you know those fees are limited licenses that need renewal in the future?

In other words, whenever WKRP ran a real song, they paid a fee to ASCAP. Never mind that it was incidental music, lending verismilitude to a rock music radio station. Never mind that it was essentially a free advertisement to the music played (“Hey, this song is so popular and cool that it fits on a TV show about a rock music radio station — don’t you want to buy it?”).

No, ASCAP wanted money for it. And it wanted even more money for the reruns. Once the music was incorporated in the show, you’d think that, so long as it wasn’t extracted and used in other new productions, it would be part of the show. Nope. ASCAP continues to want its pound of flesh.

Indeed, it wanted so much money, that it was actually cheaper to gut the shows, replace music and dialog with generic crap, and use that for the syndication package.

And the winners here are … uh, folks who can sell bootleg copies of the original episodes with the original music.

Way to go, guys. And definitely what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they established copyright law in the Constitution. Definitely.

(via BoingBoing)

MIchael Moore, in his typically understated style, is launching an ongoing defense of his documentary, Bowling for Columbine.

Starting things off in a calm and reasoned fashion (“Michael Moore responds to the wacko attackos … How to Deal with the Lies and the Lying Liars When They Lie about “Bowling for Columbine”), he manages to paint himself as an innocent regular guy being attacked by Dark and Sinister — or else Disturbed and Irrational — Forces.

… organized groups going full blast trying to discredit me … knowingly making up lies … wound up in their anger and hatred … if I go after the Thief-in-Chief … then that is naturally going to send a few of his henchmen after me … you just don’t go after the NRA and its supporters and then not expect them to come back at you with both barrels … These are not nice people and they don’t play nice – that’s how they got to be so powerful … host of gun lobby groups … individual gun nuts … Orwellian-style venom … How do you handle people who say the Holocaust never happened or that monkeys fly? … right wing crazy …

But, of course, we know that Mike is just interested in the facts, not innuendo. “Those who object to the film’s political points are left with the choice of debating us on the issues in the film – or resorting to character assassination. They have chosen the latter. What a sad place to be.” Which is why he leaps there, head first. As if he weren’t there already.

Moore addresses three particular charges laid against him:

1. That the “open an account, get a gun” bit was rigged.
2. That the Lockheed Martin plant in Littleton, CO, isn’t an arms plant.
3. That the footage of Charlton Heston and the NRA meeting in Denver was actually from somewhere else.

Moore points to a number of articles that support what he’s saying, and I’m going to leave it to others to sort out the facts here. I will note that Moore shades things a bit (say it ain’t so!) though, by how he phrases the opposition’s charges:

“The Lockheed factory in Littleton, Colorado, has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction” is how Moore paraphrases his opponents. The criticism, in fact, is that the workers at the Lockheed plant were not part of some death cult, manufacturing then and there actual weaponry, in some sort of existential parallel to the killings by Dylan and Klebold — or, as Moore himself put it in the film:

So you don’t think our kids say to themselves, ‘Dad goes off to the factory every day, he builds missiles of mass destruction. What’s the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?

But Moore elides over that distinction, noting that Lockheed Martin is a major arms manufacturer in general (begging the question of why we don’t see school shootings around other Lockheed Martin plants), that the Littleton facility used to manufacturer ICBM boosters in the 50s through 80s (or at least “instruments” thereof), but that it currently manufactures Titan IV boosters that, well, aren’t really used as ICBMs per se, but, um, are used to launch (oooh) spy satellites as well as communications satellites.

That Lockheed lets the occasional weather or TV satellite hitch a ride on one of its rockets should not distract anyone from Lockheed’s main mission and moneymaker in Littleton: to make instruments that help kill people. That two of Littleton’s children decided to engineer their own mass killing is what these guys and the Internet crazies don’t want to discuss.

Riiiiggghttt. Besides, it plays better this way.

There’s also some discussion about Bowling’s depiction of Charlton Heston’s NRA speech in Denver a few weeks later.

“The film depicts NRA president Charlton Heston giving a speech near Columbine; he actually gave it a year later and 900 miles away. The speech he did give is edited to make conciliatory statements sound like rudeness.”

Moore then quips that obviously he made the whole thing up, that Heston was never there, which is, of course, ridiculous. But, again, that misses the point of the criticism, that the film footage is all carefully and tortuously cut to make it look like Heston held a big rally on in the auditorium at Columbine HS, rather than at the previously scheduled (and significantly cut back) annual NRA convention in Denver. He makes it sound like Heston (and, thus, the NRA) were out to rub everyone’s noses in their presence, out to be particularly insulting and provocative — which a read of the speech transcript shows is not the case.

While Moore does include the full transcript of Heston’s speech on his site, a side-by-side with how it was actually cut into the film is illustrative.

Moore proudly proclaims that “every fact in my movie is true” (which is an odd way of putting it). He also note that it must all be true, because if it wasn’t, the NRA would have sued the snot out of them.

The sheer power and threat of the NRA is reason enough to strike fear in any movie studio or theater chain. The NRA will go after you without mercy if they think there’s half a chance of destroying you. That’s why we don’t have better gun laws in this country – every member of Congress is scared to death of them.

Well, no, unless Moore is talking about NRA Assassination Squads (which I’m sure will be discussed in his next flick), NRA law suits are unlikely to daunt any congressional candidate. What they are scare of is the political organizing power of the NRA, which, regardless of how you feel about the organization, is, I believe, legal. Sort of how democracy works, in fact.

Moore, who only seems to care for political activism when it’s his, also misses the point that trying to “shut Moore down” would be an expensive and iffy proposition — libel laws are difficult at the best of times — and would only give him more publicity than he already has, without actually doing anything about his message or his support. If I were the NRA, I wouldn’t have recommended it.

But it’s easier, I guess, to say that the NRA not suing him is proof that he’s telling the truth. Just has his not suing his critics is proof that they — uh, well, never mind.

I’m actually glad, though, if this is all bringing up the “documentary” facts in Bowling for Columbine for clearer debate. They deserve more examination. Reading this (and other pieces) by Moore demonstrates to me that, rhetorically, the guy’s a sleeze bucket. We’ll see, if he can be pinned down, how he actually deals with facts.

(via BoingBoing)