Why is WKRP In Cincy not in syndication?

It was a really popular show, and for a while was doing great in syndication, but then it disappeared.

I always wondered, and now I know why. When I work on weekends I sometimes just let youtube run and play videos, and right now I'm watching a whole series from FoundationInterviews, which interviews people involved in making lots of the big name TV shows. The behind the scenes stuff interests me.

Anyway, I just got to interviews with the producer for WKRP. Apparently the reason it isn't syndicated now is the music they played in the episodes as a radio station. They used real snippets from the real bands, and had to pay for the rights. He said at some point when the rights contracts ran out they had to re-negotiate the rights to keep selling the show. Instead of wanting something like $3,000 for a 17 sec segment of a song now they want $103,000, and they just can't pay it and make money.

Just an aside, but I thought it was interesting. Would have never thought of that detail being the reason they can't sell the show.

Same thing with Northern Exposure and The Wonder Years. They couldn't clear the rights so the only way to syndicate or put them on DVD was without the music. But the music was so central to the episodes, it just wasn't the same.

They eventually cleared most of the music for The Wonder Years and you can buy it on DVD now. But Northern Exposure still isn't available and probably never will be. WKRP is available on DVD but without most of the music--no thank you. Sad, really.

Sad, and a reflection of severely misguided copyright laws that have been absolutely perverted in the last couple of decades by big time lobbying and buying of politicians.

Copyrights were supposed to expire. The goal is to give a creator exclusive rights for a period of time to economically encourage work, but then to expire so as to free new people to do other things and build on those creations. Eternal copyrights with massive licensing schemes and royalties, which we just entrenched even more with the latest bill Trump signed, was never the goal.

That is my understanding. Complicated by the number of different songs and artist. Show will probably never be back....

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Very interesting. Shame. I used to enjoy watching it when I accidentally ran across a show.

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Originally Posted by KentuckyWildcat

That is my understanding. Complicated by the number of different songs and artist. Show will probably never be back....

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It never would have hit me, but it should. Use of the Sammy Hagar "Heavy Metal" song messed up release of the Heavy Metal movie for some time. I think they released at least one round of it with the song removed b/c they couldn't come to terms.