Friday questions of the week (yes, more than one)

Two questions today. The first from Mike:

I recently read a review of the Season 9 DVD of Cheers, and was saddened to see that, in the episode where the bar gets a karaoke machine, the part where Frasier sings "Isn't it romantic?" is cut. As was the very brief part where Norm and Cliff load up on helium and sing "Lollipop." And it's because Paramount didn't want to spend the money on licensing the songs for the DVD release. How does that make you feel, as a creative talent, knowing these moments are cut, all because of money? And when you were working on Cheers, did you guys have to be concerned with the cost of having a character on the show sing a song? Particularly when they only sing a little snippet of a song like in the karaoke episode. Or did you have to pay to have a song sung, regardless of how much of it was actually sung on the episode?

What annoys me most is that studios would rather just eliminate the music rather than paying the license fees. The musicians deserve their royalty just as much as the writers, actors, and directors. But since their contribution is easily removable and unlike the writers, their contractual participation is significant the studios would much rather just cut them out than pay them. And if the shows suffer, so what?

The worst example is WKRP IN CINNCINATI. The studio has practically destroyed that show by substituting generic music for what was originally there. And of course the studio claims that if they didn’t do this they would not have released the DVDs at all, so at least fans of the show can see episodes in some form. Gee, thanks soooo much.

Each studio has a different policy. When your show is in production most will allow you to use songs from the library that they own. If a Paramount show needed a romantic ballad you’d always hear “Autumn in New York” , “Moonlight in Vermont”, or “Moon River”. Need a Hawaiian tune? “Blue Hawaii” or nothing. On ALMOST PERFECT we had a big fight with Paramount over having a character sing a few seconds of the old Vikki Carr song, “It Must Be Him”. It got down to just how many words would we want to use? At 20th I’m sure you could always use the soundtrack from CLEOPATRA.

Wayne asks:

Question. How jealous do regulars get when a weekly player (like Kelsey first was) score big enough to get brought back?

I can’t speak for every show but on CHEERS I can tell you that Kelsey was accepted almost immediately. Especially after a show has been on a while the cast recognizes that adding new people can freshen things up, and possibly add a few years to the run. So they may lose a few lines but they end up with a lot more money.

I do know of some other shows where new characters were viewed by the cast as a threat and that can sometimes lead to ugly situations. I’m not at all privy to what goes on but I can’t imagine the original cast of HOUSE being all too happy over last season. They went from stars of the show to having fewer lines than the coma patients.

My big question (and maybe someone from the show is reading this and can respond) is how do the original cast members of LOST feel? Every year they’re squeezed out more and more, usually by better, more interesting characters. A lot of the original survivors have been killed so they’re no problem, but I do wonder about the remaining Oceanic Six + two. I guess they can’t bitch too loudly or they’ll be in Davy Jones locker with Charlie. Ironically, some of the “others” became the stars and they became the others.

If I find out more, I’ll let you know. Keep those questions coming. Thanks.