Monday, February 23, 2004
First of all, I should point out that I haven't yet had a chance to watch the "Roswell" season 1 DVD, partly because the region 2 set isn't yet available. However, the news so far isn't good.
On the plus side, we've got the series in widescreen, which is great. On the down side, the music substitution appears to be much more widespread than many of us had initially feared.
When the problem of music rights first reared its head, I assumed that we were only talking about the odd track. Replacing these might have been disappointing for fans, but I think many of us would have accepted that if that's what it took to get the series out on DVD.
However, things appear to be much more than the odd track being replaced by something else. Instead, it seems that there's been a wholesale replacement of the music used in the show by "new cutting edge songs selected by the original 'Roswell' music team".
Greedy music execs seem to be bearing the brunt of the criticism, but why the hell didn't the production team nail these rights when the series was being shot? I can take music problems in an archive piece of television, and I'll applaud the attempts by Mark Ayres on the "Doctor Who" (and other) DVDs to avoid cutting scenes that have unclearable music, but in an era when sell-through releases are a standard part of the life-cycle of a TV series, it seems totally unbelieveable that 20th Century Fox fucked up in this way. The fact that the BBC only cleared the use of 'Paperback Writer' in 'Power of the Daleks' for TV transmission is understandable since they couldn't have foreseen the series being commercially released (in this case on CD due to the BBC's junking of the episode in the 1970s), but Fox must have expected to be releasing "Roswell" on DVD at some stage, so why the hell didn't the make sure all the songs were fully cleared?
Maybe the music execs are being greedy, maybe The WB's tendency to pepper its series with music means there's a higher than average amount of songs to clear, but why the hell did Fox get into the situation where this level of replacement was necessary?
Will I still buy the "Roswell" DVDs? Well, probably since my off-air copies are in 4:3, have on-screen logos, the occasional clunky join where I paused the tape during the ad breaks, and talking over the credits.
Am I royally pissed off about this? Too, bloody right, especially since I'm inclined to keep my original off-air copies (despite the problems listed above) as I have a suspicion that the DVD versions will be the ones we'll ever see broadcast on TV in the future.
On the plus side, we've got the series in widescreen, which is great. On the down side, the music substitution appears to be much more widespread than many of us had initially feared.
When the problem of music rights first reared its head, I assumed that we were only talking about the odd track. Replacing these might have been disappointing for fans, but I think many of us would have accepted that if that's what it took to get the series out on DVD.
However, things appear to be much more than the odd track being replaced by something else. Instead, it seems that there's been a wholesale replacement of the music used in the show by "new cutting edge songs selected by the original 'Roswell' music team".
Greedy music execs seem to be bearing the brunt of the criticism, but why the hell didn't the production team nail these rights when the series was being shot? I can take music problems in an archive piece of television, and I'll applaud the attempts by Mark Ayres on the "Doctor Who" (and other) DVDs to avoid cutting scenes that have unclearable music, but in an era when sell-through releases are a standard part of the life-cycle of a TV series, it seems totally unbelieveable that 20th Century Fox fucked up in this way. The fact that the BBC only cleared the use of 'Paperback Writer' in 'Power of the Daleks' for TV transmission is understandable since they couldn't have foreseen the series being commercially released (in this case on CD due to the BBC's junking of the episode in the 1970s), but Fox must have expected to be releasing "Roswell" on DVD at some stage, so why the hell didn't the make sure all the songs were fully cleared?
Maybe the music execs are being greedy, maybe The WB's tendency to pepper its series with music means there's a higher than average amount of songs to clear, but why the hell did Fox get into the situation where this level of replacement was necessary?
Will I still buy the "Roswell" DVDs? Well, probably since my off-air copies are in 4:3, have on-screen logos, the occasional clunky join where I paused the tape during the ad breaks, and talking over the credits.
Am I royally pissed off about this? Too, bloody right, especially since I'm inclined to keep my original off-air copies (despite the problems listed above) as I have a suspicion that the DVD versions will be the ones we'll ever see broadcast on TV in the future.
