My Three Sons: Season 1, Vol. 1

Re: My Three Sons: Season 1, Vol. 1

Where are our advocates? I thought for sure we'd have heard from at least one by now. I realize it's important to get all the facts before you talk to CBS/Paramount, but it's painfully obvious at this point that we've been rooked by the studio for a second time in just 4 months. I sincerely hope someone with "pull" will make sure our plight is known to the appropriate people at the company.

I've got to say, when I see Bert get as mad as he has gotten today, I know things are really messed up. He doesn't get mad that easily. But I'm with him on this latest debacle. It's a joke and I'm seriously considering a total boycott of all CBS/P dvds from this day forward. I'm not gonna lie: It will be tough to do without the likes of PERRY MASON and RAWHIDE in particular, but I'm very close to making the decision.

Gary "what they have done is truly inexcusable - they have deceived us (by not being proactive and telling us this situation up front) and I consider that unethical behavior that does not deserve my support" O.

Re: My Three Sons: Season 1, Vol. 1

Jim, I know how you feel. But when you're right, you're right.

Re: My Three Sons: Season 1, Vol. 1

After The Fugitive, it's not like Paramount will be surprised to hear that people are mad. Gord or Dave telling them that people are mad will be just telling them what they already know. About the only thing I can see doing is writing a letter and stating that you won't buy this product (or you're boycotting all their products) and hoping that they get the message that way.

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Yes David, I remember you were the first to reveal the score missing on the Fugitive and some members wanted a second opinion.
I am waiting for someone else here to view these episodes and give their reaction. You really do not even have to be familiar with the show to hear how bad it is. Since Episode 1 and 3 are were not changed it is easy to compare those to the others and the contrast is night and day.
Mark Heyes is a musician? It is hard to believe, his music is the most unmusical music I have ever heard. I think he must be the son of the studio head.
Rescoring these shows will always be wrong but if it had to be done there are musicians who could have actually contributed quality to the show.
The music used here and on the Fugitive is just a complete disaster and have rendered the shows unwatchable.

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If they are going to consistently replace the music they should give us the option to at least be able watch the DVDs without the new score. Just leave the laugh track in.

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This latest fiasco really tears it for me!

I'll never purchase another TV show DVD until the companies get their f******
s*** together.

I'll turn to bootleg sets at least I have a much better shot at getting a quality product.

Re: My Three Sons: Season 1, Vol. 1

Do you mean me and Gord? You didn't name names of the "advocates", but just in case you meant us:

No reader e-mails have been sent to us about this at all, so far (everybody probably assumed that a hundred other people had already alerted us). I noticed the info about it in this thread on my own, yesterday in the very late afternoon (close to dinnertime). I alerted Gord immediately with an expletive-filled e-mail, and we've been discussing it since then. Considering the lateness of the hour when we found out about it, we have had no ability to get started on talking to anyone in the industry about it until today.

Rest assured this is something that we are not ignoring!

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Thanks for your attention to this. I appreciate all the behind the scenes work you and Gord do on behalf of the membership here. Just so hard to believe that CBS/P would do this again.

Doug

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Thanks David! I wasn't thinking exclusively of you guys, but you and Gord were definitely in my thoughts. I knew you'd come to the rescue at some point. And by "rescue" I don't mean I expect you guys to wave a magic wand and make this all better. I mean that I knew you guys wouldn't take this lying down and would at least get to the bottom of it.

Thanks again! You guys are the best!

Gary "with much respect" O.

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Notice though that CBS/Paramount has been brazen enough to announce the release of My Three Sons: Season 1, Volume 2 for January. Apparently, they are not expecting much in the way of protest of this first volume. I doubt too that protest of this will reach Fugitive proportions; I don't think as many people care about My Three Sons as they do the Fugitive.

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The volume 2 would contain episodes that had some of the best music of the whole series. The Croaker and The Musician had music by Jeff Alexander. Trial By Seperation is scored by Pete Rugolo and we know what Paramount thinks of Pete Rugolo.

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Thanks, David. There has to be a way to reconcile the music rights issue that is more satisfactory to fans than the way they've been doing it.

Do you know why these shows aren't protected under some sort of copyright law that prohibits them from being chopped up? Surely the producers could file some kind of lawsuit to prevent their work from being butchered.

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*shakes his head* Is CBS/P trying to kill their DVD program? There's no other explanation I can think of for this mess.

Honestly I don't think that the higher ups have considered the ramifications of these decisions. CBS/P has some big releases coming up for the holiday season and they are going to sit stone cold on the shelves now because no one trusts them anymore. And why should they? They are not showing any respect for the consumer or for the fan base.

How we got so lucky with Lucy, TZ and Star Trek I'll never know.

Oh and it's worth mentioning, simply because it is salt in a wound now, anyone remember those CBS/P ads where "We put classic TV on a pedestal" with shows like Lucy, Perry Mason, Fugitive and My Three Sons on it? They're re-running the ad only now including only current releases, as in within the last ten years or so. Shows you where their focus these days is, huh?

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Because they knew that if they had pulled this sort of stunt with those shows, torch-bearing mobs screaming for blood would have converged on their offices.

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I am sure the complete season 1 was done at the same time and a decision was later made to release it in half season sets. That being said I would guess the second half of Season 1 will also have replacement music. Given the amount of time it takes to prep shows for DVD release it is possible that My Three Sons was already in process before The Fugitive was released. Therefore it may be that the anger about that release was too late to change My Three Sons. Maybe the 2 episodes without replacement music are a result of the uproar.

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I wish someone would explain to these nitwits how IMPORTANT the original background music is to the feel of the show. Changing it spoils the scenes. I can still hum some of the old background music from my favorite shows, and if it were missing from them I would be heartsick.

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It seems to me their their respective estates should be able to file some sort of legal claim against CBS/P for misrepresenting their work this way. Not that I am fan of lawsuits mind you, but by not updating the episode credits, CBS/P appears to be willfully misleading consumers into thinking that these alternate synth scores are DeVol and Alexander's music. I think an argument could made about this having a damaging effect on the estate's ability to legitimately market their music catalog to other companies.

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Wow! This is amazing! I thought The Fugitive thing was a fluke and the uproar would keep them from ever doing it on a large scale again.

I was going to buy this but now it is only a possible Netflix.

I'm a huge classic TV fan and was looking forward to seeing My Three Sons (I have seen the show but have little in the way of specific memories of the shows). I was willing to spend $25+ to have a look but not with the replaced music.

I hated The Odd Couple substitutions but at least they were relatively brief.

I wonder how many remember how Star Trek's "City On The Edge Of Forever" had the song "Good Night Sweetheart" replaced (as well as the some of the underscore based upon the GNS melody) on 1990's VHS and laserdisc releases. That was actually not done in the beginning of the release as I have personally seen some VHS's that had the original music.

The replacement music they came up with was horrible.

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I just stumbled onto this thread in a moment of just surfing through my usual sites, and am once again appalled at CBS/Paramount doing a wholesale replacement of an underscore.

Admittedly, MY THREE SONS is not exactly one of my Holy Grail series. I watched it back in the day, saw all of the black & white and the color episodes, but haven't given it much thought since then. That said, I can still hum the theme, and remember that the show was sponsored by Chevrolet for a good number of years, that it aired on ABC early on and switched to CBS later on.

I recall the deletion and addition of a "son" at one point; I recall the triplets being born to Robbie and his wife, and the addition of a wife and daughter to the household in the later years.

Still, I can live without ever seeing it again - it's not something I crave to view again and again. If I catch an episode or so on TV, well that's good enough.

But I certainly empathise with those of you who ARE huge fans and want the original experience again. I don't think these chuckleheads at the studios have a CLUE how important a TV series can be to certain individuals.

I went through it with THE FUGITIVE - arguably the best dramatic series ever done on television. If they have no respect for THAT, then virtually anything else will be fair game to them.

I fear that the entire industry of TV on DVD is at a turning point, and from now on, it will be hit and miss whether or not we get the full and complete episodes.

I wonder though if we're not playing into the music-rights-holders plans. They own the music and try to re-license it to the studios. Their argument is that the music is SO important, that the studio just HAS to pay whatever fees the right-holders demand.

The studios (CBS/Paramount in this case) are attempting to say to these rights-holders: "We don't need your stinking music, we've got Mark Heyes!" Meanwhile, we fans are doing our whining and complaining, playing into the rights-holders hands.

Just some random thoughts as I sit here and shake my head...

Harry

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Wow. I picked this up to demonstrate support for Classic TV on DVD, and then I see this debacle. It's shocking, and callous.

I fail to believe that it's cheaper to commission an entirely new score and "performance" than it is to pay licensing on a score that's nearly 50 years old and has no other market.

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If you open and watch the shows you may come to the conclusion I have. The composer and performer of the new score lacks any concept of what a musical score should do and sound like. Why would Paramount want the low quality music for their DVD's? Because they do not have to pay very much if anything.

I am now so thankful for Nick at Night and TV Land and A&E (even though they no longer show these great shows) and VCR's. Nick and TV Land would have marathons where they would show uncut episodes, some with original cast commersials (MTS-Hunts Ketchup and Chevy) of one show all weekend long or every night for a week. Thats why I have the original broadcast versions of MTS first, sixth, and seventh season. The rest of my tapes are syndicated edits but I do not mind, I doubt CBS will ever release more than a couple of seasons MTS even with the new scores. I got my first Hi-Fi VCR in '94 (unfortunately not in time for The Fugitive, it was off A&E by '94) so many of my tapes have excellent sound.

So classic TV lives on despite CBS/Paramount.

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I am worried that as vast a community as HTF is, it is only a speck in the great pond, and most folks are at home watching My Three Sons season one volume one right now with no clue anything has changed.

And so nothing will.

And CBS/Paramount knows it.

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I am returning my "My 3 Sons" set unopened after reading these posts. It's been asked before as to why shows like Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Rawhide and Twilight Zone have escaped this music curse. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that these shows were all produced by CBS originally (the end credits always say either "produced by the CBS Television Network" or "in association with"). So perhaps that gave CBS a blanket right in perpetuity to the music. I'm in no way defending what Paramount has done and I will not knowingly purchase any further releases that have been substantially altered, but the attorneys at CBS may have been overly cautious about music in programs not originally owned by CBS. Too bad no one at Paramount Home Video had the guts to tell the lawyers to spend their time on other things.

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I would venture to say that, whatever the show...for a majority of us...the music is part of the experience...without it, it is a very, very different experience....and I am very miffed about this news.
We, the fans, are keeping these shows alive, and evidently the ones who would purchase it....but not if it has been tampered with.
It is just sad to lose this part of television history by losing original scores.

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I think in this is a rare case where people on message boards actually count for a good chunk of the market because the average consumer isn't buying My Three Sons. We can only hope that Paramount will get slammed with letters and see nearly zero sales and they'll realize that they can't keep sneaking out these music replacement releases without fans catching on, getting mad and not buying the product.

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Travis I hope you are right. But I know for a fact they got slammed with a ton of negativity for The Fugitive and it didn't seem to phase them.

What discourages me so much is not that they did it again, but that they knew how upset pepole were last time, and they didn't adjust their PR.

That's why I'm so down.

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As someone who didn't follow the saga of the music replacement of The Fugitive, can someone tell me: was an answer ever provided as to why it was done?

I'm wondering what the chances are of getting a straight answer from CBS/Paramount about why this was done with the M3S set.

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I have been told by a friend who retired from Paramount (several years ago) that fees have to be paid when you use music in DVD's, VHS tapes, CD's, no matter what. Paramount does not want to pay the fees.

Money to the musicians, composers, publishers, I dont know.

But a lot of people on forums and review sites say I am wrong, Work for Hire is free, Capitol Library costs, CBS Library free, on and on.

I tend to believe my friend.

Re: My Three Sons: Season 1, Vol. 1

Hiya, Mike! How's that "Roundup" hobby of yours going?


Here's some light reading for you:
Site News DVD news: Editorial: Lawyers, Disclaimers and the Replaced Fugitive Music | TVShowsOnDVD.com
The Fugitive DVD news: Official CBS Home Entertainment Resonse to Music Issue | TVShowsOnDVD.com
The Fugitive DVD news: Update about Fugitive Music Rescoring Issue | TVShowsOnDVD.com
The Fugitive DVD news: Explanation for the Music Changes on The Fugitive - Season 2, Vol. 1 | TVShowsOnDVD.com

Re: My Three Sons: Season 1, Vol. 1

It just dawned on me that as far back as the vhs days, paramount replaced music in some of their classic movie releases...COME BACK LITTLE SHEBA comes to mind as one of them.