Cheers - Complete List of Cuts and Music Replacements (1 Viewer)

[LeoA]

Yet oddly enough, they're 480p only on Microsoft's movie/tv service.

Was considering grabbing them to view the series in HD on my Xbox 360 and Xbox One (And I assume I can view them on my PC), but that stopped those plans. I'd rather not invest in digital movies and tv shows from a hodgepodge of different services and since Xbox Live is where I first downloaded a few things 10+ years ago, I've just stuck with it.

Edit: Looks like they finally updated it. I know I checked at some point in 2020 and was surprised by the lack of a HD option.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/cheers-the-complete-series/8d6kgwxn3w8m?activetab=pivot:regionofsystemrequirementstab

 

[The Obsolete Man]

The series has been remastered in HD for over a decade now, it's on iTunes, Amazon and I think it's even been on Netflix.

IIRC, the remasters were done in 2000ish, and debuted on Nick at Nite in late 2001. And given the fact that they still retain the final pre-2006 split Paramount logo and fanfare to this day, I'm betting that was the last time they were remastered.

Still, they look great, both on DVD and HD streaming. Paramount went all out to remaster Cheers.

...well, minus the full network version of the finale.

Oh, and it's streaming on Peacock, too.

 

[Wiseguy]

I wish I could remember the name of the episode- one of the plots is Norm offers to help Carla through an IRS audit. There is at least one very rough edit that appears to remove a piece of dialog or music. I’ll have to see if I can find out which episode it is.

Found it- in season 8- Sammy And The Professor. Carla is leaving the bar with the auditor, and there is an edit that appears to delete something, at least in the DVD set.

I don't have the DVDs but I managed to locate a VHS recording of the original NBC broadcast (first episode to be broadcast in the 1990s). I played back the scene and don't see any kind of cut.

Carla (as she gathers receipts and walks around the bar to the door): I'm going to get you, Norm! Let them put me in solitary confinement with nothing but bread and water! I'll survive because I got a mission-- Get Norm Peterson! You remember, I got friends on the outside!

Norm: Hey Carla--No charge!

(Carla looks back at Norm and turns to leave as the scene dissolves to the outside view of the bar entrance (with a bit of Cheers music). The scene then dissolves to Rebecca's office as the professor enters.)

Professor: Rebecca, honey? You didn't come to my seminar. I was surprised. Is something going on?

Rebecca: I just couldn't face you, Alice. Not with all you've been through, I know it was my fault.

Professor: What are you talking about?

Rebecca: Sam.

Professor: Malone, right?

Some of the dialogue was hard to make out, but I think I got most of it, with a little help from the closed captioning that chose to display.

 

[WhitneyG]

I don't have the DVDs but I managed to locate a VHS recording of the original NBC broadcast (first episode to be broadcast in the 1990s). I played back the scene and don't see any kind of cut.

Carla (as she gathers receipts and walks around the bar to the door): I'm going to get you, Norm! Let them put me in solitary confinement with nothing but bread and water! I'll survive because I got a mission-- Get Norm Peterson! You remember, I got friends on the outside!

Norm: Hey Carla--No charge!

(Carla looks back at Norm and turns to leave as the scene dissolves to the outside view of the bar entrance (with a bit of Cheers music). The scene then dissolves to Rebecca's office as the professor enters.)

Professor: Rebecca, honey? You didn't come to my seminar. I was surprised. Is something going on?

Rebecca: I just couldn't face you, Alice. Not with all you've been through, I know it was my fault.

Professor: What are you talking about?

Rebecca: Sam.

Professor: Malone, right?

Some of the dialogue was hard to make out, but I think I got most of it, with a little help from the closed captioning that chose to display.

The key part is this: "(Carla looks back at Norm and turns to leave as the scene dissolves to the outside view of the bar entrance (with a bit of Cheers music). The scene then dissolves to Rebecca's office as the professor enters.)"

The dialogue before and after that seems to all be there. It's this exact scene transition that looks weird to me. We see Carla looking back at Norm. We see the outside establishing shot (with Cheers music cue). We see the inside of Rebecca's office and the professor enters. What's missing? The dissolves! All we get on the DVD are hard cuts with no video transition for both of those instances. We've lost no dialogue, but the weird part is that we barely get a look at Carla's reaction to Norm and never get to see her actually leave. I wonder if the film was damaged and they had to cut around the original transitions.

Thanks so much for helping figure out what was missing!

 

[The Obsolete Man]

The key part is this: "(Carla looks back at Norm and turns to leave as the scene dissolves to the outside view of the bar entrance (with a bit of Cheers music). The scene then dissolves to Rebecca's office as the professor enters.)"

The dialogue before and after that seems to all be there. It's this exact scene transition that looks weird to me. We see Carla looking back at Norm. We see the outside establishing shot (with Cheers music cue). We see the inside of Rebecca's office and the professor enters. What's missing? The dissolves! All we get on the DVD are hard cuts with no video transition for both of those instances. We've lost no dialogue, but the weird part is that we barely get a look at Carla's reaction to Norm and never get to see her actually leave. I wonder if the film was damaged and they had to cut around the original transitions.

Thanks so much for helping figure out what was missing!

Now, somebody said earlier in the thread that the show was edited on videotape in seasons 6-11. Perhaps when they did the HD remasters, depending on how they did the remastering, they forgot to do the dissolves in this one case?

I mean, the show looks too good to be from a videotape master, maybe they gave it what is now known as the TNG treatment and built it back up from scratch?

That would also explain the wonky looking random shots. The original film was lost so they had to use upscaled videotape.

 

[ClassicTVMan1981X]

Now, somebody said earlier in the thread that the show was edited on videotape in seasons 6-11. Perhaps when they did the HD remasters, depending on how they did the remastering, they forgot to do the dissolves in this one case?

I mean, the show looks too good to be from a videotape master, maybe they gave it what is now known as the TNG treatment and built it back up from scratch?

That would also explain the wonky looking random shots. The original film was lost so they had to use upscaled videotape.

Season 5 (1986-87) was the first to be shot on film as usual, but edited on videotape.

~Ben

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Season 10, Episode 22 - Rebecca's Lover... Not - Rebecca sings a song as part of a conversation. Last 15 seconds of the conversation removed entirely on the DVD version. This has been restored in streaming episodes.

That must've been the bit Rebecca sang of "I'm Going To Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair" from South Pacific that was cut.

Apparently, that must be a pricey get, since Shout wound up cutting that out of a Facts of Life episode when Tootie was auditioning for South Pacific. And Shout didn't exactly cheap out on clearing music for FoL, since music heavy episodes like Cruisin' and the 50s episode were both intact. In fact, that was one of the few cuts made in the whole series.

But, for Cheers, it has indeed returned for streaming.

 

[MatthewA]

The one song that got away from the Facts box set was not a South Pacific song, but "Ease on Down the Road," which was not out of reach for Diff'rent Strokes or Sanford and Son when the episodes that had them came to disc. Sony could also get "White Christmas" for a Jeffersons Christmas episode after Fox refused to pay for it for The Mary Tyler Moore Show in Season 1. The Sony-owned show that had two Rodgers and Hammerstein songs but cut them was Soap; Jodie Dallas sang a few lines each of "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" and "There is Nothing Like A Dame" in episodes of season 1. They were on the Columbia House VHS releases but not on Sony's DVDs.

With Cheers, there seemed to be more effort put into securing music before the CBS/Viacom split, and that was true across the board of all their releases. Every other show that started after that and wasn't lucky enough to get a third-party licensor to handle it had music cuts from the get-go. And then, of course, the replacement of pre-existing logos got worse!

 

[The Obsolete Man]

The one song that got away from the Facts box set was not a South Pacific song, but "Ease on Down the Road," which was not out of reach for Diff'rent Strokes or Sanford and Son when the episodes that had them came to disc. Sony could also get "White Christmas" for a Jeffersons Christmas episode after Fox refused to pay for it for The Mary Tyler Moore Show in Season 1. The Sony-owned show that had two Rodgers and Hammerstein songs but cut them was Soap; Jodie Dallas sang a few lines each of "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" and "There is Nothing Like A Dame" in episodes of season 1. They were on the Columbia House VHS releases but not on Sony's DVDs.

With Cheers, there seemed to be more effort put into securing music before the CBS/Viacom split, and that was true across the board of all their releases. Every other show that started after that and wasn't lucky enough to get a third-party licensor to handle it had music cuts from the get-go. And then, of course, the replacement of pre-existing logos got worse!

I'll take your word for it.

I do remember South Pacific on Facts. Must've got 'em mixed up.

Oh, and for another Cheers restoration, was the song in 11.02 supposed to be Miserlou or Wipeout, because Wipeout is what I heard.

 

[Jeffrey D]

I'll take your word for it.

I do remember South Pacific on Facts. Must've got 'em mixed up.

Oh, and for another Cheers restoration, was the song in 11.02 supposed to be Miserlou or Wipeout, because Wipeout is what I heard.

I watched that episode not long ago (I have the DVDs), and it sounded like Miserlou, at least a small part of the song.

 

[MatthewA]

How popular was "Miserlou" before Pulp Fiction brought it back to prominence?

 

[SpacemanDoug]

How popular was "Miserlou" before Pulp Fiction brought it back to prominence?

As I just found out, it's been misreported that Miserlou was in the episode, it was actually a cover of Wipeout, though I can understand the mix up, at least it was restored on streaming

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Found this article someone posted over at Reddit...

KODAK: Cheers restored for a new generation of laughs

archived 5 Sep 2012 21:15:54 UTC

archive.vn

So, Cheers did get the full TNG restoration, which may go toward explaining all the odd looking shots in what used to be the edited on videotape seasons if they had to use upscaled video for missing footage.

 

[Garysb]

There are a lot of threads about music replacement on DVDs and now streaming services. As there doesn't seem to be one main article about the subject I am posting a NY Times article about the subject and the reasons for the replacements here. Nothing in the article hasn't already been discussed here on the Forum. Basically shows could not afford to license music in perpetuity so the choose limited use for 1 to 5 years. It was the only way they could afford to include popular music in the programs when they originally aired. DVDs and streaming were not a consideration at the time the shows were produced.

"These limited, temporary licenses could be as low as five percent of the cost of licensing a song in perpetuity, Urdang said. That enabled shows with low budgets, like “Dawson’s Creek,” to pack their episodes with recognizable tunes, even if only briefly — no one would be interested in watching these shows in a decade’s time anyway, the thinking went.

Now producers know better, and whether on streaming, network or cable, in-perpetuity licenses are the norm. “I don’t know anyone that would allow any kind of limited option anymore,” Urdang said. “We have to get rights forever.” Music budgets tend to be higher now to accommodate these needs, she said."

Why Don’t Some TV Shows Sound the Way They Used To? (Published 2021)

Licensing issues have gutted the soundtracks of many beloved series on streaming services, resulting in bewildering music cues and missing theme songs.

www.nytimes.com

 

[SpacemanDoug]

One thing I find funny is the 70 minute DVD version of the finale in segments that were restored, the way CBS did it can make it seem like it was just a botched fan reconstruction, I actually managed to find two audio anomalies as a direct result of it being a hybrid between the NBC version and the syndicated three part edit

Honestly the best thing I can say about the upscaled segments is at least they look better than the broadcast recording I have

The syndicated 3 part version misses out of about 8 minutes of footage (though in one segment they replaced a scene with an alternate take with mostly the same dialogue) and the DVD restores about 5 minutes of NBC footage

Part 1 has a couple of small cuts in the beginning, part 2 has basically no cuts but the beginning uses a couple of alternate shots to accommodate for the intro being added, part 3 suffered the worst with cuts because that's where the majority of them are, about 7 minutes I believe are missing from that portion alone.

As I said before though at least 5 minutes of footage from the part 3 portion of the episode has been restored and the original shots to the opening of the part 2 portion were restored to the DVD finale. It's still a shame CBS overlooked restoring the remaining footage instead of just the portions that bridge the parts together.

 

[SpacemanDoug]

Does anyone know what episode it is whenever Sam dances with the old lady?

Trying to find an HD version of that clip