TV Shows that are unavailable to DVD due to music clearance BS (1 Viewer)

[BobO'Link]

I thought it was common knowledge the Beatles weren't owned by any of the prior Beatles. That was the rift people Paul and Michael Jackson.

The real bit is...what has happened to the catalog since MJ's death and his loans against it?

In December 1995, Michael Jackson agreed to merge ATV Music Publishing (owners of The Beatles catalog) with Sony Music Publishing, a division of Sony Corporation, to form Sony/ATV Music. Currently his estate still holds his 50% share in the company and the loans have been paid. Sony/ATV Music manages the catalog. McCartney can begin to regain publishing rights in 2018. The U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 allows songwriters to get back publishing rights of songs written before 1978 after 56 years. That means he can regain publishing rights to songs from 1962 in 2018 and a few more each year following until he'll have them all by 2025 (1969 being the last year he and Lennon were contracted to ATV who had purchased Northern Songs).

 

[JMFabianoRPL]

Why is it easier to clear music on DVDs of movies, and most newer shows?

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Why is it easier to clear music on DVDs of movies, and most newer shows?

Don't know about movies, but I believe newer shows are easier because the music rights costs and clearances for home video are usually written into the licensing agreements when the shows are first produced, since pretty much everything is released on DVD now, so they don't have to go back and renegotiate for home video.

Now, shows with a tighter budget, like My Name Is Earl, still had to do some music changes for home video because they didn't have the budget for home video rights as well. But higher profile shows like Mad Men had their Beatles song cleared for home video, thanks in part to the reported $250,000 they paid to use the song.

 

[jimmyjet]

Just curious Jimmie, my post #82 that lists a series of events starting with Imavision through Liongate to the upcoming LHOTP Blu-ray and DVD releases using the original uncut elements. To you there is absolutely no possible validity to the scenario that the earlier purchases of the syndicated prints helped fuel Liongate's desire to obtain the license, nor did it help them fund the expense to remaster the elements for the upcoming release?

While you provided your general answer about not purchasing lesser quality releases, you never actually responded to the merits of this particular title and the series of events I listed or provided a differing opinion of what may have taken place. I was just curious to see if you wanted to elaborate.

i am assuming that you have provided an accurate history of what happened.

but we come from 2 different planets, regarding all of this.

so to answer your question, no i do not think the original release had anything to do with an eventual unedited release.

i was never unsure about the quality of the show, the value that it had, etc.

that is why i am willing to put my foot in my mouth on a bunch of shows. i am strictly basing it on the merit of the show, how it is part of the human equation, etc.

i truly do understand the logic of your thinking. and in many scenarios, i may totally agree with that logic.

but not about putting out tv shows, FOR THE MOST PART.

 

[jimmyjet]

there may be some shows where your logic has some merit.

if it truly is an iffy show.

but not many. and certainly not a show like lhotp.

i am absolutely positive that the studios will continue to put out intermediate releases as long as we are willing to pay for them.

it does not hurt me personally, since i have so much stuff to view, already.

it just means that i will make some purchases later than i might have otherwise.

the studios have already improved by quite a bit in that regard, simply because of the monstrous amounts of complaints at amazon when they do this.

say, when we look at 5 years ago.

so it is not a big concern to me. if you guys want to make them wealthier than they already are, that is your choice.

 

[jimmyjet]

Don't know about movies, but I believe newer shows are easier because the music rights costs and clearances for home video are usually written into the licensing agreements when the shows are first produced, since pretty much everything is released on DVD now, so they don't have to go back and renegotiate for home video.

Now, shows with a tighter budget, like My Name Is Earl, still had to do some music changes for home video because they didn't have the budget for home video rights as well. But higher profile shows like Mad Men had their Beatles song cleared for home video, thanks in part to the reported $250,000 they paid to use the song.

thanks obsolete man,

i was hoping that the shows had gotten smart about that by now.

what a can of worms to have one product with a whole bunch of licenses attached to it.

i realize that the old shows never dreamed of the dvd market of today.

 

[Richard Gallagher]

I thought it was common knowledge the Beatles weren't owned by any of the prior Beatles. That was the rift people Paul and Michael Jackson.

The real bit is...what has happened to the catalog since MJ's death and his loans against it?

In 1995 Jackson was paid $95 million by Sony to merge ATV (the company which he bought in 1985) with Sony, forming a new company called Sony/ATV. Sony and Jackson each owned 50% of Sony/ATV. After Jackson died his estate sold his 50% of Sony/ATV to Sony for $250 million to help pay off his debts. Technically Sony currently owns 50% of the Lennon-McCartney catalog. McCartney and Lennon (and now Yoko One, of course) have always owned 25% each of their songs, but they have had no say over who their music is licensed to or what the licensing fee is. Basically Lennon and McCartney made a bad deal when they set up their publishing company in the early sixties because it left them each owning only 25% of their publishing rights.

Full ownership of the Lennon-McCartney songs will begin to revert to McCartney and Ono 56 years after they were first published, so in about 12 years Sony will no longer own any of them.

 

[schan1269]

there may be some shows where your logic has some merit.if it truly is an iffy show.but not many. and certainly not a show like lhotp.i am absolutely positive that the studios will continue to put out intermediate releases as long as we are willing to pay for them.it does not hurt me personally, since i have so much stuff to view, already.it just means that i will make some purchases later than i might have otherwise.the studios have already improved by quite a bit in that regard, simply because of the monstrous amounts of complaints at amazon when they do this.say, when we look at 5 years ago.so it is not a big concern to me. if you guys want to make them wealthier than they already are, that is your choice.

Does that mean you need a stack of waffles?

 

[jimmyjet]

for the most part, i do not think that the music is that important to me.

in the sense that i would have enjoyed a show just as much if it had other music on it when it originally aired.

but i do prefer to see the show unedited.

i was watching an episode on quantum leap, where sam was dancing romantically with a girl.

and the song that they were playing just did not fit the scene at all.

if it had, i probably would not have been the wiser.

and with all these licenses attached to one product, what a way to really complicate things.

gosh, can you imagine owning something, but not being able to use it without the okay of 10 other people ??

 

[jimmyjet]

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/releases/Combat-Complete-Series/13665

this review says that it is unedited.

 

[Gary OS]

http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/releases/Combat-Complete-Series/13665

this review says that it is unedited.

Most of the seasons were time-compressed, hence they were "edited" in the strictest sense of the word. I know I'm not a fan of time-compression at all and do not consider shows released that way as being done correctly.


Gary "there are so many shows that were N-O-T released correctly (time compression; syndication prints; music subs; etc) - more than most people probably realize" O.

 

[jimmyjet]

you mean everything runs faster than it should ?

i have combat, and never noticed it.

so i guess it doesnt bother me, at least on that show.

 

[Vahan_Nisanain]

you mean everything runs faster than it should ?

i have combat, and never noticed it.

so i guess it doesnt bother me, at least on that show.

Unless you have 16mm copies of the original network episodes, you would never notice it.

 

[smithbrad]

you mean everything runs faster than it should ?

i have combat, and never noticed it.

so i guess it doesnt bother me, at least on that show.

Jimmie, you just supported the evil empire by purchasing a mediocre release and preventing the rest of us from getting the pristine version some of us have been waiting for. How dare you. Don't you realize that this behavior is just going to ensure we keeping getting this junk? I had such high hopes for you Jimmie, that you at least would do the right thing by us.

 

[jimmyjet]

hi brad,

thanks for the humor. they got me, and i never noticed !!

never heard of such a thing. there must be some limit to how fast they can speed it up, before the average person starts to notice ?

 

[smithbrad]

I'm sure they figured something out. It was all about trying to keep it complete in content while also allowing more commercial time. It similar to buying something from a region that supports PAL vs. our NTSC, one typically gets a 4% speedup in converting from 25 frames to 24 frames per second. Some notice it more than others. Luckily I don't. Now there is suppose to be a way to do a pitch conversion on the voices to mitigate it but that expense wouldn't be done on these types of releases.

 

[smithbrad]

hi brad,

thanks for the humor. they got me, and i never noticed !!

never heard of such a thing. there must be some limit to how fast they can speed it up, before the average person starts to notice ?

So does that mean it isn't so bad supporting the studio machine if it is a release one wants and the adjustments made are not really much of an impact to the individual doing the purchasing? Are you ashamed in this case for being taken in.

 

[jimmyjet]

i wonder if the studios even knew ?

the reviewers are generally pretty fussy, and they didnt say anything about it.

isnt it an easy process to change the speed ?

since commercials are no longer an issue, it seems like they would have slowed things back down a few seconds, or whatever it takes, HAD THEY KNOWN ?

i am not even convinced that it was deliberate.

but to answer your question, if it is unnoticeable to people, i guess it does not make any difference.

i do not look at this in the same way that i do with edited scenes, or scenes cut out altogether.

 

[smithbrad]

If memory serves, it was a process the studio's did at one point in the creation of the syndicated prints that they distributed. They knew exactly what they were doing at the time. The DVD's were produced from those syndicated prints by Image, an independent DVD distributor that licensed the rights, not a major studio.

Things can get a bit convoluted when it comes to independents and rights, and I don't know the state of things with regards to Combat!. There are probably film elements in a vault somewhere, but that doesn't mean that they were readily available to Image, or that it would have been cost effective for them to retransfer them. It's quite possible that this is all that was available from the source the rights were procured from.

Combat! isn't the only release timesped. The fact that they clock in at around 47 minutes each instead of 50 minutes is always the first indicator of cuts or being timesped. I knew about it before I purchased based on information here on the forum.

As for fixing it, I'm not sure you can using the timesped prints. It's one thing to remove something to speed it up but another to try to add something back that is no longer there. You basically have to go back to the original film elements. Usually it is the audio that gets most people and that can be fixed using a pitch conversion (that's what I understand they do with movies converted to PAL), but that is yet another added expense.

So whether Image knew from the get go that they had timesped prints is hard to say, but in the end there really isn't a whole lot they could do about it at the time. They don't have the budget to easily go back to original film elements. They eventually did with Twilight Zone and Dick Van Dyke but only after releasing on DVD in lesser quality first. They released Combat! a few times on DVD now so maybe they are looking to upgrade to the film elements in the future for a better release. This is the way it goes with independents sometimes when a major studio doesn't do it themselves or isn't even in the picture. Independents sometimes have to build up equity through releases to fund additional remastering work. Sound familiar.

Of course we could have just hoped for someone bigger to pick it up and try and do it right from the beginning. And we might still be waiting if that was the case. But you have plenty on your shelves so it wouldn't have made a difference to you.

 

[Neil Brock]

Time compression/speed-up and Lexiconing, as it was originally called when Lexington Broadcast System started the process, has been around for about 30 years or so. I'm not sure how anyone could claim to know anything about television and not know about this. To me, that speaks volumes and anyone who would state that they never heard of this? Well, to me that tells me all I need to know.