I just found out while I was out today that WKRP will be out on DVD, I saw the poster for it at HMV and got excited. I figured Shoutbox must be behind it, they had talked about trying to get it released.

Then I google search and find out Fox is releasing it and my heart sinks a bit. Then I find out the full deal, the episodes will be even more hacked up than the last syndication version that aired. Badly done as that was, at least a few key scenes survived intact like the scene in the Turkey's Away episode where Mr. Carlson walks in on Dr. Johnny Fever nodding out to Pink Floyd's Animals album. Many scenes had replaced music and voice impersonators recreating the original dialouge during scenes that required talking over copyrighted music.

The new DVD version won't even have that, the classic Pink Floyd moment? Gone. And instead of faked dialouge over dubbed in music, instead these scenes that had talking over copyrighted music have been hacked up in the editing booth. It's just not going to be the same. I think I will either totally give this a miss or wait for a used copy to show up.

In the mean time I do have a video tape of my favorite episodes given the 90's syndication treatment taped off the Comedy Network and a three video set my sister gave me from MTM productions who made the original series with some other famous episodes, while also having to dub in music in some places are not very hacked up. I guess I'll consoldate all of these onto a DVD-R for the time being.

It really bums me out that one of my all time favorite sit-coms given this treatment, especially in light of the fact Shoutbox got SCTV and Freaks and Geeks out with much of it's copyrighted music still intact (albiet also raising the cost of the DVD sets.)

My hope is maybe this will get TV Tropolis to pick up a syndication package of the show. They did that for Married with Children as the DVDs were being released, and they had the Sinatra theme song where the DVD's don't and all the banned from US broadcast episodes were included.

Yeah, I read about this yesterday. I loved the show as a kid. To see it now all butchered would just kill a part of my childhood. I can kinda understand why they did it. If they left the original music, it would cost a small fortune for the sets. But it still does ruin the series.

I was too young to see WKRP when it first aired but I grew up with reruns on CBC. CBC had a much earlier syndication package with much more of the original music. I so wish I had taped some but I was a young kid and took stuff like that for granted.

Most companies don't even care about classic TV. I was looking forward to this release and now I don't know.

I have not seen this show in over 10 or so years.

Loni Anderson. . . .hmmmmm

What more can we say about the "message" episode regarding the WHO concert . . .

Loni Anderson was hella sweet, I like Jan Smithers who played Bailey alot too, especially from season two on when the glasses came off and had more of an additude.

Jan Smithers has also aged incredibly well.

Oh man, Les Nessman was the best. That sucks about all the cuts.

I remember that show when I was a kid. Awesome, a WKRP dvd?!

Maybe if the DVD doesn't sell well or gets heavy criticism, the publishers will be influenced into returning the show to it's original form :) .