WKRP Music Cuts More Extensive Than Expected

Looks like I won’t be getting the upcoming WKRP in Cincinnati: The Complete First Season DVD set after all.

At least, not if this description of music cuts is accurate.

in this DVD release, there’s little more half-a-dozen real musical recordings left in. … It’s possible that Fox meant well. They’d been getting requests from fans to release it, so they did. And many of the songs that were cut are just incredibly expensive, like Pink Floyd. But ultimately, if they couldn’t afford to release the show without more music than included here, this might be one of those cases when they should have turned a deaf ear to fan requests. After all, they knew they couldn’t afford to keep the music; we fans didn’t. Or perhaps it would have been better to start with a best-of disc, focusing on episodes without much music…

I’m most concerned with cuts to the footage to cover up the changes and the use of the shorter syndication versions for some episodes. When a show’s about music and the effect it has on people, releasing such an incomplete version suggests that the studio doesn’t understand what they’re doing.