The Fugitive: The Day the Music Stopped

The highlights of my This Week in DVD post this week would surely have been a pair of classic TV sets from Paramount: The Odd Couple Season 4 and The Fugitive Season 2 Volume 1. Unfortunately, as fans received their copies, word trickled out about the dreaded music replacement that plagues both collections.

Now, "The Odd Couple" set is riddled with music substitutions, many of them seemingly trivial enough that you wonder if Paramount is even trying to clear them--snippets of a popular song or a note or two of music. Yet on balance, it's great having the show in more complete form, at least, than the terrible syndication edits that dominated TV for 30-some years.

But "The Fugitive"--hoo, boy, this is another matter entirely, as for some as-yet unknown reason, the folks at CBS-Paramount removed the entire original musical score from each episode. This is, to my knowledge, unprecedented and quite possibly unnecessary. Fans are understandably outraged, but right now it's tough to figure out what happened here. In the tight-lipped world of TV on DVD, information is hard to get from official sources, and we may not know for a long time. Here's an emotional thread at the Home Theater Forum devoted to this topic.

What we DO know, however, is how Paramount handled this. See, these folks didn't JUST remove the original music score. They commissioned someone to do a new score and then, instead of calling attention to this and alerting consumers about this radical change, they snuck in an altered title card in the end credits with the new composer's name casually arranged with several other legit people who originally worked on the show. This underhanded bit of chicanery is perhaps more disturbing than the decision to redo the music.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing happens all the time in the industry, though probably not on this scale with one of the most respected TV series in history (let alone one for which the musical score is considered so vital). Consumers accept this, the mainstream media accepts it, and even many hardcore DVD reviewers and reporters accept it. TV, even classic TV, is still treated as inferior if it's even considered at all. It's an afterthought, a time waster, and apparently not worthy of the kind of attention and PROTECTION given classic films.

Therefore we see classic shows butchered time and again for reruns, with each new cycle bringing more cuts to get those extra ads in. At least when a channel like AMC or TNT butchers a movie, they tell you about it before they air it. There is no such disclaimer before, say, TV Land shows an episode of something that's been whittled to 22 minutes from 25.

Classic TV--or let's say vintage TV--needs an advocate like a Martin Scorcese, someone high-profile enough to call attention to the fact that our TV history is being shredded. If we can't get cable networks to show uncut episodes whenever possible, for crying out loud, can't we at least get the DVDs right?

I realize that it's difficult to deal with music publishers and the lawyers and such who angle to get a piece of the pie and see old TV shows as a way to make a buck. But if something like that is going on, especially if it's forcing a radical alteration such as what is happening with "The Fugitive," let us know about it. Be honest and upfront. Maybe reassure us there are still archival copies of the original versions that can be made available someday, somewhere for viewing.

Paramount didn't go that route, instead choosing to hack up a show that was mostly UNhacked in its first two official DVD releases. Fans are shocked to see that suddenly, beginning with Season 2, their program of choice is not what they remember. So instead of being given the info ahead of time and making a decision accordingly, they're returning those sets, most likely with angry notes attached.

It's a terrible mess that further illustrates the appalling lack of respect given television of any kind--even quality television--in this media landscape. Just because something was made for commercial purposes doesn't mean it is without artistic merit. Movies may not have been made to sell soap, but they were made to sell tickets. Yet there are advocates who prevent this kind of shady dealing from going down, or at least force it to be corrected when it DOES go down. I'd like to see television get the same kind of advocacy from consumers, mainstream media, and popular DVD websites that might be able to influence studios like Paramount.