Sam and Friends Copyright

[Sidebottom]

Okay. Here's something that's been bugging me for a while.

Much of Jim Henson's early work on Sam and Friends was lip-synching to comedy records or popular songs. That is to say, it was not entirely original material.

Now, I know that whenever the Muppets did someone else's song on The Muppet Show, they always got permission. But I doubt that Henson did that in these very early days.

So my question is: If Henson were starting his TV career now, and tried to do the same thing, would he be allowed to? Indeed, was he technically allowed to even back then? Did he actually obtain rights? Or did it not matter because it was only a local station? Or what's the deal with this?

Many thanks to anyone who can help me clear this up.

Ciao,
-Sidebottom

 

[jediX]

I think because of the overall obsessiveness on "copyright" (Ugh... I hate that word. The RIAA is the reason why I quit playing music.) these days this type of work wouldn't fly. I mean, if I went on tv and had my puppets lip synching to pop music I'd get sued left and right. Back then rules weren't so tight on that evil evil "C" word.

 

[AndyWan Kenobi]

A similar discussion came up when fake-Kermit sang part of "The Rainbow Connection" on SNL recently. Wouldn't there be a way that the network (or local channel) would just pay a fee to use whatever music they like? I'm not sure about the intricacies of this, but I remember somebody saying something like this in the other thread.

 

[Ryan]

Jane has said basically that they didn't really look too much into it because it was a local show, and at that time, they couldn't be bothered about it, really. It was the very early days of TV, where they were still experimenting with everything.

 

[anathema]

I don't know if this is the case with US television, but here in the UK the broadcasters have a blanket agreement which allows them to use any recording in a broadcast programme. The only time individual rights have to be negotiated is when the programme is being released for sale or rental. So if Jim were starting out now in the UK, there wouldn't be any problems.

As for what they did on TMS, the rules over here allow you to record your own version of a piece of music without any hassles. You make payments to the MCPS (which go to the author(s) of the piece) if you make commercial use of it, but you own the copyright on your own recording. I'm guessing that this is the reason why MFC can be released here without the edits made to the US version...

 

[Sidebottom]

Interesting! Thanks everybody!

-Sidebottom

 

[Beauregard]

Oooh, I didn't know that it wasn't edited here.

Is it on DVD yet?

 

[Mark The Shark]

Jane has said basically that they didn't really look too much into it because it was a local show, and at that time, they couldn't be bothered about it, really. It was the very early days of TV, where they were still experimenting with everything.

I don't know a whole lot about this, but the above sounds right to me. This is a completely separate subject altogether, but there is a situation going on right now with the producers of "SCTV" (Second City Television), a sketch comedy show that was produced in Canada between 1976 and 1984. Fans of SCTV have been teased about some sort of video release for years, but so far, the only stuff that's been released has been "The Best Of John Candy On SCTV" (a VHS sampler including a bunch of seemingly random clips compiled with the participation of Candy himself in 1992; this was a couple years before he passed away) and one "Great White North" sketch which was included as a bonus feature on the "Strange Brew" DVD. Now they're talking about releasing the whole series, or at least most of it, in DVD sets by season...but the roadblock has been music licensing. Especially in the early days of the show, when it was essentially a local production with an almost nonexistent budget, the show's makers just pulled any music they wanted to use from anywhere they chose. This had created a lot of problems in recent years when lawyers for Second City have had to go through the reruns and a lot of skits have been edited or eliminated altogether. According to Dave Thomas, a cast member, writer and sometime associate producer, to license all these songs would run into the millions of dollars. Supposedly, the shows being released on DVD (next spring, supposedly...although this project has been announced and delayed repeatedly over the last several years, but now they appear to be more serious, since the cast are recording audio commentaries and so forth) will be complete or as close to it as possible...but given that this is a relatively obscure show and probably will not be selling in the millions, I wonder how they're going to break even.

I'd love to see "Sam And Friends"...I wonder if those shows even exist any more, beyond the few clips I've seen.

 

[Ryan]

I'd love to see "Sam And Friends"...I wonder if those shows even exist any more, beyond the few clips I've seen.

I believe Jim said that the only ones existing are the ones you see in documentaries, museums, etc. He wasn't too proud of that work, so he didn't save a lot of it.

 

[anathema]

I believe Jim said that the only ones existing are the ones you see in documentaries, museums, etc. He wasn't too proud of that work, so he didn't save a lot of it.

Given when it was made, it's unlikely that a) much of it was recorded in the first place, and b) many of the recordings made still survive anyway. Videotape was appallingly expensive in its early days - the clips I've seen to date are all preserved on film, and there was little enough reason to do that either.