Why did Noggin cancel Unpaved?

[Mark The Shark]

2 things i wanna ad. 1st, Ssetta mentioned that the ammount of people who watched the old CTW shows were in the miority. but what's also interesting is they claimed at the time he talked to them we are seen in 26million homes now witch would probably mean more cable & sattlite companies carry the channel. well a few years ago i was listening to a late night local talk show and the PBS kids shows were mentioned including the Noggin reruns and said that the channel wasn't seen on as many cable or sat. providers and i thought at the time when noggin would becaome more widely available, more people would get the chance to see the old shows. i guess it didn't help muchor not to their liking. > also i've been wondering for sometime now when they were planning to rerun the old CTW shows, i wonder if they had to possibly contact people who were on the old shows including current shows? of course SS is the only one of all 4 CTW shows that is still on. i ask this because i learned sometime ago people including myself writing to Zoom and on their website they will post people's emails up on the site and occasionaly they people ask about rerunning the original series. and they've claimed they do not have the right to air the original series due to some agreements they made with the 70s zoomers. they've never explained what the deal was. now i've heard about creators often having to pay royalties to actors and actress' to star on shows i don't understand the whole point of paying them each time a show is broadcast especially if the show is long out of production and just in reruns. those acors & actress'es have a lot of money in the bank as it is. I don't know if that's the case with the original Zoom shows or something else. it certainly didn't stop them from making a Zoom beast of the 70s video and even this season they're occainally showing clips from the 70s Zoom. it's certainly not good enough as far as i'm concerned the whole episodes should be shown if not on a daily baisis ceratinly every once in a while.

All of the above is a very complex issue. Actually, several issues. And I don't have any insider knowledge and I don't know about the various rights, licenses and what not, but I do know that showing any old shows on cable or releasing them on video or DVD opens up a huge can of worms in terms of licensing and payoffs, depending on the studio, the people involved and what kind of a contract they worked under at the time the shows were made.

I have read that specifically in the case of "Sesame Street," there is a licensing issue any time they repeat any musical segments involving songs written by Joe Raposo, and I understand that the licensing of his songs either from his estate or the current copyright owners is very expensive, so SS has tended to feature his songs less frequently (so I have read). Now, whether you or I agree with this or not, this is a legal, binding situation and all parties have to follow it, or someone ends up in court.

Any time an old show is made available through TV, video, whatever, there are huge number of people who have to get paid, from the performers, writers, producers, directors, down to the lighting crew, etc. Just to give an example, in the mid-1990s Rhino Records released a VHS box set of "The Monkees" TV series including all 58 episodes, an unaired pilot episode and a 1969 one-hour TV special. So even though Rhino owns the shows and the Monkees trademark (and that itself is another long and complicated story that isn't important for the purposes of this discussion), music publishers had to be paid for every song, etc., and I also understand that because of contractual issues with the Director's Union, the individual episodes were arranged in what seemed like a random order rather than in chronological sequence. I don't really understand this completely, but they placed three episodes on each tape and apparently, by grouping three episodes with *the same director* they were able to save a lot of money which would have had to be paid to the Director's Union if the shows had been presented inb sequence (with the work of more than one director included in the same tape). The box still sold for around $400, and I don't understand this either, but those shows more recently have been re-released in two DVD season sets (a Season 1 and Season 2) in sequence (for a lot less money), so I don't know how the licensing and legalities differ for that medium, but that's just an example.

Another series, the sketch comedy show "SCTV," is having a set of episodes released on DVD for the first time right now. It's basically a half-season's worth of 90 minute episodes which originally aired on NBC in 1981. "SCTV" is not a huge monster hit like "Seinfeld" or "The Simpsons" or "Friends," but though fans of the show have been after the owners to release the shows for years, for a long time they couldn't work it out because of licensing issues (primarily dealing with music used in the shows). When "SCTV" was being produced in Canada between 1976 and 1984 with practically no budget, the producers would grab music from anywhere they could find it...contemporary hits, etc., and used it as incidental music in some skits...which was okay for airing on television, but to release those shows on DVD, now the owners of every single one of those songs (even if it's Andrea Martin as Edith Prickley singing two lines of The Village People's "Macho Man" in a cooking show skit) has to get paid off, and this runs into big bucks. So this set is listing at around $90. But that's the only way to cover the cost of licensing, and even then, they had to redub a couple of songs that they couldn't come to terms on.

Speaking of "ZOOM," I remember reading a long time ago that just before the "new" "ZOOM" was launched, PBS in *Boston* (where the show was originally produced) showed a bunch of old "ZOOM" episodes from the 1970s for a while. I'd love to see those again. But then, that was just a brief thing to create some buzz and interest about the launching of the new show.

I have the "ZOOM/Best Of The 70s" VHS tape, and I hadn't seen "ZOOM" probably since the mid-1970s. That was cool to see again. I'd love to see some of the original shows, but again, it's a different thing licensing some clips for a compilation and getting clearances from the people involved, versus rerunning all the original shows again. That would be cool, and a retro channel would be cool where all these shows could be shown again, but then *someone* has to put up the capital to do it and then they have to pay for the licensing of all these shows.

Presumably, "Unpaved" and the 1993-1994 "123 Sesame Street" episodes are theoretically *available* (can anyone confirm this?) and what it would take would be some network (TV Land, Goodlife, PBS Kids, Nickelodeon, Fox News Channel, Game Show Network, Comedy Central, ESPN, Fox Movie Channel, Trio, BBC America...I know this is silly, but TV is a *business* and though the shows would not fit many of the aforementioned formats, that doesn't mean those networks theoretically don't have the *right* to license whatever shows they want and can afford) to pick them up again, Noggin or no Noggin.

I really don't think petitions and all that are worth the effort, but hey, if anyone out there knows any decision-makers at TV networks, it might not hurt to ask them about this...they might be able to provide a perspective on it from the networks' side of things, and that would be interesting to know.

 

[mikebennidict]

i've heard the same thing and it's too bad all if this. you might know soundstage is back on the air witch was 1 of the few PBS shows ever produced by WTTW Chicago and i asked them about showing the older episodes and said baisicly the same thing. > as for the Joe Raposo case, actually i believe a lot of his songs were used quite a bit. as i've said in the past i was 1 of those who watched SS past the target age and if you were watching in the 80s, you would of still heard a lot of his music, especially music that were used in films. now with the exeption of the 1969 SSU shows, i wouldn't know witch films were from the 1st year or not, but i'm sure a lot of them were from it's early days. now i read that he had a fallout with the CTW around 1974 but later returned in the 80s. and remained till his passing in 1989 i think. now maybe in the 90s SS began to use stuff with his music less after that and by the 90s many older films along with other skits of all kinds were beginning to been seen less and less. just thought i'd mention that.

 

[dvakman]

I have read that specifically in the case of "Sesame Street," there is a licensing issue any time they repeat any musical segments involving songs written by Joe Raposo, and I understand that the licensing of his songs either from his estate or the current copyright owners is very expensive, so SS has tended to feature his songs less frequently (so I have read). Now, whether you or I agree with this or not, this is a legal, binding situation and all parties have to follow it, or someone ends up in court

I think this is incredibly foolish of the Raposo estate. You'd think they'd cut a special deal for Sesame Street. I mean, where else will his great, underappreciated work be heard? I guess they'd rather let his brilliant musical pieces fade into obscurity before they'd charge less money. On the other hand, would SS be playing much of his music these days anyway?

This brings to mind one of those weird transitional moments from Sesame Street's past. On the Maria/Luis wedding episode from 1989, there is an extended Raposo song suite just before they exchange their vows. I think it was one of Joe's last contributions to the show before his untimely death. It had a jazzy, lilting melody reminiscent of many of the nature pieces that he did. There is a part in the song where Elmo sings a few lines. It is strange, looking back, to hear Elmo singing on this song. Even though I associate the Raposo style of music with a completely different era of the show, there was a brief time in the late 80s when the old guard was still in place but some elements of the "current" show were beginning to emerge.