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“A lot of times you realize that, say, putting an Abba song in a scene is really key,” said Thomas Golubic, a music supervisor who has worked on “Breaking Bad” and “The Walking Dead,” among other shows. But for showrunners and music supervisors intent on using hits, limited-use licenses were a cheaper workaround. The following year it went down to $19,000.”įor “Burn Notice,” Urdang pursued music by unknown independent artists - “songs that nobody knew,” which were therefore more affordable, she said. “Our first season, the budget was ridiculously low - about $20,000 per episode. “I worked on a show called ‘Burn Notice’ years ago,” Urdang said. Network and cable TV music budgets, meanwhile, are sometimes barely half that per episode. The costs are considerable - between $30,000 and $40,000 on average for indefinite rights to a popular song that has played on the radio and that most people would know, Urdang said.
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When TV producers want to put a song in a scene, even a small portion, they have to clear its use with the song’s composers and publishers and pay them a hefty fee. Some changes are less subtle - the music for shows like NBC’s “Scrubs” and Fox’s “Bones” has been dramatically altered, as fans have been quick to point out online. Scully leaves spooked, and the audience is left to wonder whether the killer really does have psychic powers. She doesn’t believe him, but as she goes to leave, he sings a few bars of Bobby Darin’s “Beyond the Sea” - a song she heard the day before, at her father’s funeral.
#Best tv theme songs serial#
In an early episode of “The X-Files,” Agent Scully, played by Gillian Anderson, interrogates a serial killer who claims to have psychic powers. This can result in some unusual and frustrating viewing experiences. The upshot is, once the licenses expired, many shows wound up on streaming services with their music replaced. Maisel.” “‘We’re airing the show for a year or three years or five years, and then it’s going away.’ They didn’t think they needed the music longer.” “At that point people didn’t think further,” said Robin Urdang, an Emmy-winning music supervisor who has licensed songs for such shows as “Broad City” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Many opted for a compromise to get well-known songs onto their shows: limited, short-term licenses, which allowed them to land big artists on the cheap. Before the early 2000s, in the days before DVD box sets and streaming, producers didn’t think much about the long-term future of these programs - as they saw it, they would air live and possibly for a few years in syndication. Why does it happen? As it turns out, it’s mainly a problem of foresight.Īll shows have to pay for the rights to use existing songs in their soundtracks, and the process of licensing popular tunes can be prohibitively expensive. It’s a bewildering transformation - and one that is surprisingly widespread across streaming services in North America. Stream it on Netflix, and most of the pop music it included when it originally aired is absent. “Dawson’s Creek” is one of many classic shows that sound different today than you probably remember.
#Best tv theme songs series#
It’s prolific.” (Cole’s song does play before the two-part series finale on Netflix, thanks to a deal Sony Pictures Entertainment, the production studio and distributor, made for a special 2003 DVD release.) “They tag me in every post - so much tagging on the socials, fans tagging Netflix and Sony. “People really care and are really upset about it,” Cole said in a phone interview from her home in Massachusetts. Instead of Cole’s tune, episodes of “Dawson’s Creek” now open with “Run Like Mad,” by Jann Arden.Īudiences have not taken this change lightly. The hit teen drama, which aired on the WB from 1998 to 2003, is synonymous with the singer’s beloved theme song, “I Don’t Want to Wait.” On home video and on streaming platforms like Netflix, however, the series has had almost all of its original music replaced, including, most conspicuously, its theme song. For years, whenever Paula Cole’s phone started lighting up, it usually meant one thing: “Dawson’s Creek” had arrived on another streaming platform.