More Music On TV

Home Media Retailing reports that CBS/Paramount is finally putting out two of its most-requested TV properties -- the Darren Star soapfests "Beverly Hills 90210" and "Melrose Place" (link via TV Shows on DVD). These were two of the shows that were being kept off DVD because of the huge amount of popular music they used, and they're going on DVD only because, as Paramount frankly admits, they gave up on trying to retain all the music:

Like many other shows with strong pop-culture soundtracks, such as “Felicity,” some music for the episodes included on these discs will be replaced with new tracks, according to a Paramount spokesperson.

That was done to prevent more delays in getting the DVD sets out, according to Paramount. The studio hired one of [Aaron] Spelling’s former music supervisors to help substitute some music.

I think that's the right way for a studio to go about this: admit what they're doing, point out that the show wouldn't be releasable unless they changed some of the music, and hire a good music editor (preferably someone with a connection to the show) to substitute cheaper songs as unobtrusively as possible. This is something a lot of music-heavy shows are going to have to do; studios will get a lot less fan outrage about it if they don't try to hide the fact that music substitution is necessary.