Second City Television - Syndication and Music Rights

Syndication and Music Rights

In 1984, after production on the series finally ended, the Second City Television syndicated half-hour episodes and SCTV Network 90-minute episodes were re-edited into half-hour shows for a revised syndicated package, which consisted of 156 re-edited half-hours. In 1990, a separate package of 26 half-hours (edited from the pay-TV SCTV Channel episodes) aired on The Comedy Channel (and later Comedy Central) in the United States. Like the original syndicated series, the US and Canadian versions of the 1984 package differed, with the Canadian half-hours a couple of minutes longer; the running order of episodes also differed between the two countries. By the late 1990s, the re-edited SCTV Channel episodes were added to the regular SCTV syndicated package; three additional half-hours (all from the 1980-1981 season) were restored to the package, knocking the episode count up to 185 half-hours.

The syndicated series re-aired on NBC in from 1999 through early 2001, in the 185 half-hour format. This shows were presented under the banner of Later presents SCTV -- "Later" was a recently cancelled Cynthia Garrett-hosted talk show, which SCTV essentially replaced. For some reason, NBC still wanted to keep the "Later" brand alive, so the shows opened with a unique introduction featuring the Later logo below the SCTV logo, and a brief voice-over by host Rita Sever. The repeats ended in 2001 with the launch of Last Call with Carson Daly.

For years, SCTV was unavailable on video tape (apart from one compilation, The Best of John Candy on SCTV), or in any form except these re-edited half hour programs. Originally, the producers and editors putting the original shows together never bothered to get clearance to use copyrighted music — for example, the "Fishin' Musician" show ended with Bing Crosby singing "Gone Fishin'", even though SCTV never obtained the clearance rights to use copyrighted music recordings.

It has been sometimes believed that the sole reason for SCTV not appearing on DVD before, is that the series did not originally get clearance for the numerous music cues used throughout the six seasons that SCTV was produced. Although the producers did neglect to clear the music for SCTV during production, this has no legal bearing on the use of the music for the DVD releases. However, this could indeed have had a detrimental effect on how smoothly those rights were granted for the use of music on the DVD releases. The ease of obtaining music clearance rights for a given music cue may depend upon the context in which that music cue is used, as well as the willingness of the copyright holder to allow the use of their music in any shape or form.

The shows couldn't be reproduced on DVD or video tape until after the laborious rights issues were resolved and clearances were received. In some cases (as with the aforementioned Crosby song) clearances couldn't be secured after the fact and new music had to be edited in its place for the 2005 DVD releases of the 90-minute shows. In a few cases where the music is intrinsic to the premise of the sketch (such as the sketches "Stairways to Heaven", "The Canadian National Anthem" and "Gordon Lightfoot Sings Every Song Ever Written") and rights could not be obtained, sketches have been dropped from the DVDs.