Re: Really?
"it turns out that whilst the songs were from that time, almost all of them were covers, to save an absolute fortune in royalty fees."
I remember that. I don't watch TV anymore so I couldn't say if it's still a popular option for production companies.
They still had to license certain rights to use the songs from the publishing company or the artist, but they found it was much cheaper to hire a studio band to re-record the song than to pay the license fee to use the original recording. I see that as an example of somebody pricing themselves out of the market. It had to be a couple of grand to hire a band, rehearse and record them. I'll put money that those musicians were paid a fixed amount or hours and signed a "Work Made for Hire" contract and were not due any royalties. There may still have been royalties due to the publishing company for each airing of the show, different markets and video sales if Knight Rider ever went to video.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
