This topic has been touched upon before but I'm not sure anything conclusive was drawn from it.
In the '70s and beyond, it was most common for a game show to have its own specially composed music package. Prior to that, it was more common to use commercial recordings as themes. or prize cues. Somewhere along the line the rules may have changed, but at one time was there a "blanket license" that gave these shows the right to use it because it was widely available?
Cases in point:
Dating Game in the '60s and early '70s used many Herb Alpert pieces as regular cues, in addition to other commercial recordings heading into commercials
Match Game used "Swinging Safari" as its theme for several years
$10,000 Pyramid and Jackpot both used previously available pieces of music as their main themes
Love Experts had the top 40 hit "Spring Rain" as its theme
Then there were
Joker's Wild and Now You See It, both of which used commercially available tunes, reverted to something else for a couple of weeks, then back again (it was assumed at the time they hadn't secured the rights to use their respective themes)
At the TV station I worked for from 1987-90, we produced newscasts each night. The audio person actually encouraged us to bring in instrumental recordings that could be used in the background during the sports segment. Then around early 1990, the rules changed and one of the directors told us we couldn't use them anymore without paying a fee, and instead started using industry-produced "Network" CDs with instrumental music.
If the rules changed by 1990, I wonder why those two shows from the early '70s had the issue of temporarily changing their themes when the others who used the music were OK. Did Chuck Barris pay Herb Alpert for the use of his music? If it was a rights issue, was it just an oversite? The other shows mentioned didn't seem to have any problems.
Any thoughts?
