DVD Release?

They really need to get on it. Southland and Rizzoli & Isles both have DVDs.

I too love this show and would like to have the DVD of both seasons.

Unfortunately, this may never happen. Think about all the music performed throughout the series and just how much music control agents would expect to extract on behalf of the music composers / songwriters copyright owners (not necessarilly the original composers/song writers).

To keep those costs down for the intitial TV performance rights, the majority of the music was 'covered' by the singer Mark Arnell, who was the voice behind Jason Lee's character, "Dwight Hendricks". Yes, Jason Lee only mimed/lip-synched. That way the show's producers only had to outlay for Mark Arnell's performances, and a basic licence to use the music and lyrics and not for the original artist/ recording company rights as well. Once you start releasing a DVD it becomes a recording rather than just a televised performance they were originally licenced for.

It is a very complex area to negotiate. It is one of the reasons (not the only one) why "Cold Case" (2003-2010) never made it to DVD. Another show for example, "Murphy Brown" used fantastic soul music (mostly Motown & Stax)throughout the series, but only the first season made it to DVD, and I would stake the claim that sales of that DVD probably never made enough to to recover the music licencing costs.

I would guess they had no difficulty with getting reasonable rights from Keb' Mo' (Opening theme) and Brooker T. & The MGs for "Green Onions" but when you factor in all the other msuic used, you would end up with a huge bill.

In movies and TV shows, you often hear a lot of classical music. This is because the majority of it used is in the public domain and the producer's only need to pay the performers and the music arrangements. Where fully licenced music is used, you will notice that only a few seconds are used the majority of the time.

The whole music industry paradigm will need to change significantly before we will see an improvement. Over time, I can see a generational change happening where movie & tv producers will negotiate directly with the artists involved to produce music directly. This will happen as many music artists are now taking direct control of their own music from production to distribution independently of the large music corporations.

Cheers

Locked my wire coat-hanger in the car - good thing that I always carry spare keys in my pocket :)