Do you think that maybe you could put the results after a jump according to the time change between me and you?  Because I don’t seem to be able to resist checking in over here.

Jim Carey?  Seriously....you nailed that shit.

Yeah, that’s fair. It’ll be in an extended entry from now on.

I felt almost sorry for Jim Carey. That was ugly.

It made me squirm.  Especially that first shot of him after the first group song where he was all, “Yeah!” and on his feet with his fist in the air.

Dude, he’s crying himself to sleep on his gigantic elephant head tonight.

I missed the show.

Let’s get to the important part: how did Kat McPhee and her fabulous yabos look?

andy - Smaller.

Although she did offer female contestants an admirable lesson in skirt length.

They are WAY overplaying the ads for that movie.  My wife commented that it must be so bad that they feel they need to get everybody to go see it when it opens, because word of mouth will kill is shortly after that.

I had to turn off AI last night.  I’ve seen too many Horton commercials as it is.  But how about the new seasons of South park and Top Chef?

Weird, I’m excited about Horton. Course, I read that book about once a week. It seems like it will be a better vehicle for expansion and riffing than, say, the Grinch. The story is pretty open-ended, and, for what it’s worth, I love Steve Carrell.

”I love Steve Carrell.”

OK, now I’m disturbed.

I think Horton could be made into a decent movie; it’s just from the advertising over-saturation, it doesn’t look like it is a good movie. The big, long, singing scene ad is particularly irritating to me.

Since I’m kidless, it might be that I’m pretty far from being the target audience. I generally like kid flicks, but this one might be aimed at a crowd too young for me to be able to appreciate. My immaturity, apparently, does know some bounds.

If I have any more kids, I’ll have to move into a shoe, and I am dreading that movie.  And Andy?  I was washing dishes when Kat came on, and all I could think is, “Oh, shit.  I hope Andy’s ok.”

BTW, I also love Cake, and the band said they “felt violated” by Idol’s use of the song.

I’ve never liked Cake and I never will, but they should feel a little violated. Although, if Ford did it without permission, I wonder who they bought the rights from? I would have thought that Cake would have had some say in the way one of their songs was being used on a show like American Idol and I’d be shocked if Ford and AI didn’t get the rights for the performance.

Naww, they just have to clear the song use with the publisher… unless they were going to use the original recording of the song. In that case they’d have to call the record label and the band, too.

This is the same reason that Idol needs permission from Sony and Michael Jackson to do Beatles songs, but McCartney doesn’t get any input.

Wow. Makes sense, but for the bands and the songwriters it has to suck to watch your songs being torn apart by the contestants.

Cake should really be mad at the publisher, then.

For most public performances of a song there’s a compulsory license available to anyone.  For more information, see this Wikipedia page and its links to Cornell pages with the actual US Code sections.

DougS - I was going to mention compulsory license, but I didn’t know if it applied to a recording strictly for a television commercial. Then I realized it must not apply to anything having to do with American Idol… otherwise, why did they have to wait for Sony to give them permission to perform Lennon/McCartney? What’s the deal?

After reading through way too much legal blather I think I have it, but I may also still be confused. There is a compulsory license for mechanical performance, which means that you don’t need permission to record a cover song, you just have to pay the fee. But there isn’t a compulsory license for performance (or is it just for televised performances?), so the publisher can refuse to grant the rights in that case.

Or something.

Maybe.

Wow, Doug knows the laws on EVERYTHING.  Color me impressed!

So why hasn’t he explained why AmIdol has licensing issues? Why?!

Public performances are licensed by venue, that’s why you see a little ASCAP or BMI sticker on the door of a bar / nightclub with live music.

Television programs cannot get a venue license from the publishers like concert halls, bars, Red Rocks etc. do, so they have to negotiate clearances song by song like all television does.  There are people in film and television whose only job is to call publishers and get clearances.

As mentioned, making a cover recording ( the first recording of a song is not included ) is a compulsory license with a statutory royalty rate set by the Copyright office.

As an aside, a lot of the delays in getting a DVD published of an old TV program or film can be that the original license for music did not include the rights to the music for a published format like a DVD, just for broadcast.

This can be an immense problem if music was an integral part of the program, can’t be replaced, and has gotten valuable since.  I’m trying to remember which TV show I’m thinking of, but I saw an article in a intellectual property blog or magazine recently that mentioned a particular TV show that could not be published in DVD because of the prohibitive licensing being demanded.

There we go… thanks, RR.

Oh, and I don’t know what TV show you’re talking about, but the DVD of Heavy Metal had similar issues.

Robin gives us the answer.

I can tell you that this isn’t the TV show you’re thinking about, but I just realized why the Beavis and Butthead show--as it was shown on MTV--is for all practical purposes impossible to publish on DVD. With all the music videos that they showed during the show, it would be tough trying to pull together the licenses for all of those songs and I’m sure that the cost would be prohibitive.

When I bought the boxed sets, I was sad to find that they only included a couple of the music videos on each DVD. I tell you what, though, I would have paid a premium to get the entire original run in its unadulterated form.

The show you’re thinking of is probably WKRP in Cincinnati.

Bingo, Matt, that was the show mentioned in whatever article I read.

Damn, you are good at readings.  Can you tell me which dead relative loved me the most?

Your uncle Bob was very fond of you.

Eww, Bob, that’s disgusting!

Wrong, but obviously you went with strength of feeling instead of frequency so its an obvious mistake.