WKRP: The Contest Nobody Could Win

I watched this episode of WKRP on lunch yesterday. Due to an error by Johnny, a contest that was supposed to be for $50 becomes worth $5,000. So they cut together tiny clips of six songs so close together that no one could ever name them. Then of course, someone does.

If you watch it, these are the six songs from the contest:

Rolling by No Big Fish, Five Into Love by Cinema 8, Take Me Home by Raquel Wood, Leave by Suzie, The Life of the Party by Eric Scott, and The National Anthem by Francis Scott Key.

Recognize any of them, except the National Anthem? I didn’t either. That’s because those were the songs they could get the rights to today in order to release the show. The original songs were (courtesy of IMDB):

"Too Wild To Tame" by the Boys; "Tumbling Dice" by the Rolling Stones; "YMCA" by the Village People; "Dankeschoene" by Wayne Newton; "Straight On" by Heart; and "The Star Spangled Banner" by Francis Scott Key.

Really? Seriously? They record industry wouldn’t even give them the rights to the split second of each of those songs you hear in the original? Instead they have to use those other lame songs and re-record the contestant’s voices saying the answers. So stupid. But you already know my thoughts on that.

Here’s an incredibly bad quality, yet still funny, clip form the episode where in Herb explains to Less his theory about class struggle.