anyone here a Bonanza (TV Western) fan?

[OhioGuy]

I just bought "The Best of Bonanza" 4 disk DVD set at Wal-Mart. It has 31
episodes of Bonanza, and 3 episodes of "Wagon Train". It was a grand total
of 5 dollars, and each disk has 8 or 9 episodes on it. (would probably make
a decent Christmas gift)

I got it partly because I like Bonanza, and because every time I give my
kids a "horsey" ride, I hum the theme to bonanza. They really like it, so I
thought they would probably get just as excited with hearing the real theme.

Strangely enough, when I went to play an episode, instead of the regular
song playing while the characters are introduced, it has some sort of guitar
song playing, and a truncated into sequence. All of the episodes seem to
have this strange intro.

Now I realize this isn't a season collection of episodes, though I think
it does have more than a season's worth in there. However, I'm wondering if
this is a normal practice? On budget releases, do they often get rid of the
usual intro sequence and replace it with something totally different?

Or, maybe I just haven't seen any episodes from the first couple of
seasons before, and perhaps they had a completely different intro and song?

Can anyone shed some light on this? Thanks!

[Anthony Matonak]

OhioGuy wrote:
> Now I realize this isn't a season collection of episodes, though I think
> it does have more than a season's worth in there. However, I'm wondering if
> this is a normal practice? On budget releases, do they often get rid of the
> usual intro sequence and replace it with something totally different?

It's not a usual practice but it's not unheard of for the DVD release
of a series to have the theme song replaced or eliminated. I can only
hazard a guess that the reason is because the studio doesn't want to
pay for the music. Perhaps it's a case of the music industry trying to
duke it out with the movie industry.

Anthony

[Evelyn C. Leeper]

This is pretty much true--the music rights are sometimes held by
different people who don't want to release them. (Also, some older
works may have had their copyright lapse, but the copyright for the
music was renewed.)

I've seen this on "Dragnet" episodes as well.

--
Evelyn C. Leeper
I believe I found the missing link between animal
and civilized man. It is us. -Konrad Lorenz