Why the sitcom What I Like About You became a victim of music licensing
In short: Running for four seasons on The WB, the sitcom What I Like About You captured the lives of two sisters in New York City. While it remains a nostalgic favorite, the show’s legacy is complicated by music rights issues that forced the replacement of its iconic theme song on home media.
Co-created by Wil Calhoun and Dan Schneider, the series starred Amanda Bynes as the vivacious teenager Holly and Jennie Garth as her responsible older sister, Val. Premiering on September 20, 2002, the show anchored The WB's Friday night comedy block for most of its 86-episode run, which concluded on March 24, 2006. Despite its popularity, the production was marked by peculiar quirks, such as the characters Vince, Lauren, and Jeff never being assigned last names in the show's narrative.
The series took its name from The Romantics' 1980 rock anthem, but the show's signature sound was a cover version by the Canadian group Lillix. This version became so synonymous with the sitcom that its absence in later releases is stark. When the series arrived on HBO Max in January 2021, the original theme was replaced by what TVLine described as royalty-free music that even identification software could not recognize. This was a recurring issue; the 2007 DVD release of the first season also stripped the original theme due to high licensing costs, which ultimately contributed to the lack of further general retail releases.
The show's transition to home media highlights the friction between broadcast history and modern digital rights. While seasons two through four were eventually released on DVD between 2017 and 2019, these were Manufacture-on-Demand products. Furthermore, although the final three seasons were originally broadcast in high-definition widescreen, these physical releases were presented in fullscreen, leaving fans to reconcile the show's broadcast legacy with its compromised home media presence.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: What I Like About You (TV series)
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