I don't know if this has been asked, but "Now You See It" is impossible to search when the search function can't take three letter words.

I know that "Now You See It" briefly switched to an Edd Kalehoff doppelganger of "Chump Change". Has it ever been explained why they had to temporarily get rid of "Chump Change"? Licensing issues?

They never got rid of Chump Change. It was the opening theme for every single episode. For a couple weeks, all the music cues within the show were changed to the Score Productions piece, including the end credits. And even after that, the piece was kept for certain cues. It probably was a cost issue... cheaper to only pay to use it once per show, but that doesn't explain why they went back to using it more.


Greg

Similar thing happened on The Joker's Wild a couple of years earlier. In Sept 1972 they switched from "The Savers" to a sound-alike piece for two weeks, then switched back.

I always wondered how payments worked when they used commercially-released music for theme songs, rather than having a music package written specifically for the show. Greg's probably right...in both cases they probably had to work out proper payment for use of the music and switched off it for a couple of weeks to be safe.

That's my best guess, unless anyone here knows more about it...

Another question... was it written specifically for NYSI or was it a shelved piece of music. Surprised they never actually used it for the main theme throughout the rest of the series. Would love to hear the other cues from that package, but id be surprised there was more than what the museum has right now.

Mark

You would think that the museum would have the cues which would later be used on TPIR.

They weren't "later" used on TPIR. They were used concurrently and were actually composed for TPIR.


Greg

The networks have blanket music licenses and take care of this for the producers. The rates are the same regardless of composer or publisher.

It would be more expensive to commission new music to be composed and produced than to use extant music.

If I'm not mistaken, the Quincy Jones song was the theme to the CBS primetime entry "The New Bill Cosby Show" from the 72-73 season. Bill also had the Tonight Show band play it whenever Cos filled in for Johnny.

Correct