Having been through six months of licensing deals with that production – I developed a keen ear whenever I watched a show featuring lots of music.  In the back of my mind I would think, “Oh those poor bastards at the production company, their heads must be spinning around like the exorcist child trying to make deals for the music.”

I had those same thoughts when I saw the TV show GLEE.  The FOX hit about a group of misfit high school Glee Club singers.    Each week the show features at least four songs.  I’ve come to discover that the show producers and Sony Music made a deal.  When the execs at Sony Music saw the pilot they jumped at the chance to partner with GLEE. And that was a very, very smart move.  The songs from the show have already generated over 200 million iTune downloads and the number grows weekly.  Can you hear the ‘cha-ching’ at the music publishing company?  A gold mind is being created and the show is giving re-birth to songs that were no longer bringing in the big bucks.

I don’t think many music publishers, labels or recording artists thought much about GLEE when it premiered – but Sony Music was insightful enough to see that this show had legs and would be advantageous to their publishing division.  When the show featured Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” the track went gold with over 500,000 digital sales.  Those sales figures are attracting attention and there are now many musical artists offering their songs, including Brittany Spears – all with the hopes of cashing in on the phenomenon that is GLEE.

Steven Bochco achieved great success when he created “Hill Street Blues” and “LA Law”.  Both shows helped reinvent the one hour drama with fast cutting, unique story lines and bizarre characters.  Mr. Bochco was a ground breaker.  And with most creatives that take chances there are those times when what they create doesn’t work.  That was the case with his short lived musical/cop/drama show.  It’s even hard to write that into a sentence.  The show “Cop Rock” was a resounding failure.  Didn’t last but minutes on television.  The premise – highway patrol men meet the Broadway musical.  It was produced the way a stage musical is produced  – once the ‘cop action’ was complete, the actors would stop to sing and dance.  Viewers just couldn’t wrap their arms around this let alone give it their time.For example, one scene in a courtroom had the jury break into song, proclaiming “He’s Guilty” in Gospel style. Another episode had a lineup of Hispanic suspects proclaim in song “We’re the local color with the coppertone skin / And you treat us like we’re guilty of some terrible sin.”

So  what makes “Cop Rock” such a resounding failure and “Glee” not only a Golden Globe Winner, but a fan favorite, and the recipient of  2 Gold Record Albums from the series?.  For one, they’re not superimposing a premise on top of a style.  Cops don’t typically break out in song and dance unless they’re at a wedding.  However, with “Glee”, the premise is a high school glee club, there’s no superimposing of premises on top of premises.  Secondly, Glee doesn’t take itself seriously – that’s obvious by the characters and their very witty dialogue.  And finally, they sing songs we all know.  If you’re going to go out on a limb, there has to be something familiar an audience can grab onto.  And there’s nothing more familiar or embracing than a song you know and love.  When Will, the teacher breaks out into song while trying to explain a situation, we’re not jerked out  of the show – it makes sense because as an audience we’ve bought into the style.  Besides, Will is cute, and he can sing and shake his booty at the same time.

The results are in the numbers.  They have an audience, they’re selling albums and over 4 million songs  from the series have been downloaded.  It would appear that musical television works, as long as the premise doesn’t jerk the audience out of the story.