When I heard the news a couple weeks ago that Shout! Factory — a niche entertainment company that produces, among other things, DVDs of “orphaned” TV series whose owners abandoned them after releasing only one or two seasons — had licensed my beloved WKRP in Cincinnati, I crossed my fingers and hoped against hope that they were going to do this right.

If you’ll remember, WKRP, which is possibly my all-time favorite television sitcom, is one of those shows that presents a huge challenge for home video, because it used so much actual music performed by original artists. If a scene called for “Old Time Rock and Roll” in the background, WKRP used Bob Seger’s version instead of a re-recorded soundalike. This added immensely to the verisimilitude of a series set in a radio station, but of course all of those songs need to be licensed from the record labels that own the copyrights on them in order to release the show on DVD, or even for syndication. And the cost of doing that adds up in a hurry. Practically from the moment ‘KRP entered syndication in the early ’80s, the music was a problem that the show’s owner “solved” by substituting low-cost generic stuff, or by trimming scenes that featured music. Often this created problems with the narrative because scenes and even entire episodes were written around specific songs, and to not have them there left a big hole… or, in the worst cases, made the story downright incomprehensible.

When Fox released Season One on DVD way back in 2007, the version they released was so heavily edited that many people — myself included — decided it was unacceptable and refused to buy it. Based on poor sales of that first set versus the prohibitive cost of music licensing, Fox decided not to pursue releasing the rest of the series. And so we fans of the show have just had to make due with bootlegs and the butchered syndicated versions for seven long years.

But now along comes Shout! Factory, which has announced plans to do a box set of the entire series. Could it really be that they’ve somehow worked out the licensing issue? Am I finally finally going to get the ‘KRP I remember watching instead of the ghost of itself it has become? Well, Shout! still hasn’t issued a definitive statement… but during a cast reunion at the Paley Center for Media on Wednesday night, Tim Reid — who played disc jockey Venus Flytrap  — reportedly said the box set will contain all the original rock music. A little subsequent googling turned up an interview with Hugh Wilson, ‘KRP‘s creator, who claims Shout! has successfully relicensed about 85% of the original music. There’s no release date on the Shout! set yet, so I think it’s probably safe to assume they’re still working on the problem…. which means we may end up with an even higher ratio than 85%.

I can’t tell you how over-the-moon thrilled I am about this. The acquisition of  WKRP, along with Time-Life/StarVista’s upcoming release of The Wonder Years — with all its original music intact too! — will basically complete my list of personal holy-grail DVDs, i.e., those movies and TV shows that I’ve wanted to own but thought would never be available in a high-quality digital format. I’ll have it all, except, of course, for sanctioned releases of those pesky pre-1997 versions of the original Star Wars trilogy. And now that Disney is calling the shots on that issue instead of Uncle George, I even have some hope for those…