The Public Domain Channel: Difference between revisions

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When movies or TV shows need an establishing shot of the characters watching TV, especially when it has no bearing on the plot, the producers will often try to save money by having the characters watch something whose rights they don't have to license.

So all too often, what you'll see is people incongruously watching old, old, ''old'' programming that hasn't even been shown in [[Syndication]] since the late 1980s, like silent movies or, more often, ancient [[Fleischer Studios|Max Fleischer]] or [[Terry Toons|Paul Terry]] cartoons for that extra visual kick. For bonus incongruity, sometimes it will be out of character for the character to even be watching the show in question.

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* In a related move, many TV documentaries and biography shows will use footage from a theatrical trailer rather than the film itself. Even if studios carefully protected the copyrights for their movies, most of the trailers were ignored and fell into public domain.

* ''[[The X-Files]]'' pulled this all the damn time.

* In ''[[Buffy]]'', Faith was often watching old movies in her motel room.

* ''[[Doctor Who]]'':

** The TV movie shows the morgue guard watching ''[[Frankenstein]] (1931)'' which seems to match the trope, but the movie was used for a reason (to compare to the Doctor coming back to life) and the movie is not public domain--the rights are owned by Universal, who produced the TV movie.

** In "[[Doctor Who~~/NS~~/Recap/S4 E10 Midnight|Midnight]]", the entertainment screens on the shuttle bus only show old black-and-white movies. Unlike most examples of the trope, the characters are aware that they're old movies, and aren't especially entertained.

** In "[[Doctor Who/Recap/NS/S4/E10 Midnight|Midnight]]", the entertainment screens on the shuttle bus only show old black-and-white movies. Unlike most examples of the trope, the characters are aware that they're old movies, and aren't especially entertained.

** In the opening "The Impossible Astronaut", Rory is watching a [[Laurel and Hardy]] movie, ''The Flying Deuces'', which is out of copyright. Presumably this has something to do with the fact that the Doctor shows up in it briefly to wave at him -- getting permission to alter something under copyright is going to be a lot more difficult than merely getting permission to show a clip from it. The other reason is probably because of the [[Cool Hat|fezzes]].