Murphy Brown: Why The Popular ’80s Sitcom Is Impossible To Stream

It wasn’t easy to stand out if you were a sitcom in the ’80s and ’90s, but “Murphy Brown” certainly did. Following in the footsteps of the legendary “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” the series helped blaze a trail for independent, successful career women on television, led by Candice Bergen’s title character. The show even returned for a revival in 2018. But while “Murphy Brown” was a major hit during its original run, and many of the topics it tackled are still relevant today, the series remains nearly impossible to watch for one frustrating reason.

As we’ve seen with several other popular shows from days past, the issue has to do with music rights. Before the age of digital releases, producers often negotiated the rights to popular music for broadcast and sometimes syndication because those were the formats that mattered at the time. Unfortunately, those agreements didn’t necessarily cover later releases like DVDs or streaming services. Even if a character were to sing a few notes of a popular song, that could cost a network thousands of dollars. 

In the case of “Murphy Brown,” the issue is particularly tricky because of how often the series used original master recordings of classic hits. In fact, the way it integrated music into each episode is part of what distinguishes “Murphy Brown” as one of the best sitcoms of the ’90s.

Getting Murphy Brown on streaming would be a massive undertaking

“Murphy Brown” didn’t just sneak in the occasional pop track. Producers used music to craft unique opening sequences for each episode. “The original series used one and sometimes two pieces of original music,” creator Diane English told the “FYI: The Murphy Brown Podcast.” “And we cut our opening sequence to that music pretty specifically.” That creativity means there are well over 100 songs that would need to be licensed in order for the show to be added to a streaming service. As you might expect, the process to license each and every one of them would be time-consuming and far from budget-friendly.

English explained that modern music licensing agreements generally account for future formats as well, which has driven up the cost. “Now when you buy a piece of music it’s easily five figures and often six figures for one song,” she said in the same interview. “So somebody would have to foot the bill for that.” And considering the original run of the show had 247 episodes, the cost is prohibitive, to say the least. 

So for now, “Murphy Brown” falls into the growing list of older TV shows that are not on a major streaming service. You can, however, find the 13-episode, single-season revival streaming for free on Tubi.