Sorry Les.....You actually bring up two points here, both of which are interesting.

On the TV issue, there seems to be less ans less music in general and very rarely used for dramatic effect. Maybe that's pendulum swing of some sort. Not too many years back, music reached a pinnacle of sorts in TV series stuff. Probably more than any other, "Miami Vice" was lauded for the use of music. If you ever watched it, you were completely taken with the well done usage of pop music as an integral part of the plot. It was indeed almost dialogue. Many series during that period used a lot more music or at least used it to end each show to some degree (outside of a theme song). "Northern Exposure" did this quite well. The last episode of the series showed small tableau type things of the principles going on with their lives while playing Iris DeMent's "Our Town."

Spaw