i was thinking about this watching them back up Method Man this week going in and out of commercial.
They basically did a 4-5 track Method Man live EP during the commercial breaks, and I was thinking damn i wish i could buy that.
And even when no one is sitting in, they still put down solid jams during every comercial.
NBC is pretty savvy with their use of iTunes, just look at how they operate with The Voice.
If these tracks are recorded, they could easily pick the best 1 or 2 from every show and do a weekly itunes release = basically free money. These tracks are happening no matter what, why not go ahead and monetize them?

and if they are using their album sales as a measure, not how many million people see them on tv, then why would they go through the trouble

Licensing, publishing, etc.
Would be more trouble then it's worth

_______________________________________________________________________________________
Soul music is bad, bad, bad!

If they were smart they would link up with Jimmy Fallon and give people the option to buy each performance.

phemom's the name, all-star writer/
searching 4 journalistic fame, mindframe igniter....www.twitter.com/hayabusaage

i mean, the roots were jimmy's band for his album that just won a grammy, and they've released singles on itunes before, so i know theres a way around the label BS, not to mention that, YA, like you said, they should just parter up.
besides just wanting more roots output for myself, its just smart business - every content producer in the game is looking for new ways to monetize the shit that they ALREADY DO, creating multiple revenue streams is the way it works now, and this is like a gimme - it literally requires NO ONE to do anything they're not already doing.

A lot of artists aren't ready to give that kind of control over to the show and the show's label. There's a lot more involved that just "We should do this."

Take a show like SNL. A lot of times they can't even clear sketches that air or musical performances for repeats or for streaming online.

Something like this has been tried in the past. Letterman and Conan both put out compilations in the 90s of guest performances( http://www.amazon.com/Live-On-Letterman-Music-From/dp/B000002NJD & http://www.amazon.com/Live-6A-Night-Conan-OBrien/dp/B000001EXT ), but they weren't the ones everyone wanted. They were the ones they could get. So they were somewhat lackluster, and sold as such.

Trust me... if they could figure out a way to do it and make profit.... they'd be doing it.

_
Yo! That’s My Jawn: The Podcast - Available Now!
http://linktr.ee/yothatsmyjawn

But the Week to week crux of this would just be the typical roots + black thought doing their thing
I understand that bringing in other artists is a whole nother headache, despite what it would ad to an ongoing endeavor like this

Well, here's some: http://royayersproject.com/2011/02/the-roots-lnjf-sandwiches-mixtape/

_
Yo! That’s My Jawn: The Podcast - Available Now!
http://linktr.ee/yothatsmyjawn

i mean, ive got everything that quest has dropped in that regard
but what they've put out is a tiny fraction of what they produce
quest my have some grand scheme for all that work - i just see an easy route to monetize it on a regular basis in the present - its all about revenue streams.

like im in the magazine biz. we may take a feature we did for our mag - say "100 greatest DIY tips" - the work is done - for the purpose of the magazine we had to gather the tips, edit them, assign photos and illustrations, etc etc etc. - so now on the back-end, what else can we do with that? well there's web-stories, there's tv specials, there's bookazines, there's mobile apps - all done with minimal tweeking of the original product that we've already produced. thats what the content game is about these days - if you're a content generator, you're missing most of the game if you're not repackaging and building off of that content in new ways.

thats all im saying. the work is done as far as the roots are concerned. they came up with the sammiches, rehearsed them, and presented them in their final context on the show.
if they were to be recorded live and released every week on itunes - whatever, 5 tracks for 3 bucks or something. are they gonna break the bank doing that? no. but its extra cake for shit they've already done with no extra effort. also very gratifying for the fans.

let's say for the sake of argument they do own the audio portion of their walkon, special segment, and commercial break performances on LNWJF (they don't) or that arranging with NBC a mutually beneficial weekly release was as easy as you think (it isn't). just like the site owner finds it more worth his time and energy to post on twitter than his own web site, the roots find it a better use of time and energy to record albums and line up high profile projects and appearances than organize every week(!!!!!!!!) an official new release that in the grand scheme of things is only of marginal interest and detracts and distracts from what they if not most of us consider a stellar discography. as efficient as they already are and have been for some time, putting everything to use and having multiple revenue streams is not the endgame, it's the prestige and the riches, and neither marker of success will come from this. honestly they would get more cool (underground connoisseur) points for more zip files of their studio sandwiches. hint hint.

and they probably can't use a lot of the Fallon stuff because of legal reasons.

“So back we go to these questions — friendship, character… ethics.”

it seems like more and more artists are doing live shows where they perform select albums in their entirety.

i'm wondering if the roots ever considered doing that. would love to see them peform some of their earlier work in its entirety.