As a local broadcaster, I can only look to the future and wonder what industry I’ll be part of in 5 years. Too young to retire, and unable to afford the excessive fees the placed on us by the CRB decision of this year. With the growing audio landscape, and the smaller piece allotted to local radio, why would the record industry allow a group of disconnected corporate goons to decide to pillage and plunder their number one village? We spend an incredible amount of time sorting through the stacks of music the record guys send our way. We select and program the "best of the best" in a way that surely benefits the recording industry from the artists to every level of development and management. Now the record guys are telling me that since I volunteer my resources to take their artists’ songs to another medium and expose them in another neighborhood that I must significantly increase the already substantial payments I render each month? Come on guys – we’re not the enemy! We’ve provided a service and paid you for the opportunity for decades. The CRB decision is only hurting your cause, and even the fan base will suffer in the end.
Dan DeBruler, General Manager
Christian Listening Network, Fayetteville, NC
How’s about the reverse fees that record companies, artists, composers should pay to radio stations, collected by and distributed by NAB.
1. P.A.C.S.A, aka Payment After Calculation of Songs Played. ASCAP would pay a calculated fee to each music station based on yearly estimates of % of each record companies’ records played on each station.
2. IMB, aka Individual Music Broadcast. Each station would send its rate cards to each record company, indicating the average cost per 2 1/2 minutes for each record played. .
Run Of Schedule. Each record companies’ ad agency would place an annual bulk order for average plays per month-for clients of each record company. Stations would generate quarterly recaps for credits or increased fees.
C.A.S.E.S., aka negotiated variations of the above.
Record Companies, ASCAP,BMI,SESAC can’t have it both ways for the historic free air plays aka Ads–Music Stations have given them. Those same stations have to pay 2 to 4% of their Revenue Gross to ASCAP,etc.
To successfully execute these wild ‘n crazy reverse fees, the Industry would have to lock arms, to not play music they didn’t get paid for. The current fee parasites have always bet the Industry has neither the guts nor programming creativity to put their feet to the fire.
Same kind of pattern when the UAW-CIO Unions threatened one of the then big three auto companies with a strike, unless they agreed to unrealistically high employee benefits. Car companies always caved– now same big three have been in virtual bankruptcy for years.
What’s a mother to do??
Frank Boyle
Station Broker, dedicated to stations not going broke.
