Broadcasting (Oct - Dec 1950)

1937 (Continued from page 102) of a U. S. originated program in a foreign country other than Canada when it bought time on three South American stations for its Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera programs, shortwaved and rebroadcast with Spanish comments and commercials. Commercially sponsored shortwave broadcasts were not permitted as all licenses in this field were strictly experimental. E. B. Craney, operator of KGIR Butte, Mont., opened singlehanded war on ASCAP early in the year with an open letter t o Congress urging a revision of the Copyright Act to discard the statutory $250 minimum for infringements and to require copyright licenses on a perpiece basis, with clearance at the source. He then turned to the local scene and inspired a Montana bill requiring measured service methods of copyright licensing which became law in March despite strenuous ASCAP opposition. Similar legislation was introduced in a dozen other states, becoming law in Washington, Tennessee, Nebraska, Florida and Wisconsin. Late in the year, ASCAP Mr. Craney secured a Federal Court injunction in Nebraska restraining application of that state's anti-ASCAP law. Set up as an independent corporation to operate on its own instead of as an NAB division, the Bureau of Copyrights auditioned its first transcriptions of copyrightfree music at the July convention, securing 58 subscriptions to the library service at $10 an hour. The networks changed their views and agreed with station operators that music should be cleared at the source for network and transcribed programs. John G. Paine resigned as chairman of Music Publishers Protective Assn. to become general manager of ASCAP on May 1, succeeding E. C. Mills, who was given a new post of chairman of the administrative committee. A partial index of some 25,000 ASCAPlicensed tunes, said to be those most played by stations, was prepared by ASCAP and distributed free to licensees requesting it. Pa. Supreme Court Upholds Waring The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania upheld the lower court's decision enjoining WDAS Philadelphia from broadcasting records made by Fred Waring without his permission. With this official approval of its argument that artists have property rights in phonograph records they make, National VIC" DIEHM says: NBC WAZL HAZLETON, PENNA. NBC SELLS EASTERN PENN. including Luzerne, Carbon, Columbia and Schuylkill counties — one of the great Pennsylvania market areas. saturating Luzerne — fourth Penn. county in retail sales: ^306,024,000. backing your shows with listener and sales promotion to assure sales, carefully programmed with NBC's best and local shows to community tastes — the dialing habit since 1932. w^uU ta Vic Diehm or Robert Meeker Associates S21 Fifth Avenue, New York City 17, N. Y. Assn. of Performing Artists offered licenses to other Pennsylvania stations, asking 10 times the stations' highest quarter-hour rate for right to broadcast records made by NAPA members, and anticipated nationwide licensing after decisions of court cases pending in other states. Meanwhile, American Society of Recording Artists, West Coast organization similar to NAPA, engaged Kenneth C. Davis, Seattle attorney and managing director of Washington (State) Assn. of Broadcasters, to conduct a drive for record performance licenses among Pacific Coast stations, including those he had represented in the fight against ASCAP. Inspired, or perhaps irritated, by the NAPA campaign, which he said helped only the band leaders, not the men, James C. Petrillo, president of the Chicago Federation of Musicians, led his AFM local in a drive to "end for all time the menacing threat of 'canned' music competition" with the employment of live musicians. CFM mem.bers were forbidden to make records except with special permission of the union board, which imposed such stringent regulations that the making of musical records was transferred from Chicago to other cities. Mr. Petrillo took his cause in June to the union's national convention, which instructed the national AFM board to act immediately to bring all recording of music under union control. Meeting in New York the last week of July, the AFM board called in executives of recording companies, told them that to be able to employ AFM members in the future they must agree to stop "dubbing" (re-recording) music from one record to another and also to stop picking up music from broadcasting studios, to register all records with the AFM and get permission of both national and local unions before using them. AFM Demands Stations Employ More Musicians Network officials, also summoned to the board sessions, were told that unless the nation's radio stations increased their employment of musicians to a number satisfactory to the AFM the stations would be unable to employ AFM members or to receive network shows, transcriptions or phonograph records made by union musicians. When the networks explained that they had no authority to speak for any stations except those they owned, AFM told them bluntly they'd better get it, demanding submission of an acceptable industry plan by Sept. 16 under threat of a nationwide AFM strike against radio on that date. James Baldwin, NAB managing director who although uninvited had attended the AFM board meeting with the network officials, with them sent a letter to all stations, notifying them of the AFM move and asking them to send representatives to discuss the matter with the musicians' union officials. Sta Mr. Ethridge tions were also asked to provide data on their employment of musicians to combat AFM claims that only 781 of its members were employed by the nation's broadcasters. Lots of activity followed, but there was little progress toward solving the AFM problem until a dozen major broad casters, meeting in Chicago, called all network affiliates to meet in New York Aug. 23-24. ^L^HS^ More than 150 network -affiliated ^IlKl stations represented at that meeting organized themselves as the Independent Radio Network Affiliates, elected Mark Ethridge of WHAS Louisville, chairman, and appointed a committee with William S. Hedges, WLW Cincinnati, as chairman, to conduct negotiations with the AFM. First glimpse of a means of meeting AFM demands came in a suggestion from AFM President Joseph N. Weber that a possible yardstick might be for each station to agree to spend five times its evening quarter-hour rate for the employment of musicians. The IRNA committee, after strenuous argument, knocked this down to times the 15-minute rate. A quick estimate showed that this would amount to some $5.5 million a year for the broadcasting industry, or about enough to employ 3,000 musicians at an average wage of $35 a week. NAB Calls Its First Special Convention Mr. Weber promised AFM would not act until the IRNA report had been received by the full AFM board at a special meeting in New York Sept. 16. A second IRNA gathering in New York Sept. 10-12 approved a plan calling for expenditure of an additional $1.5 million a year by network affiliates (practically doubling their previous expenditure) for the employment of AFM members, but took that action only after three days of intensive debate that more than once threatened to split the industry wide open. NAB board, meeting concurrently in New York, called a special convention, first in its history, for Oct. 12 in that city. Threat of an immediate strike was averted when the AFM board agreed to accept the IRNA proposal as a basis for negotiations, promising to allow AFM members to continue working in radio as long as negotiations were in progress. Emile Gough, Hearst Radio; John Shepard 3d, Yankee Network, and Samuel R. Rosenbaum, WFIL Philadelphia (who became chairman of the IRNA negotiating committee in October when Mr. Hedges left WLW to return to NBC), presented the IRNA plan to the AFM board Sept. 16. Formula of allocating the additional $1.5 million promised among the (Continued on page 106) Page 104 • October 16, 1950 BROADCASTING • Telecasting