Exhibitors Herald (Mar-Apr 1924)

XX BETTER THEATRES SECTION OF March 29, 1924 YOUR PUBLIC Deserves a Perfect Picture THIS Can only be had by using SNAPLITE LENSES See Your Dealer or Write Kollmorgen Optical Corporation 35 Steuben Street Brooklyn, N. Y., U. S. A. WE ALSO MANUFACTURE SNAPLITE JR. LENSES FOR PORTABLE MACHINES BRASS RAILINGS THEATRES Ornamental Work Brass — Bronze — Iron Wire Wire Enclosures Mesh Work Assistance In Working Out Your Problems Will Gladly Be Given. EDWIN G. REINHARDT MANUFACTURING CO. 326 East 2nd Street, Cincinnati, Ohio THE GEOMETRIC SAFETY REEL USED AS STANDARD by THE LARGEST PRODUCERS The Double Edge Prevents cSJ&oSSSrtFi, the The Rolled Edge Strength The Geometric Stamping Co. 221 E. 131st STREET CLEVELAND, OHIO Radio Must Pay for Talent, Says Mills (Continued from page VI) a fair price for the service to their sets, and when that day comes, then the comparative value of the various sorts of entertainment available will be analyzed by the individual or the family looking for an evening's entertainment, and the theatre will hold its own. But, what an amazing thing it is to see composers, authors and publishers of music now condemned by a few shortsighted exhibitors in and around Chicago, for seeking to require the broadcasting stations who publicly perform music for purposes of profit (and none of them are broadcasting except for purposes of profit, bear that in mind), that such broadcasting stations shall pay the same relative fees for the right to use music as these same copyright proprietors expect motion picture theatres to pay for the same use of music. Apparently, some exhibitors would see even the musical copyright proprietors render service free to the radio folks, and in Chicago particularly, it is reported that the motion picture managers have joined hands with the radio folks there to defeat the purposes of the copyright owners. How shortsighted this policy is time will prove, and if a few theatre owners want to lend their influence to an effort to "pull the chestnuts out of the fire" for the radio men, no one can quarrel with them, nor should they complain when their fingers are burned. * * * The fees charged for the right to publicly perform copyrighted music have long been made a bugaboo for exhibitors. They have been made the excuse for endless propaganda, fund-raising and agitation for years and years; they have served as a "smoke screen" behind which inactivity in other and important directions as a result of which the exhibitor has suffered and will suffer, might be concealed. I often wonder when the time will come that the exhibitor will have a real organization, devoted to the real and practical solutions of the many important questions that, confront the much beleaguered industry, instead of an organization the leaders and executives of which devote their time to "playing politics" and maneuvering for personal glory and aggrandizement. God speed the day. And, in closing I want to say just this: that the sooner the exhibitors bend their efforts, so far as radio is concerned to see that it pays for all the service it receives, just as the theatres have to pay, the sooner it will settle down along the groove that it is going to occupy and not be such unfair opposition to the business of theatres, dance halls, etc., as it now is. We need not worry about today, it is the future that must concern us. Read the plain writing on the wall, do some thinking for yourselves, and then tell me how wrong the music makers are when they insist that radio shall pay them when it uses their product just as they insist that you shall pay them when you do.