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AFTRA Halts Many Radio Stations' Webcasts
livitup writes: "Surprised when you couldn't listen to that live stream of your favorite radio station at work today?
AFTRA (The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), the union for Radio and Television actors has dealt a blow to the internet. AFTRA is now requiring radio stations to make supplemental payments to AFTRA members on stations rebroadcast on the internet. So they have in effect shut down internet radio rebroadcasts, because no radio station in their right mind would pay their DJs 300% more just to stream over the internet. This NYPost article quotes Clear Channel, which owns 1170 radio stations has ordered them all to stop streaming their on air feeds."
You speak as if unions were the only ones acting out of greed. A lot of the bennefits you enjoy at work, assuming you do work, you have because unions fought for them. To numerous to mention--but consider the recent rash of incidents involving the RIAA, DMCA, HarryPotter domain name disputes, a recent story about how listening to baseball games over the net are no longer. Point is, look almost anywhere on the net and you'll find stories, on a daily basis, on how corporations are stiffling the internet thus reducing it from a medium of popular and democratic participation to just another mass comsumption and propoganda tool. No Virginia, Reagan was not right about the union thing (he himself was in a union). And you should learn to apply a little more complex thinking.
"But what we're talking about is replacing one mom-and-pop radio station with five corporate affiliates. That's the situation on your dial these days, overall."
No, it isn't. And it will never be, as long as there are a finite number of FM radio stations available for licensing in any given area. When there is replacement these days, it is to replace a current station's management with new management. Not to replace one station with "five corporate affiliates."
And, having lived in 3 different metropolitan areas of different sizes over the last 6 years, I can vouch for the way clear channel and it's bretheren have been innundating local markets with "market music." Just because the phonomenon started 10 or 15 years ago, doesn't mean it isn't worse today.
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
oops.
Kinda revealing to me about the true nature of the union. Instead of representing the people who (arguably) need representation the most, it concentrates on people who are likely to be able to provide the most dues (salaries in major markets are *much* higher).
(They misspelled "due", not me. :-))
So, in their case, it has nothing to do with their air talents, who are not likely to be AFTRA members, but with the talents on commercials that they air.
OK...that's just stupid, and indicates an extortion scheme. Does anyone disagree? I hope not.
Why is the only prejudice it's PC to have is anti-Christian prejudice?
Probably because people are more tolerant of people being less tolerant towards people who are generally a pretty intolerant lot.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
>but Country stations, but now it's very rare for me to find a stretch
>of road where I can't pull in Classic Rock, Hip-Hop, even National
>Public Radio.
Like he said, it's gone to hell
hawk
:)
You could not possibly make a more disengenuous comparsion. Two random software engineers are not going to be NEARLY as interchangeable as two physical laborers of any kind. There are simply too many of them. Meanwhile, computer professionals of various kinds are hard to come by. Furthermore, just getting trained sufficiently for an entry level position seems well beyond the resources or capabilities of most that end up as laborers.
Put simply, all things aren't equal between the two examples your comparing.
One highlights the effect of a buyer's market in labor and the other a seller's market in labor. They are about as diametrically opposed as you can get.
You are simply remarkably less replaceable than the average UAW member.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Try to tell the stations that if they want to move into a new medium (the net) that they should share some of the procedes with the folks who make the content.
In reality if the DJ's etc have a contract with the stations then they should expect the stations to stick to it. If the stations want to move into a new market, they need to share what they are doing with the DJ's.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
I don't know you can't swap Pedro Martinz for Joe pitcher and get the same results. However many people here on /. work in jobs where you can distingish yourself from the next guy. For many jobs from flying an airliner to driving a school bus there is not a lot of difference between an OK person and a great person.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Part of the thing is that I think unions work a lot better in places where people are more or less interchangeable. For example airline pilots. Now I know some airline pilots they are very highly skilled and well trained. But lets face it if you take 2 guys who are both rated in the same plane (say a 737) then there is not much difference between them. One is not going to get the plane there any faster then the other.
On the other hand a good ball player or school teacher is not replacable by another. But even in that case for every great person you have a hundred people who are good and get the job done without being amazing, they still deserve some protection.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
It is not by accident that I used OPEC; the similarity reveals one thing: labor unions are cartels.
Possibly, but they are not necessarily monopolistic cartels. For example I can reel off three UK teaching unions -- NUT (National Union of Teachers), NASUWT (National Association of Schoolteachers/Union of Women Teachers), PAT (Professional Association of Teachers) -- and there are more. These unions compete for members, have slightly different values, and their campaigns and their aims will not always overlap.
--
Well Metro Radio is worse. Used to be the best local radio station in the UK and now is one of the worst.
Ana Schofield - Metro's breakfast DJ is worse than anything radio 1 can come up with.
Whatever resurgence there is right now in talk radio, it is all (and I do mean ALL) owed, for better or worse, to Howard Stern.
EVERY radio station now has a show with a central host accompanied by a pair of chatty co-hosts and a sound effects/sound byte engineer. Most of them are annoying in there desparate failure to approach the self-deprecating humor, interpersonal interplays and spontenaity (or successful illusion of spontenaity) that make's Howard Stern's show so staggeringly successful.
It's kind of like when Nirvana came out with "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and a whole new wave of bands scratched their heads and said "Loud...then soft...then loud again. Cool!" Dynamics were re-introduced to pop music for the first time in a long time.
The Stern format is interesting and is probably here to stay, if people can find the courage to do it their way instead of imitating his.
**>>BELCH
Most of the radio stations I've listened to max out at about 30 streams. What's it like in the big-city markets? I can't imagine a big NY station can serve an internet audience even 1% the size of its broadcast audience. So give the blabbermouths a 1% raise and be done with it.
Besides, all of this contract language is talking about radio broadcasting, and everyone knows that internet radio is unicast, not broadcast. Even multicast is different than broadcast. Most routers on a leased line won't even pass broadcast traffic, so I doubt anyone is broadcasting anything over the Internet.
And what the heck is with charging a station money to play an advertisement? I thought it worked the other way around....
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
That was my goof on the Nielsens - I had an early-morning brain cramp. I knew it was Arbitron, lord knows I've heard Imus rant about it enough times during drive-time.
When you have technology in place to broadcast only the content and block the ads, make sure you run a "this is ad time that you'd hear if AFTRA wasn't a bunch of ninnies" PSA during the breaks so people don't think the stream died.
I'd suspect that the more specialized the fare, the easier it is to find a streaming audience. Talk shows, sports programming (like regional sports stations), and specialty music would seem like obvious things that would find a Net audience - Top 40 I'd expect nobody to stream if they have a radio available (since there's a Top 40 station in pretty much every market). Christopher Lydon, according to an article I read a few days ago, is drawing about 2000 listeners per streamcast so far (he's done a handful) since leaving WBUR and The Connection. However, that's a fraction of the radio audience. Ironically, a couple of radio stations are now broadcasting the webcast of a show that used to be broadcast. It makes your head spin...
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Internet-based radio streams are useful as a way for a radio station to widen their audience somewhat, and a way for people to listen to their hometown radio when they're away. I strongly doubt, though, that Internet broadcasting (except maybe in a very few cases) of a radio station gathers anywhere near even 5% of that station's over-the-air audience.
The interesting thing, though, is that it's easier to measure the audience on the Internet - just count server connections and you've got a pretty accurate audience measurement. As opposed to the satistical sampling of radio diaries by Nielsen. So if stations could sell those additional numbers and pay unions/labels appropriately, then it'd be worth it to stream.
The problem there is that I suspect Internet listeners are going to be (because of the dispersion) listeners that advertisers don't want. A large proportion of radio ads are local, and only have appeal to the local audience. If I'm listening to a Boston radio station in San Francisco over the Internet, does Bernie & Phyl's Furniture really care that I'm listening? They don't go any farther west than Westboro - heck, Springfield is out of their market, let alone San Francisco!
Basically, that's the problem - if an Internet simulcast gets a lot of listeners, it's often going to be because those listeners aren't in the market and therefore won't buy the stuff in the ads. The unions and record companies want stations to pay based on audience, the statons would rather pay for that part of the audience that they can actually sell to.
They need to meet somewhere in the middle - but if our experience to date with the record lables is any indicator, that won't happen.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
There seems to be some confusion as to exactly why radio stations are discontinuing their internet "simulcasts". Does AFTRA represent announcers, i.e., DJs, and is it asking the stations for more money for them, or is it asking for more money for the voice talent used in producing advertising, which is usually recorded and then sent to advertising agencies who then send dubs to the stations they buy time from. Why shouldn't the advertising agencies (who control who is or isn't hired to be in a particular ad) be the ones to pay the actors more instead of the radio stations who have no control over the creation of the ad. Do radio stations who simulcast on the internet get to charge the clients who are buying the air time more for the time than if they don't simulcast? Does the guy running the car lot in Hartford or Phoenix really feel that getting "airplay" for his commercial on somebody's computer in Tallahassee or Des Moines is worth paying extra for? Thank you in advance for a prompt, informative reply.
Perhaps businesses in Des Moines might still benefit from your hearing of their ads (you might buy something from them when you go back to visit, etc.), but for the most part I can't see where there's any great value added for local businesses when their ad is heard in some other media market far, far away. Perhaps I'm wrong, I last worked in broadcasting a couple or three years before commercial radio via the internet amounted to anything, but I can just hear the local merchants saying "I'm paying extra for what?"
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
As far as that monkey is concerned, it is Dave's or Microsoft's. Either way, be sure to clean up after it. And the chicken, too.
As far as using the letter s at the end of a word to form the plural, to create the possessive, and for contractions involving "is" or "has", the responsible parties should have been ashamed at creating such a linguistic and typographic minefield.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Conclusive evidence that the moderation system is totally hosed is that the above has been up for almost half a day without being modded up as informative, interesting, or insightful.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
When record companies pay radio stations to play their records it's called payola. It's not legal.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
C'mon now. Radio DJs don't make the kind of money that lets them indulge in all the latest fads like scooters. They borrowed it from a rich relative when their old Pinto or Vega broke down (again).
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Doesn't really matter where you live, radio sucks. The best is when a new station comes in, and plays a bunch of stuff you've never heard.
But then, after a couple months, you realize that it's the same-old-same-old - the same rotation of the same fucking 100 songs getting the shit played out of them until you puke in disgust.
If I hear "What if..." or that same damned song from Godsmack again I'm going to be sick. Great songs, the first 10 - 20 times you hear them, but give me a break.
Fucking play something new, play something unknown, play some other song off the same album as a chartbuster. Don't play that shitty song "Mother" from Danzig, play some of the scary shit off the same album.
Give us some depth of perception. Get out of your weenie world. Don't give me the pathetic excuse "We only play things that have been released as a single..." Bullshit, Stairway to Heaven was NEVER released as a single. With your bullshit clonish corporate attitude, that beautiful song would have never been heard by millions. Play the GOOD music, play the REAL music, not this pre-packaged pap that gets puked out by the music marketing companies.
Have some balls. Have some spirit. Give your radio station some style, rather than just another sad format station. Give your DJs autonomy -> "You have to play these 15 songs today, but there are 10 other slots that you get to pick". This depends on a bit of intelligence from the DJ, the DJ'd better not play some Brittney Felcher crap on a metal station, but what's wrong with the DJ saying "Hey, I heard this great song over at my friends and thought you people might like checking it out..."
Instead, you fuckers give us the sameold sameold sam eold sam eolds ameoldsa meolds ameoldsam eold sameolds ameo ldsameo ldsameol dsameol dsam eoldsameol dsame oldsa meoldsam eoldsa meoldsa meoldsame olds ameold - Ack! FuckingStopAlready! and think you know all about it.
No - you just know how to play the bullshit musicopolitical game.
You're not important, in fact, you suck.
And you still haven't learned about the real world... How sad.
many Radio stations are now noting they are being Forced to stop broad casting, and have been doing so for the last 2 weeks. problem is, who or where to go to figh t this? or are internet users just that users with no rights?
To err is human, to really screw things up, you need a robot.
Having a contract that that states severance terms certainly changes things.
And unions don't "force" employers to do anything. They are simply a means by which employees get the leverage necessary to get desirable employment terms, safe working conditions, and so forth. The ability to walk out en masse with a safety net (from union dues) is that leverage.
When all you've ever worked in is a bull market where you set the terms by which you work, as so many techies have for the past 10-15 years, it's easy not to notice how hard it is to get livable working consitions when it's the employer that has the upper hand. When, say, you have an oversupply of qualified people for a given job.
Given the rate at which people in the tech sector are being laid off and pay rates are leveling off and even starting to decline, I would have thought the brand of thuggish, anti-union conservatism so popular among geeks the past few years would be on the wane. (How exactly is it "libertarian" to argue that government should assist companies in blocking people from engaging in collective bargaining?)
When you guys get laid off without severance pay in a couple of months because your department's project is being moved to a subcontractor in Russia or India, let's see how anti-union you are. Right now, the only hot jobs are for J2EE programmers and senior sysadmins. Even those are likely to dry up at the rate things are going.
Anyway, back to the AFTRA/media-company standoff:
The broadcasters have had a good five years to negotiate terms for Internet rebroadcast with AFTRA. That's how long decent streaming has been around, so it's not as though this whole "internet" thing just blindsided everyone. When the broadcast companies decided to start collecting additional advertising fees for their Internet rebroadcasts, their lawyers were well aware of the terms of the AFTRA contracts that were in place.
The New York Post is a right-wing tabloid; be aware of their bias and as with any publication, read it with the appropriate decoder ring. Clear Channel has a business unit that runs separate Internet-only "radio" stations. It's entirely possible that this cutoff has less to do with AFTRA than it does with their desire to "replace" Internet rebroadcasts of radio stations, and eventually those stations themselves, with their cheap-to-run Internet stations with their anonymous, interchangeable, and non-union deejays.
So is KPIG, my favorite streaming station....
One type is, as you mention, those that listen from afar to their hometown radio. The other, which is possibly much bigger, is people listening to it at work within the coverage range of the station and would rather use their employer's expensive hardware and network infrastructure instead of buying a cheap FM radio.
-
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
You so called 'radio professionals' are so caught up in your industry's self-manufactured little world that you have totally lost contact with the real world.
I've been out of radio for over a decade, moron.
-
For the record, the reason that you don't hear anything decent on the radio anymore is, for a large part, due to the fact that approximately 90% of radio stations are owned by three companies.
I think radio right now is the best it's ever been.
I'm no expert, but I have been a #1-rated DJ (in a small market) and a Music Director / Assistant Program Director, so I'm not without expertise.
I recall a time when I could drive down I-10 or I-12 and hear nothing but Country stations, but now it's very rare for me to find a stretch of road where I can't pull in Classic Rock, Hip-Hop, even National Public Radio.
News/talk is seeing a resurgence it hasn't had since FM was invented, and a lot of it is in the FM band.
Those "three companies" are bringing economies of scale into the administration and advertising sales that results in a lot more money being available to pay the talent, upgrade the equipment, and license good programming.
Radio sucks the least it's ever sucked. I suspect that you think this because one radio station you liked changed formats and nobody replaced it. That has always happened, even at tiny little mom-and-pop radio stations in the rural midwest.
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The difference is that, 10 or 15 years ago, in larger markets, the DJs would occasionally play a local band JUST BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO.
You really don't know much about the radio biz, do ya?
10 or 15 years ago, I was Music Director and Assistant PD for two stations in Oklahoma, and spent most of my free time socializing with my buddies from other radio stations, including folks from much larger markets and one guy who was syndicated on the Star Network. They all said the same things you're complaining have "changed" since then.
On just as many stations back then as now, you played what the Music Director said you played, or you went and looked for another job.
The difference nowadays is that there are more radio stations, about the same number of total jobs for DJs (because although there are a lot more stations, there are a lot more that play syndicated programming, so it evens out), and the jobs pay a lot more.
On one of the local stations, an alternative/college rock station, a DJ decided to play one of their songs and was promptly put on the vampire shift, for "playing music not in line with the station format and our corporate strategy."
He'd have gotten that same speech from our General Manager in 1986, only he'd have been representing the strategy of a much smaller corporation. (I.E., owning one station instead of 1,000).
Unfortunately, I simply cannot agree that replacing mom-and-pop radio stations with corporate affiliates is any better than replacing mom-and-pop stores with Wal-Marts.
But what we're talking about is replacing one mom-and-pop radio station with five corporate affiliates. That's the situation on your dial these days, overall.
Oh, I'm sure there will be half a dozen posts now from people who live in specific areas where things suck, but there are always half a dozen counter examples to anything.
However, opinions vary, and you are welcome to yours.
Mine is based on having done the job for years, and having kept my nose in it since then.
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The issue is that the 4A wants them to pay triple for the ads. Remember the commercial actor strike? They were complaining that they weren't getting paid when their ads show up on the internet.
No one is demanding that DJs be paid more...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Actors in radio commercials get paid more if the commercials are also broadcast on the Internet. The advertisers do not want to pay the additional fees if they never asked to have their commercials simulcast on the Internet. The radio stations could pay the difference in fees to the actors or delete the commercials from the Internet feed.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It started on tuesday, the Local radio stations were whining about it. As a Network Admin, I am happy that noone in my office can waste the bandwidth listening to a station they could listen to on a 2 dollar radio. but in the other hand, I shake my head at the amount of greed in this world.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Similar thing here in Pittsburgh - 105.9 (WXDX) and 102.5 (WDVE) consistently play, sponsor, and help promote local (southwestern PA) bands. Really, it makes sense for them to do so - it costs them virtually nothing (OK, once every 2-4 hours some local band gets a 4-minute slot on the air), and gains them a whole hell of a lot of listener loyalty.
I'd be surprised if this isn't a consistent feature for "album rock" or "new wave" stations across the country, regardless of the station's ultimate owners. Sort of a corporate-enforced deviation from the standard... though that is a truly weird concept.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Stories I've heard from people working for PacBell or AT&T indicate that the unions fight hard to keep incompetent workers
Yep... my father worked for AT&T for something like 23 years, and the union was nothing more then a huge pain in their asses. I remember him going through a strike when I was 10 or so... man, my parents were scared then.
Then union used to do things like: A company (or gov't team.. I forget which) wanted to hand pick the best people to go over to Armenia after the earthquake (I forget the year) to help restore communications. The union stepped in and said they had to go purely by seniority instead... so they went elsewhere. My father was one of the people they wanted, and he lost out on a great opportunity and good money because of the union's actions.
I think the entire time he worked there, the union did perhaps 2 or 3 things that were good for the workers in their eyes... the rest of the time what they did resulted in more harm than good.
I had to join the Teamsters when I had my first job at the SD Zoo. The union clearly didn't care about us. As long as we earned enough to pay dues, that seemed to be enough for them. And of course, noone lazy was fired, and promotions weren't based on merit but on seniority.
- My favorite error message: xscreensaver, running on an old Sparc 5 w/ 8bit color: bsod: Couldn't allocate color Blue
I was driving into work the other morning, and decided to flip through the radio stations and came across a decent band. I stopped, the song finished (rather abruptly) and it was Howard Stern playing an unsigned band because he liked the way they sounded. I changed it after I found that out. ;)
Also, here in San Jose we have a few "independant" stations which play local music as well as some affiliate stations, which also have local music promotions and such.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
I disagree. How much extra work do the DJs have to do for the net broadcast? Nothing. Why should they be paid extra for not doing extra work?
-matt
Good Friday ain't a national holiday.
I know this because gubmint people don't get the day off.
Which kinda sucks for me, but you can't really expect the US gov't to let people off on a religious holiday. At least not yet...
C-X C-S
It seems that whenever there's a cool technology that benefits consumers, some greedy dickhead(s) has to come in and tear it down.
Net radio is pretty nifty, I mean how else could I listen to another station hundreds of miles away, that might have a different format or wider variety of music than any of the stations in my area.[1]
Not to mention, net radio is nice for cubicle-dwellers stuck inside, where bandwidth is available, but radio signals are weak.
The radio stations are already paying a license fee so they can broadcast, why should they have to pay another one just because a transmission media has been added?
Greed sucks.
[1] IMO, Denver radio bites. KBPI has a couple good DJs, but the playlists are too repetitive.
KTCL used to be pretty good, 'till they sold out, and KXPK has that annoying ex-MTV chick. Ugh.
The only station I remember as being really good was 92X (KNRX, I think) but they only lasted a couple years.
C-X C-S
Dinosaurs will die.
In the construction industry in California, the unions provide training for new workers, and generally only make noise over pay scales. Union construction companies in return don't generally pull lots of arbitrary and heavy-handed shit on their employees.
Stories I've heard from people working for PacBell or AT&T indicate that the unions fight hard to keep incompetent workers, people who show up stoned, and otherwise make a general nuisance of themselves. In return, the companies will fire people for minor infractions that wouldn't even rate being reprimanded in a sane work environment. Then the union files a grievance, and the employee gets reinstated, without back pay for the day missed.
Teachers unions are notorious for fighting against any form of accountability for their members, for demanding more money every time any budget at the school gets increased, even the maintenance budget, and for opposing any kind of change in the way that schools are run. In return, school managements play nasty political BS games with the teachers, over rooms and scheduling, and have kept teachers poorly paid, which is directly related to the lack of accountability the unions cherish.
We all knew that the golden age of the late 90's couldn't last. It sure was exciting though. High paying jobs. The chance to be able to retire at 30. Almost anything you would want to know available for free. There's no way it could last, but it was fun while it was there.
But the way this will work is most stations use software to automate their entire broadcast. So what they will do is setup an identical rotation on a seperate machine, and not put a DJ on it. Then they can put their streams back online.
For a while now some of the lisseners to clear channel radio stations have been asking for net feed.
One talk show host has his own web chat system set up and people post and interact with the host that way.
They keep asking for the same thing.. streaming audio.
Now we FINALLY get it...
I sereously doupt the on air tallent asked for this.
Just some burrocrat got a bug up his butt...
Hay... pay those burrocrats 300% when you have a website... can not do it can you....
Why not? Same deal right?
Your paying someone for exactly the same job becouse you have a better system...
This is bogus... I'm really really not happy...
For those who don't know why this is helpful...
Basicly a lot of people work in areas with bad radio reception. It's very commen. Largish office buildings with thick walls block radio signals. Offices loaded with PCs have similer problems.
Office workers are basicly stuck. One of the early streaming audio experements (using Linux.. it's on the old Sunsite Linux archives) feed radio signal into a lan to rebrodcast into an office where radio signal couldn't be picked up.
Now people can pick up radio stations the like. IF they netcast. No radio distortion or anything. It's really neat...
So here comes a burrocrat and kills all that...
Gee... thanks a frigen lot...
I don't actually exist.
If it weren't for unions, and more succinctly, people looking out for their own best interests, workers would be working 16 hour shifts and would be getting paid $5.35 an hour
This is a commonly held myth. There's almost no evidence to support it. I work in a non-union profession (software engineering) and the pay is quite good. I'm self-taught and worked my way up from the very bottom. No damn union helped me float along. As for long hours, there is that but it's usually by choice, not fiat. When there was a severe labor shortage in the food service industry here in Boston the employers responded by offering higher pay, e.g. 8.50/hr and up to start at MacDonald's. Pretty good for unskilled work.
The problem is that unions artificially suppress the laws of supply and demand and of course they don't like meritocracy. It's the guild system of the Middle Ages all over again. My grandfather had to quit the shoe business in New York because he couldn't hire a driver of his choice; had to be picked by a union. He worked hard all his life (died at 91) what the hell did he do to deserve that?
As for workers getting shafted that's a typical justification for stealing from one's employer, lying on one's timesheet, etc. The fact is that if you hurt your company you're hurting yourself, long term. Soiling your own nest and all that.
I say to hell with unions, they've driven all the manufacturing out of the U.S., they've ruined the schools, air travel, on and on and on.
Feh.
--
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Aside from gathering otehrwise useless liteners (those who can't buy the stuff advertised)...
Why should people be paid more for doing the same job, but more efficiently (the DJs are doing the same shows, just getting pushed to more ears)? If I get a better PC and it crunches my data faster, but I do no more work, I still get paid the same.
FWIW, NPR is still on the net.
you'd better make sure it's an original tune. And don't even think of any lyrics, or Harry Fox himself will come, unbidden, into your mind - ala Freddy Kruger - to force you to write him a check.
I would put a smiley on this post, but the possibility of these things coming true is so close as to be more frightening than any horror movie.
*** Da Da Da Dum, De De De Dum *** -- at least this is in the public domain.
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
So my options of getting "legit" music reduce down to: listen to the "alternative" tenny bopper pop station, listen to the Steely Dan station, listen to the Metallica station, listen to the Kool & the Gang station, pay $18 for a CD, pay $6 for a cd-single.
I think I'll hum quietly to myself.
[quote]And before you start saying "Well this is the internet, it's different". People that use Napster sometimes say say that you can trade music in real life, why should it be different over the internet... You can't have it both ways.
[quote]
so now you are suggesting (at least this is what i read into it) that we can't have it either way
#include sig.h
This is why I now listen to foreign radio at work.
Feel free to chime in with yours...
Code commentary is like sex.
If it's good, it's VERY good.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
I think radio right now is the best it's ever been.
You've got to be kidding.
Maybe the number of "formats" has increased, but that just means the recording and radio industries have sliced and diced the same ol' factory-produced, crappy pop pablum into new categories.
How many of those radio stations you hear on your commute have more than a few dozen songs in their playlists? How many deejays even get to pick their own playlists? How many of the songs being aired were recorded by local bands?
And you call the proliferation of shrieking talk radio garbage an improvement?
And NPR isn't any better. In the market where I live (Washington DC), the non-commercial end of the dial has been completely taken over by "public affairs," your industry's euphemism for hours of self-important blowhards verbally circle-jerking. Jazz, blues, bluegrass and classical are down to just a few hours a week, and even then, it's predictable, safe and dull.
I understand you're drawing a paycheck from the radio industry, but that doesn't mean you need to kid yourself about what you're doing.
The fact is, broadcasters, recording companies and unions have conspired to suck all the oxygen out of the air for any music that in any way challenges its listeners.
You can't argue that the increased concentration of power in the music and broadcasting industries has not been correlated with a decline in music quality. Yes, everyone has different tastes, but look back 60 years. Just as today, most popular music was sugary, dull and predictable. But popular music also included under its umbrella truly classic works by bands like Ellington's, Basie's, Goodman's, Lunceford's and Shaw's. Three hundred years from now, people will still be awed by "Cottontail" and "Lester Leaps In." What popular music recorded in the last decade can you say that about?"
We can only pray that whatever results from the technological, legal and regulatory wrangling over Napster will give artists more opportunities to be heard and consumers more choices. I can't say I'm optimistic.
Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), in Canada, "Canadian content" regulations require that radio stations play a minimum amount of Canadian material (approx 35%). Because of that, we get to hear a lot of really cool bands, many of them local, that we'd never otherwise hear. Something like 90% of the music I own, I would never have discovered had it not been for those regulations. I wonder if bands like the Crash Test Dummies, the Barnaked Ladies, the Tragically Hip or Rush would ever have been heard of in the US had Canadian stations been not been forced to pick up enough Canadian music to meet quota.
Wile some argue that the CRTC's (Candian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commision) rules are government interference, there's no doubt that we get a lot more variety than the endless "variety" of top-40 stations that seem to be a-la-mode in the US. That's not to say that there aren't some great US stations... NPR is pretty cool.
Canada isn't unique in regulating cultural content; Australia, New Zealand, France, Korea and other nations all have similar regulations setting cultural content requirements.
If you want to call up SAG and voice your concern about their greediness, have a look here.
http://www.sag.com/whoswho.html
Have a look here. SAG is involved in this.
Oh, and it is about advertising rates, but what really pisses me off, and you can see that at www.poliglut.org, is that SAG/AFTRA is trying to get money for distribution of commercials that radio stations are not charging more for. WGN radio would have a helluva time trying to get Old Style (obscure Wisconsin/Chicago beer) to pay for one of their commercials streamed to Thailand.
SAG/AFTRA are trying to get money from a revenue source that does not exist, and therefore shutting down a free service.
Oh, and yeah, I don't believe in residual payments to actors. That is, I think SAG/AFTRA is wrong to insist upon such a ridiculous payment scheme. But anyway, go to the link above if you are interested in more debate...
what a sad day for the internet
but my favorite online station is still online...
radio1 out of the bbc is hands down the best station in the world (yeah... the world)
the music is about 3 months ahead of north america, no ads, best real audio stream online and ya gotta love the brits eh.
You have paid for a total of 0 pages and so far 0 have been used up (0 today).
In the Netherlands, we already have a bunch of these stations. They're nothing more than an electronic jukebox connected to a transmitter, serving music and advertisements. The formula seems to work, seeing they've been around for several years now.
--frank[at]unternet.org
As one involved with a noncommercial streaming project motivated by the desire to disseminate points of view that don't make it in the commercial media I have to say this is good news. That capitalism's "warring brothers" shackle themselves in this new medium with licensing agreements and industry consortia that get a percentage demonstrates the value to society of information that is licensed for use by civil society (ie GPL, Open Content) or in the public domain.
... umm artist's songs off of Napster, I say let them cut their own throat, the independent music industry will flourish. If Clearchannel (which controls 25% of the nation's radio advertising revenue thus can control the airwaves) can't webcast their thousands of carbon copy RIAA bitch radio stations, I say great, this is an opening for independents and noncommercials to take advantage of.
So if the RIAA wants to get all its slaves
This is of course only a temporary window of opportunity. No one believes that Clearchannel will not be able to get on the web. Ultimately this will probably speed consolidation in the radio industry, as the big players like Clearchannel will be able to leverage deals that small independently owned stations can't.
Now I can't listen to any of the Dodger games at work unless I subscribe to mlb.com (damn kxta1150.com)! Isn't anything free anymore? ;)
Now accepting sig suggestions.
AFTRA today offically closed it's doors as it's membership dropped into single figures. The organisation was dumbfounded by the situation, one (now ex) staff member was quoted as saying:
"How were we supposed to know that all media broadcasts were moving towards an online option, how were we supposed to know that we were limiting stations whose DJs fell under our jurisdiction and making them so anti-competitive as to make student and overseas radio stations who did have a global Internet prescene a more pratical alternative to advertisers".
In this reporters opinion AFTRA were the one driving force behind the closure of may American based radio stations, unable to afford the "levys" imposed by AFTRA they were passed over as viable by Advertisers forcing their closure.
If there is one thing we can learn from this it's that no one ogranisation should have the power to dictate the wages paid for specific aspects of a job, let the market decide.
It hasn't been the same since Opie and Anthony were canned, if you ask me. Those guys were the life of the station.
The DJs are still better than WBCN, though.
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Would(can) this affect Joe's like me who are encoding live radio and streaming it for personal use?
Streaming live radio is easy...and fun...and can be done without the expressed written permission of the commissioner of Baseball,Basketball,NFL,Howard Stern, or anyone. (Don't worry, I'm not charging anything or runnning my own commercials ;-P)
Just get a cheap radio, line it in to you line-in audio port, fire up some streaming software (M$ Media encoder is strangely priced right(free)) and viola'...your buddies in the shielded LAN bunker can listen to mediocre quality radio. The source is already inside the firewall so we're not killing our internet connection. Hell...with 100 Mb ethernet, who cares?)
Several people have commented on how greedy the stations are who won't pay an air personality triple his salary to stream his program. Don't you think that if there were large profits to be had for those stations that streamed their content that they would pay up? Loudly complain about the cost, certainly, but pay up anyway just to get the extra revenues. Greed can work both sides of this particular street.
Sony tried it in the netherlands. They didn't like their music being streamed by the VPRO, a dutch public radiostation. So Sony music is not streamed by VPRO. But since the VPRO are (what americans would call) communists, they also stopped playing ANY sony music on the radio. filtering out sony music from the streamed radio broadcasts is too much hassle. Not using ANY sony music anywhere is a lot easier.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
well.. should I ever feel the need to go on strike, I'll loose payment for that time, if not my job.. I'd love to have a union. a union allows workers to stand up to large companies, and is essential to the proper operating of any industry, who'd otherwise just screw their workers under the guise of either efficiency or profit.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
"Clear Channel, which owns 1170 radio stations has ordered them all to stop streaming their on air feeds."
Maybe this will help show the mainstream how much control corporations have on the media.
Wait. This is America. How would they find out?
Spinner. It has lots of different channels based on genre, and it's still working today... Of course, it's a Windows-only product, but...
--
"A dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman who has lost an eye." -- Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
Have you lived under a rock most of your life? In many cases Unions are mob protection schemes. In recent years the unions have improved their image a little bit, but it wasn't all that long ago that the teamsters union was run by the Mafia.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Is it just me or are the DJ's getting entirely too annoying recently? They don't seem to add anything at all to the content of a typical Rock music station. The morning programs are the worst of all, getting downright disgusting.
So maybe this will make a few radio stations get rid of the DJ's alltogether. I'd rather listen to commercials than some of their blathering. If I'm tuned into a 'music' station, I expect to at least occasionally hear MUSIC during the hours between 6am and 10am.
So, anyway, I'd like to see the union get taken down a notch for this. After all, it's the number of people listening to the commercials that pays their salaries. Getting more people listening over the internet should be a money-making proposition.
After all, it's a lot harder to switch stream channels than changing radio stations, more people listen to the ads on a stream than listen to them on a broadcast station. The whole ergonomic design of a car has gone to making it absurdly easy to play with the radio, but no one has yet come out with a peripheral that changes the stream channel for you.
In the C-Net article, they indicated that the broadcasts could
go back on line as soon as technology is put in place to
automatically remove the commercials.
That would be great! Listen to the music on-line without all the
loud car-sale ads.
Then, the advertiser doesn't have to pay extra for the online playing,
I don't have to listen to the ads, and the actors are guaranteeing no internet exposure!
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
Coming from twenty years experience in the industry, yes, it is unreasonable. As a rule, Sales, not DJ's, are the only ones payed by commercial sold. DJ's get a flat salary, sometimes an additional fee for production work sold outside the market or to other stations and, in rare cases involving major talents, an incentive bonus based on ratings in their day-part. Why would they get a commercial cut? It's not a piecework gig like sales. Why would they be the only ones? In the total amount of labour that goes into programming a radio day, the DJ's have the smallest part. Traffic, production, promotions, programming, engineering, all work obscene hours compared to the typical 4-6 required of an air shift, though it's invisible to the audience.
Something odd happens when the conversation turns to anything remotely considered 'artisitic'. Principles considered ridiculous elsewhere get applied. No one believes line workers should get a cut of every dollar made from the after-sale use of a GM truck, or that a Quicken coder should share in the profits of every business using the software. This appears unique to the entertainment industry, though with their new rent-not-own licensing models the software industry appears to be catching on.
I don't miss New Jersey, but I sure as shit miss JM in the AM.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Ah - the classic way to karma whore on Slashdot. Find a problem and find a way to blame a corporation for it. Never mind that it doesn't make any sense, the children that frequent this site will mod it up anyway.
For a radio station, broadcasting on the internet means they reach a wider audience. It's no different, conceptually, than if they got a more powerful transmitter and reached more people (admittedly with a different geographic distribution). It is perfectly fair for the artists to want more money - assuming their contracts are structured so that they get paid more for their ads going to a wider audience. Blame the ad agencies if they are not doing that because it's their fault, not the radio stations. Radio stations get paid for the advertising - they don't pay for it.
The article you pointed to on Salon is egregiously naive. Radio stations have two sources of revenue: Advertising and record companies paying to broadcast their music. Advertising is constrained by the kind of listener audience they are able to command. The better stuff they play, the more listeners and hence more advertising revenue. Obviously, not everyone shares your opinion that radio sucks or there wouldn't be people listening to it and therefore no advertising.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Oh yeah. That's what I'd like to see. We should make laws that tell people what they should or should not play on their radio stations beyond what is obscene or defamatory.
Are you being facetious or are you just naturally stupid?
Mmmm.. Donuts
With a few corporations owning majority control over the major-market radio stations in the US, they're all the same anyway. I can't tell the difference between a "classic rock" station in Boston, Chicago, or anywhere else.
Public radio and noncommercial radio are not affected; some of my favorites on the web:
WZBC-FM Boston College Radio
WNYC-AM National Public Radio - Windows Media Player, sorry.
Yup. Radio corps suck. Virtually every station in Des Moines is owned by the same company. Last year the Register did a story on local radio and completely ignored the only indie station (which happens to webcast, BTW) around. Typical.
I have zero tolerance for zero-tolerance policies.
Constitutionally Correct
I disagree with the arugment here. Your points are valid, but you missed his argument I think. Radio does suck now. There is no loyalty to DJ's or stations. I feel every hour now is half ad's and half music, a ratio that is to disparate to maintain interest. I am not saying their are not good DJ's or good radio stations out there, but this single format, play the same 10 songs and add 1 from 10 years ago every three hours shit has to go. And that witty DJ banter is so lame it hurts!
Oh well! There goes the ethernet enabled IM (I think Clear Channel coined IM to mean internet modulation which means streams). Anyone remember Kerbango and a few others of those radios with built in modems for streaming audio?? Looks like they are useless rocks now, unless they can pick up Internet Only streams like Wolf FM.
Gorkman
The problem with the Ad Agencies (and the Actors' Union, for that matter) is that they don't understand that streaming radio is radio, not ``online advertising.''
Online advertising is when I see an interesting banner or link on a web site, click it, and get a web page, movie, or catchy jingle in return. If the Actors want to be paid extra for that, fine.
Radio is when I listen to cool music or dialogue (audio content), and ``pay'' for that content by also listening to the advertisements that are broadcast with that content. This is what streaming radio does, and it's not at all like online advertising.
Consider what would happen if we were to listen to these radio broadcasts by shortwave, from thousands of miles away. Would that suddenly qualify the Ad actors for their online bonus? And yet that's all that streaming amounts to. Anyone listening to a streaming broadcast is holding up their end of the advertising bargain 100%. There is no reason to treat the stream any differently from the radio broadcast itself.
Of course, if the station wants to replace some of the local ads in their stream with ads more relevant to their new expanded market, well, that's one of the wonders of this streaming technology now isn't it?
-Renard
It's still ok to make jokes about fat people, too.
So the record companies shell out big bucks to get songs played on the radio, and yet they turned down Napster's billion dollar offer to get their songs played for free?
In this case "it's" is a contraction of "it has." What he said "the best it's ever been." There was no mistake from which to protect yourself (except, of course, from putting [sic] in there ;-)
This is CAPITALISIM people, profit drives the world. I can't believe how many posters here don't realize that DJ's are getting screwed out of their share.
Ads that run on the net cost the advertisers, just like the ads over the traditional airwaves. The station makes money just like it does over traditional airwaves, SURPIRSE SURPRISE, talent had to do something drastic to get their share of the new dough that the radiostations hit the advertisers up for.
(I think the ny post had misleading text that seemed to suggest that this wasn't exactly the case)
Who's owed? The fucking station that's who! This is how advertising works. That sentence should read who
How can you be Anti-Union and the bitch about corporate bohemoths? The AFTRA's not anti net, they just want their share of the corporate profits.
mariolio
But if you want to say internet radio should be treated differently then broadcast radio then online trading should be treated differently.
--
Free Mac Mini
The other nice thing about internet radio is that you could keep track of exactly how many people are listening and if you have a small form to fill out you could get some nice demographic information and then sell nice targeting advertising at very nice prices.
Now, with all this (potential) extra income, and the fact that the radio station pays the artist/record company based on the size of their listening audience. Doesn't this just make logical sense that they should pay more? (based on the exsisting way they pay)
And before you start saying "Well this is the internet, it's different". People that use Napster sometimes say say that you can trade music in real life, why should it be different over the internet... You can't have it both ways.
--
Free Mac Mini
As someone who has been in the radio game for over 20 years I see this as a good thing. Not because it protects the fat cat idiots that controll the medium, but because it keeps them out of the streaming game. With the advent of streaming, the last thing we would want is this old media controlling a new one. Good. Get them out of streaming. That way the true innovators of the medium can create truly compelling content. We don't need the large broadcast companies turning streaming into another mindless, banal medium like radio has become.
Like Virgin or the BBC Radio 1 2 3 or 4
The only US station worth listening to IMO is WBAI for OTH a 2600 broadcast.
"WPLJ has temporarily suspended our live internet broadcast while our streaming infrastructure is being retooled.
We apologize for any inconvenience."
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
They COULD say "We own 90% of the top 40 stations in the US, if you want your song added to the play list you'll incure 'marketing costs' of 5K per song/per station
More like DO
Our Local "Wolf" station (Clearchannel has set Nicknames that you can call your station. They Range from The Wolf, Kiss, The Beat, ETC) about three months ago went insane for about a month and basicially played Sammy Hagger's "Let Sally Ride" Non stop as a "New Rock Exclusive" (IE: "We've been paid to play it into the Ground Exclusively").
It got to the point where I was predicting when they were going to play it based on what "The Wolf" Promo they would play. Usually it was the Promo where Homer Simpson (another Thing that for some reason Clearchannel worships: Any "The Simpsons" soundbyte) would say "Yah there always tryin to screw ya!" Which I also thought was pretty ironic in a sense. I drove some of my friends insane doing this, simply because they A) Hated the song and B) Were annoyed that I knew it was on before They did and would shut the radio off before it played.
So how do I know they were paid to play the song to death. Because on the next month, the song mysterously disappeared, and was never heard from again. It's been three months now, so you would think at least one person would have requested it by now, right.
Im curious. How many "Wolf" stations are playing "Aerosmith - Jaded" and "Arron Lewis - Outside" As a "New Rock Exclusive" Or basicially Playing it into the ground. Just about every non hip-hop or talk radio Clearchannel station I've listened to have buried Aerosmith into the ground. and I've noticed that the've started working on Arron Lewis as of late.
--
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Of course, unions today are nearly as bad as the Evil Corporations, but at least they hate each other and strike a sort of balance.
Corporations are out only to improve their bottom line, and that means perpetrating any and every abuse possible. Our economic and legal system makes this so (shareholder lawsuits and just plain greed). The union system we have today is a DIRECT consequence of that behavior.
Okay, first off, DJ's make shit, so 300% more gets them up to what? $15 bucks and hour? Gimm'e a break, with the exception of a few heavy hitting on air personalities, no one makes huge cash.
Salon.com did an article on the radio biz, and to be honested, it made microsoft seem nice compared to clear channel.
Basically salon said this:
Top 40 stations in major markets get about 100K annually in marketing co-op (read money to play songs). The people who do the co-op with the station collect from the studio. The studio passes the cost of this co-op to the artist. This is basically how someone who sells 1M CD's ends up will a bill from the label when it's all said and done. Clear channel has bought the middle man out, and basically running a fine line between creative marketing, and outright extortion.
They COULD say "We own 90% of the top 40 stations in the US, if you want your song added to the play list you'll incure 'marketing costs' of 5K per song/per station."
So, sorry to break someones bubble, but in my opinion Clear Channel is part of the problem, not the solution.
Say what ? Since when is ANY company obligated to pass profits to employees ? The employees should be getting compensated well in the manner of a paycheck. And if the employee (DJ) is any good.. then he can/will go else where or have major control of their contract.
UPS Sucks
Unions haven't driven out manufacturing; taxes and employer greed have. Did you ever notice that the price of goods remains the same for those companies that have moved their plants to places like Mexico? But people keep paying it. Merit pay only works if you have an honest employer. People who bitch about unions are pissed off because they have no job security and are too afraid to speak up when they are upset with their employer. You either have to take a load of crap and get shafted or walk out the door. Yes, there is corruption in unions, but that's just like anything else. Why the hell shouldn't the workers be able to get what they deserve? People complain about how union laborers continue to benefit despite mediocrity and/or laziness. What about those hard workers who get thrown away like they were nothing after 20 or 30 years of dedicated service? You think it's that easy to pick up and move on, especially at age 50 or older? Why not actually get out there and talk to blue-collar laborers and see how easy it is. I don't know about the rest of you, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to fly in a plane with a pilot who's unhappy because he's not being fairly compensated. You think going on strike is an easy power play? Fortunately, my dad's union never had to make the decision to strike, but the threat and fear is real for the whole family. Union funds only go so far and most people don't have enough savings to last any significant amount of time. Frankly, I'm tired of getting into these arguments. People like you are ignorant as hell and are too cheap to pay an honest price for honest services rendered.
Besides, this dispute really seems to be about advertising rates.
If radio stations are getting more money from advertisers when they stream on-line, then the on air talent should be paid more. If they radio station doesn't get more money for the ads, then the talent shouldn't either.
The Economics of Website Security
Another great student run station, KWVA in Eugene, Oregon. Quote from their website: "Tired of being torn from blissful slumber every morning by "Who Let the Dogs Out"?"
I DJ'ed there from 2am - 4am with a friendThat's true as long you don't have any ad revenue at all. If you make any money at all then the price jumps in a hurry. My brother is in a web class and did a project on streaming and the legal requirements. I helped him out with some of the research and it was eye-opening. It is extremely difficult to be 100% compliant even when you jump through every hoop and have the money to do it right.
If they don't pay the ascap fees then they are doing it it illegally in the first place and then they can be procescuted and stopped. I guess the little guy will have to be a talk station or sing their own copyrighted music. There is no way to follow all the rules they have put in place if you use music with any kind of copyright on it.
That's why I listen to kgnu. No commercials, the weirdest music programming you could want, and science programming (not often enough) where intelligent questions are asked of working scientists instead of publicity seeking popularizers (which I'm listening to right now over a streaming feed).
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
Y100 is Philadelphia's most popular station for modern rock. They routinely persuade the biggest names in music to come to Y100-sponsored concert events in the area. That being said, their audio feed is still working. So, I'm wondering just what kinds of stations this ruling is affecting.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
"Big Media" is dictating what we can or cannot hear.
This is just a logical extension of radio. Even better, the stations do not have to purchase/lease a frequency, they just need 'net connection. Maybe that's the problem, the producers cannot control it and therefore want it shut down until they can get a stranglehold over how/when things are broadcast.
So much for the little guy being able to have a web-streaming radio station.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
This same issue with web publishing of newspapers and magazines is going to the Supreme Court. I think that 300% is a bit high, but if you are rebroadcasting a show, is there not due some additional compensation. Most of the SAG and AFTRA members are not paid large sums of money.
Fight Spammers!
I think that it's the advertisements, not the DJ's that cost a lot more when they are aired over the Internet. The AFTRA contracts are for those doing the commercials, voice overs, etc. When they make the advertisement, the person gets not just a 'payment' for doing the ad, but they make money based on the number of times the ad is aired, etc. Evidently, if it goes over the Internet, they get triple the normal payment for times aired. It does seem a little excessive, to be honest. All of a sudden, somebody's ad budget goes to hell. IIRC after hearing this, at least a couple of stations would like to get back to streaming if they can figure a way to keep the commercials from being streamed. Then again, I could be wrong.
I recently moved back to Dallas after 8 years from Austin, and that's not quite correct. I remember the Edge from when I was in high school here, and here's where the various stations have shifted to on the dial: Q102 is dead and gone from what I can tell, although similar music plays on 92.5 still. For more metallish/hard rock stuff, if that's what you want, there's 97.1. Mostly crap 80s hard rock there, though, with some of the most annoying DJs on the radio here, other than the 93.3 ones. The Edge moved to Q102's old slot, 102.1. For the most part, they play about the same type of stuff they've played since a year after the station started (no old post-punk or other interesting stuff, more current "hard alternative" music for the most part). At 94.5, where the Edge used to be, there's an oldies R&B station, which was an odd but interesting change of pace when I moved back. Hope that helps.
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
Actually, there ARE laws in place to prevent record companies from directly paying radio stations to play the songs the record companies want played. They were enacted in the late '50s or early '60s, and are generally referred to as payola laws, after the payola scandal of the '50s. Since the radio industry deregulation, folks have found a way through this by going through "independent promoters" that pay radio stations a certain amunt of money in exchange for the ability to choose a certain chunk of their playlist. These independent promoters then turn around and charge the record companies to make sure their songs are added to the playlist. If you read the Salon article listed above, most of the info is in there.
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
No, actually, the reason I think that radio sucks is because radio currently does, in fact, suck.
And, to be fair, for the most part, it's always been hard to hear anything decent on the radio. The difference is that, 10 or 15 years ago, in larger markets, the DJs would occasionally play a local band JUST BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO. Not because their corporation wanted to be the first to break a new band on radio, not because the "band was situated to enter the market," but because the DJ like the way the band sounded, and thought the listeners might, too. A good example of this was a local band from Austin called the Asylum Street Spankers. Fun band, does modern riffs off of old-style music, lots of swing, old-style country stuff with titles like "I Was Flannel When Flannel Wasn't Cool" slamming Johnny-come-latelys in various scenes and "Beer" explaining the singers preference of beer over any other drug. Generally fun stuff, well liked by the college crowd in the market. On one of the local stations, an alternative/college rock station, a DJ decided to play one of their songs and was promptly put on the vampire shift, for "playing music not in line with the station format and our corporate strategy." Now, don't misunderstand me, I know that that type of crap happened before the corporations got involved, but it was less frequent. You know why? Because, in order for that DJ to get that song played, he would have had to talk to one person, who could have simply given him a "Yes" or "No" answer, rather than putting in a request to four different departments, clearing it with legal, etc. Ultimately, the reason that radio stations suck these days is that their programming decisions are made less and less by people who love music, and more and more by beancounters and lawyers.
However, opinions vary, and you are welcome to yours. Thank you for some intersting comments on the current state of the music industry. Unfortunately, I simply cannot agree that replacing mom-and-pop radio stations with corporate affiliates is any better than replacing mom-and-pop stores with Wal-Marts. Ultimately, you reach a point where no matter what store you go to, they're all Wal-Marts or Targets or K-Marts, and you have to buy the same crap.
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
You'll note that AFTRA did not start requiring this until AFTER the American Association of Advertising Agencies started requiring its members to pay additional for their ads being simulcast on the internet. Ultimately, the radio stations are to blame for what's happened to them, due to their own greed. However, as Clear Channel and its ilk are wont to do, they'll pass the screwing on to you! "Damn AFTRA for saying that if you get paid twice for an artist's work that the artist should get paid twice as well. It's all the artists that are making us shut off your internet broadcast, not the radio stations trying to get something for nothing, rather than pay the artists their cut."
Fucking radio corporations. For the record, the reason that you don't hear anything decent on the radio anymore is, for a large part, due to the fact that approximately 90% of radio stations are owned by three companies. For an excellent article on the subjct of why radio currently sucks, check out Pay for Play on Salon.
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
Anyone from outside the Americas, Australia and Europe want to comment on this?
Did everyone in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia get a day off?
Just wondering...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
WBER is a community radio station in Rochester, NY. Except for it's station manager, and programming director, all of the DJ's are 100% volunteer. As with most forms of math, 2 * 0 = 0.
Though I will say that WBER kicks ass, and is one of the reasons I'm staying in Rochester.
-Paul Mischler -Secretary, RIT Student Music Association -http://music.rit.edu/
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Come on, hardly any DJ's can be considered artists. They do "work for hire". People listen to radio for music, not the freakin' talk-bots. At least the people I know anyway. Why would the DJ deserve more money?.. unless of course we're paying them to shut the hell up. You don't see many recordings of DJ's surfacing on Napster do you? That probably means they're not in demand, no one wants to hear them!
How will the union respond to that? By trying to expand to include internet DJ's, of course.
Look at the Verizon strike of a few months ago. It wasn't really about wages or benifits... It was that the union was upset that the people who worked for ISP's that verizon took over were all non-union workers (because, unlike the telephone industry, the data communications industry has tradionally not been run by unions).
The big unions are hoping to use the fact that baby-bells are moving into the Internet business to turn all those brash young Internet workers into dues-paying members. Over time, don't be surprised if the unions try to get a hold of more of the IT industry over the next 10 years... not because IT workers need a union, but because the unions' numbers have been dwindling over the last two decades, and with it, so has their money, power and influence. We don't need them, but they certainly need us.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The scenario you are reciting is a total myth. Every time somebody points out that unions are redundant, corrupt, and bad for everybody who is not a union boss (and they are), somebody drags out the old saw of "well, you would be working like a slave for change found in the couch if it wasn't for the union", which is total BS.
I'm not in a union, and I make great money. Everybody I know who is in a union is only in it because joining was a requirement of the job. Unions are nothing but a mob racket these days, and anybody who doesn't see that must be blinded by their hate of industry and capitalism, because it should be obvious to anybody who looks at it objectively.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
If it weren't for unions, and more succinctly, people looking out for their own best interests, workers would be working 16 hour shifts and would be getting paid $5.35 an hour. Yes the workers like giving the company the shaft, but guess what, they're getting it too. It can be very difficult to see the good things that unions do, when only the bad get publicized and talked about.
The whole Seattle music scene a decade ago happened because there were two good college stations, KAOS in Olympia and KCMU in Seattle, along with OP magazine out of Olympia and Bruce Pavitt's Sub Pop tape compilations - it was a very small circle of people, which also included Stephen Rabow who went from KAOS to being the only (and probably the last) free form DJ on a couple of commercial Seattle stations. Kim Thayil moved to the NW because he read in OP about what a cool station KAOS was - there was nothing like that in Chicago then. Soundgarden, Nirvana et al. happened only because this was enough to make a scene - that and that rent used to be cheap out that way.
So there's really only one Classic Rock, one Urban Contemporary, one Country, one Hip Hop station in the country anyhow - all the same centralized playlists, the DJs don't do shit, they aren't allowed to. Internet broadcast for them is redundant, and the DJs might as well be paid more for it. But for the free form college and community stations, well, those really can matter. So if this means that the commercial shit declines in this sector of the Net, good! And if this leaves the door open for noncommercial Net broadcasts, this could be very good indeed.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
This is not an undisclosed "music industry rule"...
You don't know what you are talking about (or it's merely conjecture)
College radio stations do pay royalties/license on the songs they play... but i believe it is at a much reduced price... (but i'm not going to pass that off as a fact...) College stations like regular stations get a special royalty license that is more of a blanket than a per/song rate...
That's what I vaguely remember from my COM 300 classes anyways...
ymmv,
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
I don't think you get it... but that's ok...
.0002 local share. And the free shwag, is pretty lame (wow a sticker from some christian metal bank from OK!)... and someone steals all the good cd's at the station so in order to have anything to play you have to lug in your own collection (pre-mp3 explosion... a lop top full of mp3's woulda saved alot of aggrevation)
it's not all that important to know how a college radio station works... just that it does.
Maybe I just DJ'd at a crappy College station (which i did/it was) but there wasn't alot of payola going around to influence that
*Shrug*
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
See for yourself at http://nuclearchannel.com.
My local radio station, KLAQ, has stopped their broadcast. See their notice here: http://www.klaq.com/pages/listenlive.html. Not that this will affect me, I always listen to KNAC at work...
Gosh, it would be nice to get all the religions' holidays off...
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
UGH, station has been going down hill for years. Well thats alright I never listened to their net stream much since they switched to Real audion and it sounded like I was stuck underwater. I told them they really should use shout/ice cast intead, but they avoided the issue. In any case my .02 the DJ's get paid to do their show, how the station broadcasts the show shouldn't matter.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Yep, and further more, there are plenty of internet stations based in the USA that are not affected by this. Only communications companies who have on-air employees that are members of AFTRA are affected. That means most of the big boys, of course, but hey, if they want to cut off their nose to spite their face, so be it. Listeners will migrate to the independent internet stations, broaden their horizons a little, life is good.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
Seems to me that it's the stations that are killing the feeds because they don't want to pay up according to agreements they accepted. That's what happens when you sign a contract, you have to abide by it.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
This is a good point, but it is a simple matter to strip local ads and replace them with advertising from a national or international account.
Depends on what you mean by "work". Perhaps a DJ doesn't expend any more *effort* if he is heard by 10,000 people instead of 10 people. But he *is* accomplishing more. It's like a person using a lever to move amplify his effort to move an object. So by that rationale it would make sense to increase their pay. The only justification for any company to not raise employee wages in response to an increase in revenue is sheer executive and stockholder greed.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
OK, good, you agree with me. So what happens if you give the lever-operator a longer, more powerful lever? He's able to expend the same amount of effort to get more done. But he's still just moving a lever, expending the same amount of effort as before. He's working more efficiently. Should he get paid based on his effort? Or how much that effort accomplishes? Businesses *never* give you more money if you find a way to work more efficiently. They always just give you more work, and keep more money. That sucks and is lame from a labor perspective. I think it's how much the effort accomplishes.
I would say that yes, the amount of increase in wages ought to be proportional to the increase in ratings. There's a distinction between ratings and market size, here, which might be confusing. Broadcasting to "the internet" gives you a huge market size, potentially. But it may only give a very small ratings increase. Management would be wise to harp on this point.
You seem to understand the main ideas well, but don't let your experiences in college color your understanding of the state of the industry as it stands now. If you were in college in, say 1996 or 1997, the internet was much different back then. Although the 'net might account for negligible ratings presently, that doesn't mean that in the future it could bring about more. Once everyone is sucking information from a fat pipe it may become a very important consideration. The voice talents and personalities are just being forward-thinking.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
That's because the industry has conspired to shape it that way. In the early days of radio, remember, there were all kinds of drama and performances with people who were considered entertainers/artists and who were celebrities.
In the modern day radio forces DJs to be faceless clones of each other and not exhibit genuine personality traits. Much of what they do is not really artistic, and amounts to being little more than an announcer. But there's a great deal more potential for what the medium could allow. Even the lowly radio DJs have the potential to cultivate and shape culture by promoting music scenes and guiding the public to discover as-yet undiscovered New Sounds.
But prioritizing great quality is not the most cost-effective way to manage a radio station. They want everything to be predictable so they can guarantee to advertisers that the number of listeners will be the same from week to week.
Even so, there are still well-produced shows, such as talk shows, which, while not what we'd typically call "art" are a sort of journalism and are definitely a work of authorship.
You may equate "radio" with "listening to a set list of prerecorded music" but that is a small, though popular, part of a broad spectrum. Music programming isn't going to be affected by this so much as live talk shows and news/issues oriented stuff that people may only be able to get from a single source. People can get music from lots of places, but how do you listen to Stern/Limbaugh/Slesinner (or someone who actually doesn't suck) if you're not in one of their markets?
Even if we're talking about what the article is talking about, the voice talents who do the commercials, voice acting *is* an art, even if the commercial aspect of it makes it a "work for hire", the contracts for actors in commercials tend to be such that if a commercial is broadcast the talent appearing in the commercial gets a royalty or usage fee.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
1. Radio stations derive revenue based on the number of listeners that they can bring to advertisors.
2. Internet simulcasting and rebroadcasting allows a radio station to reach many more people, many of whom might live outside of their normal broadcasting radius, and who would not be reachable over the airwaves.
3. Therefore it's not totally unreasonable to ask for more money if you're a DJ. The radio station management is certainly going to ask for more money from the advertisors; why shouldn't DJs see some of that money?
It's an inconvenience for now for those of you in the listening audience, but it's a real issue and one that I think the on-air personalities have a strong case for.
This isn't a situation analogous to the RIAA/MPAA vs. the people; the public *isn't* being gouged for the cost of listening to radio.
It's more like the usual RIAA rips off artists so that the publisher and distributor can get fat off of the artist's vision and hard work.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Okay, put the Pabst Blue Ribbon down, and listen to what the guy has to say. He doesn't want to be stuck in a hierarchy behind guys who are ahead of him on the list simply because they lasted longer - he wants to be compensated for his skills and expertise. Which is totally fair, and NOT what unions have been fighting for - sadly.
sulli
RTFJ.
I can assure you that the cost of operating a radio station is not the DJ's salary. The amount of wooing that a account manager has to do in order to get a new account is insane. I worked at a small station and our account manager worked about 80 hours a week and about 60 of those were off-site visits to advertisers. She did insane things to make the advertisers happy. I remember her making all kinds of pies, cakes, and other baked goods to take them. At one point she even went out and picked a customer up and took him to pick up his car at the shop. Another time she helped someone paint their house. It was nuts! Now, the ad agencys are wanting to charge more money for the ads themselves, this means less money for the stations unless they come up with another revenue stream. This isn't good.
As for anyone thinking DJs are somehow involved, here is something to put their place in the radio heirarchy in perspective.
There was a cartoon I saw once which showed the real hierarchy within a radio station. There were three vehicles in the parking lot. The first was a HUGE luxury car. It was parked in the spot reserved for the station manager. The second was a mid-size sedan, it was parked in the spot for the accounts manager. The third was a Razor scooter which was parked in the spot for the DJ. That's about right. Even though they're the personalities who make the radio interesting, they aren't the real stars.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
. . .
There's still good internet radio out there. Check out Radio Free Slam for a good example.
Could part of the reason the AFTRA is asking for 300% be the new forms of listening to web radio that are coming out? From reports I have seem on the web from sources like Techtv.com and reports from the consumer electronic show listen to web radio is getting a great del easier. The easier it gets the larger the listen audience. Maybe the AFTRA is just trying to secure the pay now for a future increase in web audience. Or perhaps they are afraid of losing the local listening audience to the web.
As for as Clearchannel goes, may somebody slay that demon. I live near Cleveland Ohio. About a year ago I called up a rock station to request a song for my buddy for his birthday. He is a great Pro Wrestling fan and his current favorite is Rob Van Dam(RVD) From the former ECW wrestling promotion. RVD comes out to Walk by Pantera. My friends and I where informed that while they did indeed have the song, WMMS had list of songs they could play from and that going away from that list would mean that person playing the nonlisted song would get fired. WTF I have heard of a station playing a special request before, and it was not like I asked them to play Garth Brooks and a metal station. Cleveland radio is just bad. I listen to 90% of my radio from the net and a mini FM transmitter. I only listen to local radio in the car and the day I find a way to listen to web radio in the I buy it.
The things that come to those who wait are usually left by those who got their first - Steven Tyler lead singer of Aerosmith
Great people don't need people to complete them, great people complete other people. -- Matthew Pawlikowski.
A local station (KOGO) is considering simply removing the ads from the streamed web audio as their solution to this. They don't get any additional money for the web listeners, so it's no skin off their nose to remove advertising. Long-term, I hope some more sensible people come up with a realistic system of compensation. 300% extra for web audio is completely beyond the pale with the sizes of the audiences they're getting.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine
Check out www.kpig.com.
Small local station that still has a lot of character. Been broadcasting on the net longer than anyone.
And they don't suck. Amazing.
I hate local San Jose radio. Yuck. Give me an independent DJ any day!
Many streaming servers have licences for how many connections they can have at once. Also when you buy power at your ISP to make them serve your stream, so you only have 2 outgoing streams, you often pay for the maximum number of connections also.
So providing your signal on the internet is very different from broadcasting it in the air. You also have logs on how many connects to your service.
Many of these dudes getting mad about the stations streaming the signal on the net seems to forget(or does not know/care) these things. It not like the whole internet can listen in at the same time, there is a limit one way or another(licences, bandwidth). So it should be very easy to work out at contract saying that they allow 3000 people listen to their broadcasts. So you can see them squirm when their dreams of a billion dollar pay check vanishes when they realize that the whole world has the potential of listening in but there can only be fx, 3000 of them in reality.
Ok so there is the whole deal of cache servers for RealAudio, Quicktime and that microsoft format. But let's forget that for a moment.
--------
What's sad is that things like radio streams are the kind of features that draw 'the average consumer' to the internet in the first place. The internet is already losing its appeal with this crowd. Some of my "non-nerd" friends actually consider the internet a fad.
WBER
But then, it's a student run alternative station. Nobody gets paid.
How odd, the alternative station is bypassing union wishes.
Go out and point your browser to KEXP and listen to real radio. If you are lucky enough to be on Internet2, you can get an uncompressed 1.4mbps feed! The best radio station in the world!
There is a niche interest in online broadcasts, but most large company's have firewalls that block them and the quality can be poor.
Until IP multicasting comes about, quality of streaming media will remain poor and will suck up a disproportionate amount of backbone bandwidth.
I see this netcasting halt as temporary and good. In the meanwhile we will all get a little more bandwidth to download our slashdot pages quicker.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
It's not going to all end untill the internet is officially bland and tasteless...
We now have the technology to keep any kind of information on the web. I get upload a book, music, picture, anything! I can then place them on my web page where I can then turn around and retrieve it from anywhere in the world! This technology is amazing and it just keeps getting better.
Why are so many people just out for an easy buck?
I guess the internet was promised to be a gold mine.... People are out still looking for it.
Linuxrunner
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
they are stripping the "air" commercials out of their streaming content and will sell the internet time separately.
I think that is actually the best route to follow. Screw this money grubbing union, which is pretty damn sure not to forward all those "stolen" dollars to their members, after all their are costs involved in collecting it, and heck there are so many they would probably charge their members for the "service"
I would expect many of the streamers to come back after installing the software needed to "swap" the commercials for approved ones
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
In general, you have to imagine that AFTRA knew what the consequences of their action would be. I wonder if there hadn't been the precedent by the RIAA requiring royalties for web broadcasts, that AFTRA wouldn't have gotten the idea of supplemental payments.
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
First, they're probably paying to use Mp3 or Real audio's format, second, they're paying for the bandwidth, and third, they have to pay AFTRA's fee demands. You know... I can't emagine why napster got popluar ;-)
For anyone with faster-than-a-modem-connection; visit http://gnutelliums.com and join the Gnutella network, which always has and always will be free (beer & speech).
"Surprised when you couldn't listen to that live stream of your favorite radio station at work today?" ...uh, actually... it's Good Friday. No one's at work... (are they?)
uncompetitive.
Dang unions see dollar signs on the internet, and now they're killing streaming radio because of their greed.
Maybe Reagan was right about that union thing.
First, this is bullshit. The web is not repurposed content -- it's the same as radio, just coming out of different speakers. You don't consider my Sherwood receiver at home to be a different medium than the Blau in my Passat. And, in a lot of areas, you can't have an honest FM station that will reach all your prospective listeners. A good example is Vermont's WEQX (I am listening online as we speak). It's one of the last great independent commercial stations in the world, and it's one of the few stations I've ever heard that will play what the DJs want to hear. But their transmitter is not powerful...it gets drowned out by powerlines and is nearly impossible to get indoors. Hence, I listen online at weqx.com. It's terrible quality, it get congested and the ads are stupid. But it satisfies my need for independent radio.
This is the type of station that should be online -- a station whos playlist is totally different from every other station in the world, both statistically and stylistically. And, for that matter, EQX has listeners all over the country. Do the ads for Stratton Mountain and the Vermont Lottery appeal to these listeners? Hell no! That's why they supplement the cost of their online radio with print ads. The advertising is being broadcast online, sure, but it's hardly repurposed. It's not even properly targetted. Arguing that EQX's advertisers get money from all of their online listeners to Alan Yando's snappy Lotto patter is futile, they don't.
I think this is a sensible law for some radio stations -- ones with nationally appealling ads, for coca-cola or ford motors or even Fox TV. But then again, those stations don't need to be online! The big advertisers don't deal with independent stations, because they can't offer the kind of run that would be cost effective. They deal with huge faceless corporations like ClearChannel, whose content from station to station does not vary anyway. In fact, ClearChannel's DJs are all nothing more than talking heads, with no humans manning the local station mics. They won't answer your requests, they don't understand local politics or personalities and they don't visit local businesses. In essence, ClearChannel stations over the radio are already netcasts...they're nationally broadcast playlists without regional content or any real insight into the listening audience.
I suppose the only consolation I have is that, so far, EQX is still online...and I can still hear the Live Lunch at work.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
As a former radio programmer and engineer I have to wonder why the stations don't just block the microphone output on their webcasts. That way the union's precious "talent" isn't streaming, the pre-programmed music selections are. Many commercial stations have all the content coming out of one server anyway - why not just stream the output of the server, instead of the console?
We don't tune in to hear those windbags talk fast and deep, we tune in for the music. If the union's not careful - they'll make themselves obsolete.
I also have trouble beleiving that broadcasters weren't charging advertisers already. Free advertising?!?! Sorry I missed that boat!
If WWOZ isn't streaming anymore I will definitely begin to cry.
According to Neal Boortz in his news section this morning, WSB in Atlanta is solving the problem by filtering out the commercials from the webcasts. Makes sense to me... could end up being another source of revenue for the stations also, as they could sell streamed commercials separately.
"I pay my dues to these pinky-ring wearing thugs, and this is what I get. My listeners get dumped in the middle of my show."
There are plenty of radio stations broadcasting on the web that aren't affected by "AFTRA"
Radio station DJs have nothing to do with this.
The issue is with "syndicated" commercials; ones that a station airs that was from an external source (typically an agency etc). These commercials are "voiced" by professional talent... we've all heard the Voice of God (Joe Kelly) thundering away sooner or later, and that's one of the things that he does for a living. Howard Parker is another most of us have heard by now... he reads commercials for a living, and gets paid based on the number of airings. Advertisers hire these people because of their voices, etc, and these people get paid either flat-rate or on royalty.
Which leads us to the problem - A station will charge an agency (or whoever) "per airing" of a commercial, and makes cash on it. Wanna buy 10 timeslots? The time isn't free. The agency charges the advertiser in a similar fashion, per unit aired... and they make money on it. Per unit. The guy who voiced the spot is often supposed to get paid per airing as well.
And that's an issue. Stations push their streams to the clients as a "value add"... after all, the sales pig can sell this to a client as additional (free?) airings. The agencies do likewise... some will even charge more if a target station has streaming capability (I don't know of any stations that do this, but several national agencies are adding a few pennies here and there). Everyone... everyone involved is selling their streams as a media outlet, an additional way to air spots. Some agencies are actually surcharging for those additional airings. AFTRA, right or wrong, has decided to call them on it.
So, that's the reality. It has nothing to do with your local airstaff.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
And don't forget Giant Glass!
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
corporations are greedy.
...
never, ever, forget that.
unions were formed in response to unbearable working conditions that were prevailent in the early 20th, late 19th century. child labor, unlivable wages, 7 day work weeks, and 15 hour days. there was no concept of 'benefits'
your mistake is an egregious error that is made altogether too commonly... you ignore back breaking work of people who came before you, while enjoying the fruits of their labors.
you should be ashamed of yourself. i doubt you have worked single day of your life as hard as the average day was for a laborer in 1910, and you've been brainwashed by reaganesque rhetoric to blame the very same people who improved your standard of living.
blaming all unions for the actions of a few greedy/corrupt ones is wrong. and sad. i pity your lack of perspective.
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
The radio station probably loses money from internet streaming. They have to pay for the software, for the bandwidth (which could be quite a bit, depending on the quality of the feed and the popularity of the station), AND (with the exception of MLB) most radio stations do not charge for the service, offering it free to the listener. So let me get this straight... 1) Radio stations spend quite a bit of money so people (maybe even a lot of people) can listen over the internet through shoutcast/realaudio 2) Radio stations make very little extra, if any, money through this (as there's no Nielsen internet audio survey that counts those listeners) 3) The station broadcasting on the internet requires absolutely ZER0 additional work for the DJ/Actor/Whoever, and only creates more work for the IT department (another expense for the radio station - paying the people to troubleshoot the audio stream) 4) DJs/Unions demand a 300% increase, based on the company taking a loss to do something nice for the listeners... Hmmm.... so it seems that based on the zero amount of extra work that they are doing, and the stations taking a Net loss (pun intended), the DJs Union, etc. are saying that they deserve more money... It makes PERFECT SENSE! *huge roll of eyes*
Ah you mean it will be easier to find interresting radiostations on internet.. ;)
*listing to http://www.gothicradio.com right now..*
/Geggibus "E!"
In my opinion the broadcast is still the same, it just gets to their listeners differently. I doubt that the DJ's pay for the stream, or that the cost of the stream eats a lot out of their pay. Until I see some information from the AFTRA on their reasoning behind this, I am guessing this is about easy money and using absurd logic.
I was wondering, could this be due out of fear because now just about anyone can become an online DJ? With services provided by Live365 and other sites I could see them worried. All the stations I listen to online are provided by services like this, I hardly ever listen to a regular radios station's internet stream.
But I know this theory about online DJ's makes no sense because by doing this they are turning people away from them which will lead to people finding other alternatives like the mentioned non "professional DJ" ran stations. Also they still will have radio listeners, even though they will not be getting a easy 300% increase for doing what they have been doing for years.
Anyone find anything on their site about their reasoning behind this?
Kevin Hodapp
Cnet has a similar article about this here. Basically The Web radio standoff that silenced hundreds of Internet audio feeds this week could be good news for companies that help stitch ads into streaming media broadcasts. So the reason all these web radios halted was because of $$ issues. As the article say Major radio corporations Tuesday, including Clear Channel Communications and Emmis Communications, temporarily halted their Web streams because of unresolved online advertising issues. Although that decision was a temporary setback for nascent Web radio stations, analysts said it could help ignite demand for so-called ad insertion technology, which can be used to get around disputed Internet advertising rules. The way I see it Tuesday's dispute among actors, advertisers and broadcasters over royalty payments could make streaming ads more attractive. Since advertising agencies have agreed to pay radio voice actors a higher fee if their commercials are used online as well as on air, they will likely seek alternatives such as ad insertion to control their costs.
Diplomacy is the art of letting people have your way
"I can still remember the day the music died... and we were singing bye bye..."
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
http://www.krxq.net/streaming_sorry.html That's an Entercom station.. maybe Clear Channel owns them, I'm not sure. Regardless, it boils down to greed. People want more and more money, and what a better way to get this money than to milk the cash cow called "The Internet" for every penny they can squeeze out of it. Meanwhile, those of us that actually enjoyed listening to online radio broadcasts from stations around the world get screwed. Because a union wants more money.
Does this signal the end of mainstream radio? That would be awful, because now my kids can just hop on the internet and listen to any one of the unregulated DJs spewing their filthy language and disgusting ideas. At least when they listened to Rush Limbaugh via internet streaming, I could still trust the FCC to fine him should he slip and let an occasional swear word through.
"If the Lord had meant for us to fly, He'd have given us wings with which to soar...." William, 14:35
Maybe I should turn my client in to AFTRA, eh? they're sitll live and on the air.. http://www.sunny106fm.com/
Spice it up with some Hot Sauce from www.americanspice.com Enter 'dan' when you check out and get 10% off