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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."
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
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."
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
Besides, this dispute really seems to be about advertising rates.
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."
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.
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
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!