The battle for free radio
continues
Brandon Moeller
Listener-sponsored community radio almost
made me lose control of my vehicle the other day. There I was, peacefully
listening to intriguingly
funny British accents on the British Broadcasting
Corporation World Service News Hour simulcast on KPFT-FM 90.1 and zipping
by 8 a.m.
traffic, when all of a sudden the disc
jockeys barged onto the air and began pleading for money.
Yet that wasn't what made me swerve three
lanes, nearly broadsiding a Coca-Cola truck, for such things generally
happen thrice a year on
the commercial-free station, which began
broadcasting in 1970. What could have nearly brought the end of your columnist's
mortal life — and
perhaps the lives of millions of plastic
bottles filled with tooth-dissolving sugar water — was an explanation from
the disc jockeys about how
Pacifica will now be more democratic.
In the past, the Pacifica group has allowed
a local advisory board to decide what happens at each station. Yet sometime
recently all hell broke
loose, as friction between the Pacifica
national board and the local stations attained critical mass.
But recently the Pacifica national board
settled lawsuits with its stations and the national board members (with
ties to big money, wishing to
demonize Pacifica by turning it into yet
another facet of big money's hold on the media) were ousted.
Now, in an effort to better the most democratic
progressive radio chain in America, those who donate money and become a
"member" of a
Pacifica station will be able to vote
for their leaders, who in turn elect their own leaders.
Democracy has won a victory with Pacifica,
but a lot more funds are needed as the bullies who were forced to resign
have left unpaid debts —
some of which are legal bills — meaning
Pacifica victors will now have to pay for both sides of the legal struggle.
For more information about all of this,
go to www.savepacifica.net.
CARP's crap ruling
In an effort for big money to reap profits
from independent and alternative broadcasters that have launched on the
vast Internet — many of
which operate non-commercial stations
— they have pestered politicians until the Digital Millenium Copyright
Act in 1998 was passed and
subsequently rubber-stamped by President
Clinton.
The DMCA called for both sides of the fence
to agree on a fair royalty rate to be paid to the big-money record corporations
that own the
copyrights, unlike royalties traditional
radio stations pay, which go to the composers of the music. Since the two
sides of the fence could not
decide what is fair, the U.S. Copyright
Office set up a Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel.
CARP recently ruled that commercial Internet
broadcasters must pay .14 cents for each song played per listener. Traditional
radio stations
that simulcast on the Internet must pay
half that rate, while non-commercial Internet stations must pay .02 cents
retroactively for the past two
years since the DMCA came into effect.
For instance, say a UH organization, in
the spirit of UH tradition, wanted to start its own non-commercial Internet
radio station.
Let's also hope 5 percent of the students
tuned in (a generous estimate, more than the percentage of student who
attend UH football games)
to the Web cast. Doing the math, for two
years' worth of broadcasting, the hypothetical UH station would have to
pay nearly $58,000 in royalty
back-dues, as commanded by the DMCA and
CARP.
This is given the following formula: two
years, 1,650 listeners (5 percent of an estimated 33,000-person UH student
body), 240 songs a day.
This would be chump change if the UH student
organization wanting to run a radio station was the student-fee-grabbing
Athletics Department.
But for most student organizations, raising
such a large amount of money would mean more than selling cookies.
The amount could still be too large for
the Student Program Board, which operates with a student-fee budget of
less than twice the amount the
radio royalties would cost.
In essence, paying such royalties would
kill independent Internet radio and only help big money achieve its purpose:
to keep the power of
