Word: ascap
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This week, after being barred from the networks since Jan. 1 when the big chains joined battle with the songwriters' society, ASCAP music returns to the air. Mutual Broadcasting System approved an agreement with the Society, and in a Garrison finish at St. Louis won ratification from a majority of its 169 member stations. By signing on the eve of the National Association of Broadcasters convention in the same city, at which the battle of music was to be a topic secondary only to the FCC antimonopoly report (TiME, May 12), Mutual and ASCAP did the big broadcasters...
...terms were a comedown for ASCAP, which before the music war collected at a blanket rate of 5% of gross from the stations, and was asking 7½% from the chains to renew contracts. ASCAP General Manager John Paine reckoned that if extended to the entire industry the new terms would yield some $4,200,000 a year. ASCAP's 1940 revenue ran about $550,000 higher. The contract applies only to network programs. Local affiliates still must sign contracts with ASCAP if they want to use its music on non-network broadcasts...
Last week 14 resourceful songwriters filed suit against NBC, CBS, National Association of Broadcasters and Broadcast Music, Inc. for $1,215,500 on the ground that while fighting American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers the broadcasters had conspired to destroy the livelihood of the composers. Forthwith ASCAP repudiated the suit. Said a spokesman: "We have plenty of troubles of our own without worrying about what those guys are going...
...ASCAP has plenty of troubles indeed. Convinced that they have the Society on the run, the chains have no intention of rushing quickly into a settlement of the music war. Each day B.M.I., radio's lusty little music mill, grows stronger and bargaining gets tougher for ASCAP. Last March a 15-man committee of the National Association of Broadcasters met with ASCAP, got nowhere in a four-hour session. Just as unfruitful was subsequent dickering. Now ASCAP is trying to deal separately with individual chains and stations, but it still hasn't figured out a mutually agreeable form...
While B. M. I. goes smugly along, ASCAP has been full of internal confusion. ASCAP is bitter about the networks, accuses them of being indifferent to the public. Says a representative belligerently: "They don't have to sign. Nobody is going to force them. The music is here if they want to buy it and if they don't want to buy it the hell with them...