This was Cathy Hughes, who is one of the owners of Radio One, that own 97.9 The Box, Majic 102, & Praise 92.1. She is talking about a bill the Rep. John Conyers of Michigan is sponsoring which will require radio stations to pay artists for every song they play. It's a performance tax. She is stating the bill would hurt minority owned radio stations more than any other ownership groups. She is running promos on all the Radio One stations and appearing on various shows trying to get listeners to write their congressmen/women to get them to reconsider moving forward with this bill. WAMO-AM is owned by Sheridan Broadcasting, which is another minority owned station. I want to say this deal was on the table, before this bill was even introduced. I would like to feel sorry for Cathy Hughes, but I don't. You know it's bad when I say The Box and Majic were operated better and more community oriented when Clear Channel owned them. Radio One is another company that grew too big, like Clear Channel & CBS Radio and now they are feeling the impact of the tough economy and radio advertising way down. She is using this bill as a crutch for that. I don't necessarily agree with this bill, but artists are losing a lot of money, mostly because of the free music downloads you can find on-line and sites like You Tube, imeem, project playlist, and others. Punishing radio stations for putting their music out there, is not necessarily right, but this has been coming for a long time. Congressman Conyers and the people for this bill seem to be dead-set on passing this, no matter what. Thousands of people protested outside of his Detroit office and his offices in DC & Detroit got flooded with calls, as well as the others who co-sponsored this bill, and it doesn't seem to have made a difference. But you never know.
