To run over the air spots in stream or not ?

[Groove1670]

My thought: Why would you take your clients ad out of your stream. If it is an extension of your on air signal, why would you limit your clients message.

Your thoughts?

 

[landtuna]

My thought: Why would you take your clients ad out of your stream. If it is an extension of your on air signal, why would you limit your clients message.

Your thoughts?

I've heard that the spot talent gets paid based on where the sports run and they aren't cleared (paid) for Internet streams.

There may be other reasons but that's the one that keeps coming up.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

My casual observation is that the eliminating of commercials on the stream is a large-market issues, where a lot of commercials are produced by union talent. The talent unions are demanding that if the commercials they voice are put on the stream, they want a significant bump in their union negotiated fee for talent.

I can't imagine that a small-town rural-area station with commercials created in-house would have any reason to strip them out of the stream.

 

[Groove1670]

I've heard that the spot talent gets paid based on where the sports run and they aren't cleared (paid) for Internet streams.

That would be a issue for the large markets. So let's say for stations the produce spots and programming locally.

 

[Chuck]

I've heard that the spot talent gets paid based on where the sports run and they aren't cleared (paid) for Internet streams.

That would be a issue for the large markets. So let's say for stations the produce spots and programming locally.

Our web stream is 100% the same as our off-air signal. We don't have the AFTRA issues to deal with, so why would we want to limit the coverage for our sponsors?

 

[davideduardo]

I've heard that the spot talent gets paid based on where the sports run and they aren't cleared (paid) for Internet streams.

That would be a issue for the large markets. So let's say for stations the produce spots and programming locally.

AFTRA agreements with advertisers (not stations) specifies that additional fees be paid if voiceover work by union members is used on streams.

When those agreements were signed, agencies told stations that they should not run their spots on streams, and if they did, they would cancel. The matter has been questioned of late by people like Ed Christian at Saga, who polled advertising agencies and found that the "no stream" dictate was not as stringent today.

But most stations, just to be cautious, cut the stopset out of the stream rather than trying to guess (or spending lots of time researching) which clients might cancel if the spots they ordered were streamed. This, totally clipped stopsets.

Even smaller stations get some business from regional agencies and so they are just as cautious as the big markets... maybe even more because they can't afford the problems that might come from violating an agency AFTRA agreement.

 

[reelyreal]

One station I worked at used to stream the locally voiced spots, with agency spots blacked out. Another used to charge an extra 10% to stream spots. I didn't agree with it, but that's the business plan they had in place.

 

[landtuna]

My casual observation is that the eliminating of commercials on the stream is a large-market issues, where a lot of commercials are produced by union talent. The talent unions are demanding that if the commercials they voice are put on the stream, they want a significant bump in their union negotiated fee for talent.

I can't imagine that a small-town rural-area station with commercials created in-house would have any reason to strip them out of the stream.

That may be a better description than I gave. I have noticed that the "big city" streams, including my own HD2, strips virtually all commercials whereas KODS, a small market station does not. Virtually all their commercials are for in-market businesses.

 

[Nostalgia]

Arbitron asks this question on their annual (or semi-annual) Station Information Profile or SIP update:

Does your station currently stream its signal on the internet? Yes No
If yes, is the stream (including commercials and sports) exactly the same as the over the air broadcast? Yes No

We only stream our local high school football broadcasts, but I know in our contracts with NASCAR and college football we were not allowed to stream their games.

 

[andydallas]

the reason you aren't allowed to stream NASCAR or college football has nothing to do with the AFTRA situation, but with rights,,if someone is city A wants to hear NASCAR, they have to listen to the local affiliate, not through another station in another town online.

Nearly all stations have some percentage of business thats agency, so yes, the AFTRA situation could come up anywhere,,but it probable never will for a small station. It's really not fair since a 50 KW clear channel station doesn't pay talent for service half of the country, which it might cover at night, but since someone "may" listen on the internet the talen can ask more for fees.

The whole talen issue came up after TV stations started streaming local news, and then it spread to radio

 

[KeithE4]

AFTRA agreements with advertisers (not stations) specifies that additional fees be paid if voiceover work by union members is used on streams.

When those agreements were signed, agencies told stations that they should not run their spots on streams, and if they did, they would cancel. The matter has been questioned of late by people like Ed Christian at Saga, who polled advertising agencies and found that the "no stream" dictate was not as stringent today.

But most stations, just to be cautious, cut the stopset out of the stream rather than trying to guess (or spending lots of time researching) which clients might cancel if the spots they ordered were streamed. This, totally clipped stopsets.

I find it interesting that baseball games that are streamed via MLB Gameday Audio run all ads from the flagship station, while football games carried by NFL Audio Pass, as well as baseball on MLB.TV, have them all removed. Those are replaced by either music (NFL) or a "Commercial in progress" graphic (MLB.TV). Apparently, either AFTRA doesn't care, or MLB has permission to run them.

 

[secondchoice]

It's really not fair since a 50 KW clear channel station doesn't pay talent for service half of the country, which it might cover at night, but since someone "may" listen on the internet the talen can ask more for fees.

The whole talen issue came up after TV stations started streaming local news, and then it spread to radio

Disclaimer: I was a union member (different union: CWA) but IIRC AFTRA contract after one of the strikes, has some kind limits on "new" media distribution due to the nasty residual issue over VHS / DVD sales that someway the actors who took less money at filming for residuals percentage "for the copy-write life" were not getting anything off of the sales.

IMHO Somehow the actors and writers who really created the product should be paid by the producing company not by third parties. I bet next contract AFTRA "gives away" internet streaming in exchange for something else.