I work on the air and on the board of a LPFM. I know that many of the early "radio shows" are in the public domain for use on the air. "War of The World" gets aired many places on Halloween and I assume those are legal airings. What about programming from the 50s and 60s that aired on entities that no longer exist or it's thread to the current company is not easily traceable to grant permission for airing on non-commercial radio? I'm thinking of some of the Drake produced shows, under the RKO banner at the time. Would those be fair game to air?
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Weird question....
- Thread starter Mike Stark
- Start date
Hmmm. I don't know exactly, but I know that the RKO Radio Network (if that's who released it) was sold to Unistar in the 80s, and Unistar was sold to Westwood One in the 90s. But if it was produced & released by Drake-Chenault, that's a whole different thing. Jones Radio and Broadcast Programming got the assets, and they were bought by Dial Global, that then combined with Westwood One.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Pretty much anything like that has -- at the very least -- an implied copyright, even if it's not easily identified as such (for example, the copyright notice may have been on the distribution media and not in the broadcast itself.
I would bet that any "untraceable" copyright holder would quickly emerge from the woodwork if a broadcast they weren't asked to clear first aired.
We're in the process of "rebuilding" the LPFM in Long Beach. We're doing a number of programming things to try to make ANY kind of noise and say "give us a listen" (on the Internet). We are thinking about doing some "stunting" to get some attention. The programming I'm asking about would be used for that purpose. Just one play. We'll come up with something we can produce on our own, but using some "classic" radio would be fun.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
That sounds like everything ends up at Westwood One eventually ... and if that is the case, good luck even finding what you want permission to license for airing. A friend of mine who used to work there said he was given the task of organizing the archives, only to discover that there weren't even records of what shows were on what tapes, etc.
Which is a shame, because with Classic Rock and Classic Hits being so popular right now, Cumulus could make a nice piece of change re-syndicating all of their live concert shows.
For all materials created prior to 1976 (when the Copyright Act o f 1976 was passed through Congress), there is a chance some materials are in the public domain, if the copyright owner failed to apply for a renewal.
For example, this is why a few episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies are in the public domain.
I do not know if any old time radio programs fell into that category, but there is at least a chance.
For example, this is why a few episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies are in the public domain.
I do not know if any old time radio programs fell into that category, but there is at least a chance.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I have a feeling that by the time anyone could dig deep enough to see what may well have "fallen through the cracks" it won't matter anymore.
There are lots of "tribute" stations on the internet. You might investigate a few of those. Someone was doing KNX-FM:
The Mellow Sound
When KEXP started their San Francisco satellite, they put together a great montage of old SF radio. So stuff is out there.
Just the "rights" issues.There are lots of "tribute" stations on the internet. You might investigate a few of those. Someone was doing KNX-FM:
The Mellow Sound
knxfm93.com
When KEXP started their San Francisco satellite, they put together a great montage of old SF radio. So stuff is out there.
m
Seems to me the rights are the same for an internet station or an LPFM. There's a contact email on the website. Ask them.
Doesn’t the station you’re working with have a lawyer that can advise you all on stuff like this, or do they only deal with FCC legal stuff?
I'm pretty sure as a non-profit we have a lawyer, but I'm not sure the scope of their work.
In lieu of stunting, I have one question: why spend all that time and effort stunting with programming that will not be your 'format'. In essence you are making a first impression that is not what you will be.
Take the easiest route to a format that can hit as many people in your very limited broadcast range at least on weekdays during the day with specialty shows at night and weekends. Provide as much local information as you can (ie: community announcements maybe one at a time every 30 minutes) so people in the area identify the station as a local station. Maybe identify the station with 'the sound of Long Beach'.
Take the easiest route to a format that can hit as many people in your very limited broadcast range at least on weekdays during the day with specialty shows at night and weekends. Provide as much local information as you can (ie: community announcements maybe one at a time every 30 minutes) so people in the area identify the station as a local station. Maybe identify the station with 'the sound of Long Beach'.
This is a good idea - start as you mean to continue. When I was at an LPFM we had live reads for the local zoo and other places in the community, community calendar at the bottom of the hour with local events, etc.
I've always thought of stunting as more of a commercial radio thing than an LPFM thing, anyway. And if your audience is like many LPFM audiences, some of them don't like anything that reminds them of "corporate/commercial radio".
Even though the station has been on the air for a few years, the last management team - all with zero radio experience - had a "this is a hobby" mentality. Our new management team is made up of several veteran broadcasters and we're going to apply a lot of commercial radio principles to what we do, much like KZAP in Sacramento and KOCI in Newport Beach. We didn't have an audience doing it the "normal" community radio way, so we are trying another approach. We're not married to "stunting". We're definitely in a "rebuilding" stage and don't plan on doing a hard launch with serious marketing until January.
Long Beach has so much going on that we plan to be very entrenched in the community. We are also going to focus on using our broadcast experience to train and educate the young non-broadcasters to improve the production quality of the station sound. The LAST thing we want to sound like is KPFK.
Good! Please don't let the non-broadcasters get into bad habits like holding their phone up to the microphone to play clips (like one person on a sports show I listen to does constantly and it always sounds like crap). That is one of my pet peeves, when it's not difficult to wire in an adapter to hook up their phone to a board channel and play it through there, or even Bluetooth transfer or email the clip to whatever computer system the station runs. Are you going to have producers for the shows or is everyone going to produce their own?
In the case of "The Beverly Hillbillies," yes, certain episodes are in the public domain but the theme song is copyright protected and must be substituted. So, that's another subtle trap regarding copyright that needs researching. Certain elements within a public domain show or movie, such as music, may still be protected.
When I was living in Long Beach (I was actually born and raised there) they had a very active and growing Cambodian community. Not sure what it's like now, but I often thought that an LPFM station or a time share with a station (or an HD sub-channel on KKJZ) would be a perfect media outlet for that community.
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