Re: [ARSCLIST] Community Radio

[steven c <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Lewis" <davlew@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Tom Fine wrote:
>
> How do these stations afford to pay the yearly royalties to ASCAP and BMI?
> Very curious -- and sure wish there was one in this neck of the woods!
>
As I recall, having dee-jayed some three decades ago for a carrier-current
station at Illinois State University, most of these stations are publicly-
owned, not-for-profit operations, and are given special reduced rates by
the performing-rights bodies as a result.

However (and I think this shows up later in this thread) the waters muddy
considerably if they "simulcast" by web streaming. RIAA imposes fees for
"broadcasting" records on the Internet, based on the idea they can be
copied and used to create exact duplicates of commercial CD's.

Needless to say, back in my dj'ing days, computers were about the size
of Ohio, required complicated cooling systems and climate control, and
it would have been a bit tricky to set up an IBM 360 in your sitting
room! The Internet did exist (as ARPANET) but about all you could do
with it was send text messages...something like non-HTML e-mail today.
So, the only way you could listen to WILN was to live in one of the
dorms we fed our signal to (you could sort of listen if you had a
transistor radio and stood next to a lamp-post on campus)...

Steven C. Barr