Category: Media Moguls

On the one hand, any time you file a huge flurry of law suits, you’re bound to get a few erroneous targets in it. Of course, maybe that’s why shotgun and ill-researched suit-filing like that — especially by a powerful industry group, backed by outrageously broad laws, against private citizens — is probably a bad idea.

Blather has its own humorous observation, which I would quote here, but I’d end up quoting the whole thing, and that’s hardly fair use …

Every now and then you run across something that makes no sense. Absolutely none. It’s something that in a sane world would never happen, because it makes no sense.

Okay, I’m not talking about axe murders and torture chambers and other acts of cruel insanity. Those are ubiquitous enough, today, in the newspapers, and in the history books that, well, they are part of the sane world. Just not part that we care to dwell no much.

No, I’m talking about changing music and dialog in a two-decade-old TV show because of licensing fees.

Is just plum crazy, or what?

If you’ve watched “WKRP In Cincinnati” on the Comedy Network in Canada, or on TNN in the United States, or on the commercial videotapes released in 1998, then you may have noticed that some of the music has been changed. You may have also noticed some dialogue changes, as in one episode that now has a nonsense line (“Hold my order, terrible dresser”) replacing a quote from Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer.” This page will try to explain what’s happened to the music on “WKRP,” and why. Originally, nearly all the music played on the show was real rock music by real artists, both in “WKRP”‘s CBS run and in the subsequent syndicated reruns. But in the last few years, a new package of “WKRP” episodes has been distributed, and much of the music has been replaced by generic instrumental music from a music library, or by sound-alike “fake” songs. Also, some of the dialogue has been redubbed by voice impersonators, usually when the actors were speaking over the music, but sometimes to remove references to songs that have been replaced.

Why, you may ask?

The simple answer is: Money. The reason WKRP was shot on videotape (unlike the other MTM sitcoms like “Bob Newhart” and “Mary Tyler Moore,” which were on film) was that it was the only way they could afford to use a lot of real rock songs on the show. At the time, ASCAP had a different licensing arrangement for taped shows than for filmed shows; licensing the music for WKRP cost something like half of what it would have cost had it been filmed.
Well, the music licenses expired by the time the show was being prepared for re-distribution in the mid-’90s, and by then ASCAP no longer had a “discount” for videotaped shows. Also by then, the cost of licensing songs had skyrocketed across the board. So it would have been prohibitively expensive for the distributor to re-license all the songs used on the show. They certainly could have done a better job of replacing the songs they couldn’t pay for, but it was inevitable that some of the songs would be gone due to rising costs, and that’s all there is to it.
Strangely enough, sometimes music has been replaced even when it was generic music to begin with! Generic music was occasionally used on the show, mainly for fake commercials, but since the new distributors probably no longer knew exactly where some of that generic music came from (and since even stuff from a music library has to be paid for), they frequently replaced it with generic music from their own music library. This of course is not as bad as replacing real music, but I’ll note it when it happens.

Did you know that TV shows pay fees to ASCAP when they have “real” music playing in the background? Did you know those fees are limited licenses that need renewal in the future?

In other words, whenever WKRP ran a real song, they paid a fee to ASCAP. Never mind that it was incidental music, lending verismilitude to a rock music radio station. Never mind that it was essentially a free advertisement to the music played (“Hey, this song is so popular and cool that it fits on a TV show about a rock music radio station — don’t you want to buy it?”).

No, ASCAP wanted money for it. And it wanted even more money for the reruns. Once the music was incorporated in the show, you’d think that, so long as it wasn’t extracted and used in other new productions, it would be part of the show. Nope. ASCAP continues to want its pound of flesh.

Indeed, it wanted so much money, that it was actually cheaper to gut the shows, replace music and dialog with generic crap, and use that for the syndication package.

And the winners here are … uh, folks who can sell bootleg copies of the original episodes with the original music.

Way to go, guys. And definitely what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they established copyright law in the Constitution. Definitely.

(via BoingBoing)

MIchael Moore, in his typically understated style, is launching an ongoing defense of his documentary, Bowling for Columbine.

Starting things off in a calm and reasoned fashion (“Michael Moore responds to the wacko attackos … How to Deal with the Lies and the Lying Liars When They Lie about “Bowling for Columbine”), he manages to paint himself as an innocent regular guy being attacked by Dark and Sinister — or else Disturbed and Irrational — Forces.

… organized groups going full blast trying to discredit me … knowingly making up lies … wound up in their anger and hatred … if I go after the Thief-in-Chief … then that is naturally going to send a few of his henchmen after me … you just don’t go after the NRA and its supporters and then not expect them to come back at you with both barrels … These are not nice people and they don’t play nice – that’s how they got to be so powerful … host of gun lobby groups … individual gun nuts … Orwellian-style venom … How do you handle people who say the Holocaust never happened or that monkeys fly? … right wing crazy …

But, of course, we know that Mike is just interested in the facts, not innuendo. “Those who object to the film’s political points are left with the choice of debating us on the issues in the film – or resorting to character assassination. They have chosen the latter. What a sad place to be.” Which is why he leaps there, head first. As if he weren’t there already.

Moore addresses three particular charges laid against him:

1. That the “open an account, get a gun” bit was rigged.
2. That the Lockheed Martin plant in Littleton, CO, isn’t an arms plant.
3. That the footage of Charlton Heston and the NRA meeting in Denver was actually from somewhere else.

Moore points to a number of articles that support what he’s saying, and I’m going to leave it to others to sort out the facts here. I will note that Moore shades things a bit (say it ain’t so!) though, by how he phrases the opposition’s charges:

“The Lockheed factory in Littleton, Colorado, has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction” is how Moore paraphrases his opponents. The criticism, in fact, is that the workers at the Lockheed plant were not part of some death cult, manufacturing then and there actual weaponry, in some sort of existential parallel to the killings by Dylan and Klebold — or, as Moore himself put it in the film:

So you don’t think our kids say to themselves, ‘Dad goes off to the factory every day, he builds missiles of mass destruction. What’s the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?

But Moore elides over that distinction, noting that Lockheed Martin is a major arms manufacturer in general (begging the question of why we don’t see school shootings around other Lockheed Martin plants), that the Littleton facility used to manufacturer ICBM boosters in the 50s through 80s (or at least “instruments” thereof), but that it currently manufactures Titan IV boosters that, well, aren’t really used as ICBMs per se, but, um, are used to launch (oooh) spy satellites as well as communications satellites.

That Lockheed lets the occasional weather or TV satellite hitch a ride on one of its rockets should not distract anyone from Lockheed’s main mission and moneymaker in Littleton: to make instruments that help kill people. That two of Littleton’s children decided to engineer their own mass killing is what these guys and the Internet crazies don’t want to discuss.

Riiiiggghttt. Besides, it plays better this way.

There’s also some discussion about Bowling’s depiction of Charlton Heston’s NRA speech in Denver a few weeks later.

“The film depicts NRA president Charlton Heston giving a speech near Columbine; he actually gave it a year later and 900 miles away. The speech he did give is edited to make conciliatory statements sound like rudeness.”

Moore then quips that obviously he made the whole thing up, that Heston was never there, which is, of course, ridiculous. But, again, that misses the point of the criticism, that the film footage is all carefully and tortuously cut to make it look like Heston held a big rally on in the auditorium at Columbine HS, rather than at the previously scheduled (and significantly cut back) annual NRA convention in Denver. He makes it sound like Heston (and, thus, the NRA) were out to rub everyone’s noses in their presence, out to be particularly insulting and provocative — which a read of the speech transcript shows is not the case.

While Moore does include the full transcript of Heston’s speech on his site, a side-by-side with how it was actually cut into the film is illustrative.

Moore proudly proclaims that “every fact in my movie is true” (which is an odd way of putting it). He also note that it must all be true, because if it wasn’t, the NRA would have sued the snot out of them.

The sheer power and threat of the NRA is reason enough to strike fear in any movie studio or theater chain. The NRA will go after you without mercy if they think there’s half a chance of destroying you. That’s why we don’t have better gun laws in this country – every member of Congress is scared to death of them.

Well, no, unless Moore is talking about NRA Assassination Squads (which I’m sure will be discussed in his next flick), NRA law suits are unlikely to daunt any congressional candidate. What they are scare of is the political organizing power of the NRA, which, regardless of how you feel about the organization, is, I believe, legal. Sort of how democracy works, in fact.

Moore, who only seems to care for political activism when it’s his, also misses the point that trying to “shut Moore down” would be an expensive and iffy proposition — libel laws are difficult at the best of times — and would only give him more publicity than he already has, without actually doing anything about his message or his support. If I were the NRA, I wouldn’t have recommended it.

But it’s easier, I guess, to say that the NRA not suing him is proof that he’s telling the truth. Just has his not suing his critics is proof that they — uh, well, never mind.

I’m actually glad, though, if this is all bringing up the “documentary” facts in Bowling for Columbine for clearer debate. They deserve more examination. Reading this (and other pieces) by Moore demonstrates to me that, rhetorically, the guy’s a sleeze bucket. We’ll see, if he can be pinned down, how he actually deals with facts.

(via BoingBoing)

A District Court judge has put the national “Do Not Call” list on hold. The list, which was supposed to kick in 1 October, has been signed up for by 50 million people. The full ruling is here.

[Insert muttering noise here]

Actually, it’s not as bad as it sounds. The judge rejected the challenge by the Direct Marketing Association and telemarkers to FTC regulations against “abandoned” calls, where telemarketers do not get on the line within two seconds of the call being picked up. (This comes about due to “predictive dialing,” programs that call you while the telemarketer is still on the line with another sucker, in anticipation of the their being free by the time you pick up. Yes, they evidently are that busy that they cannot wait to hang up before they dial again.)

Further, the judge’s ruling (which will certainly be appealed anyway) basically said that the FTC exceeded its Congressional mandate in setting up the no-call list.

“Admittedly, the elimination of telemarketing fraud and the prohibition against deceptive and abusive telemarketing acts or practices are significant public concerns,” the court wrote in its order. “However, an administrative agency’s power to regulate in the public interest must always be grounded in a valid grant of authority from Congress.”

It’s pretty certain to me that Congress, if the ruling stands, will make that mandate crystal clear. Nobody wants to be seen on the side of phone solicitors, campaign contributions notwithstanding. The FTC here was acting on law that Congress had made for the FCC; given the tangle of agencies and overlapping jurisdictions in such matters, it seems to me that the FTC was acting properly. The judge, clearly, disagreed.

One interesting factoid I ran across on the CNN newscrawl at lunch, by the bye, was that the DMA claims its members will lose $50 billion in sales if the regulations are enacted. The number is nonsense, of course, since folks who sign up for the DNC list are unlikely to be buying much by phone in the first place. As well, it’s not like the money is going to somehow evaporate from the economy — it will either be saved (providing capital) or spent (providing jobs). But it’s great scaremongering.

Okay, it’s full of enough hyperbole that, were it a blog entry on a serious site, folks would be regretfully Fisking it left and right. But as a cartoon, it’s pretty damned funny.

(via Cronaca)

A very fine analysis of the difference between the music and movie industries, and how their approaches have led to very different public perceptions of them and their products. Where the music biz has tried to tighten the screws, the movie biz has tried to lure customers. Guess which one’s in better shape.

The best-selling “Chicago” movie soundtrack is available on CD starting at $13.86.
The actual movie, with the soundtrack songs included, of course, plus additional goodies ranging from deleted musical numbers to the director’s interview and a “making-of” feature, can be had for precisely $2.12 more.
Therein lies the problem for a critically wounded music recording industry: The “Chicago” CD looks like a rip-off, and the DVD looks like a steal.

(via Blinne)

Of course, this one I’d have a hard time disagreeing with.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) continued its legal campaign today as it filed suit against Share Bear in federal court. …

Surprise, surprise. After fighting tooth-and-nail to keep customers from being able to take their cell phone numbers with them when they go to a different carrier, some cell phone companies are finding ways to substantial profit from the FCC mandate.

Sprint PCS, for example, has about 17.9 million customers who began paying an additional 63 cents per month in July, generating $11.3 million per month for “cost recovery.”
Over the course of a year, Sprint’s fee would bring in about $135 million at current subscriber levels — though that amount likely will be even higher since Sprint and other carriers are signing up hundreds of thousands of new customers per quarter.
Sprint refused to quantify its expense for enabling number portability beyond a rough estimate of “hundreds of millions of dollars” — an amount several times larger than more specific estimates disclosed by rivals Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless. Similarly, Nextel Communications says it has spent about twice the costs estimated by Verizon and Cingular.

Either Sprint has incredibly screwball service software — in which case it ought to be firing the lot of ’em — or else they’re simply turning lemons into gold-flecked lemonade served in Waterford crystal.

The FCC allowed fees in their mandate, and required that such fees be “just and reasonable.” But there was no requirement to track actual costs, nor is anyone monitoring what those fees are.

Sounds like a good reason to have number portability — and, thus, the ability to bail out of abusive service providers without losing your phone number …

(via BoingBoing)

Today is Fair & Balanced Friday.

Spread the word.

While I’m not usually a big fan of Al Franken, all Fox News’ lawsuit against him — suing him for the title of his new book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, is just plain stupid.

Fox News registered “Fair & Balanced” as a trademark in 1995, the suit says.

Which is ludicrous to have been able to do so to begin with (leaving aside the content on Fox News, it seems like far too generic a phrase to trademark — ethically, if not legally).

Franken’s “intent is clear – to exploit Fox News’ trademark, confuse the public as to the origins of the book and, accordingly, boost sales of the book,” the suit said.

Riiiight. Al wants people who watch Fox News to think that this is a Fox News book, and therefore buy it, because Fox News readers are not only big fans of Al Franken, but all of them would be interested in a book with that title.

Now — exploiting the trademark? That’s called parody, guys. And it was, last time I checked, fair use.

I’m not sure what Fox News (or their lawyers) thought something like this suit would accomplish — but what it will accomplish is plenty of free publicity for Franken’s latest tome.

(via InstaPundit)

The FTC has targeted the music industry again for price fixing.

In a unanimous decision, members of the U.S. FTC (Federal Trade Comission) chastised Vivendi Universal and Warner Communications for restricting competition in the sale of “The Three Tenors” – Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo, and Luciano Pavarotti – audio and video products. It seems that PolyGram (a company later bought by Vivendi) conspired with Warner “to curb discounting and advertising to boost sales of recordings that the two companies jointly had distributed based on the tenors’ concert in Paris during the 1998 soccer World Cup.”
Based on these practices, the FTC has arrived at a stunning ruling.
“The Commission’s order bars PolyGram from agreeing with competitors to fix the prices or restrict the advertising of products they produced independently.”

They need an FTC order for that?

The labels deny any wrongdoing, which should not come as a shock. The labels also denied earlier charges from the FTC of a much larger price-fixing scandal that cost consumers an estimated $480 million. The pigopolists agreed to settle that little incident by paying 41 suing states $67.4 million in cash and offering $75.7 million in CDs.

Of course, it makes you wonder, if prices are being fixed at an artificially high level — how much of all those much-lamented losses that the labels are suffering is due to file sharing, and how much is due to folks figuring out that the price is too high for this stuff?

Indeed, the article goes on to look at how big those losses have been — and determines that not only are they much lesser, in this poor economy, than many other industries, but they are largely attributable to drops in cassette and vinyl sales — and come on the heels of (and thus contrast with) spectacular growth in the 90s (sales doubled between 1993 and 2002).

The RIAA’s vendetta against file sharing keeps seeming less defensible as time goes on.

Here’s a nice analysis of the myths propagated by both sides in the music-sharing wars. They include everything from the mantra that “copying = theft” to the idea that “I’m just sharing with my friends” isn’t covered by copyright law. Interesting stuff.

A judge has accepted the settlement in the CD price-fixing case.

A judge has approved a settlement agreement in a music antitrust lawsuit that will result in more than 3.5 million consumers receiving nearly $13 each. Judge D. Brock Hornby issued a 51-page ruling Friday in the case that began in 1996 when attorneys general across the country began investigating whether distributors and retailers had conspired to inflate CD prices.
“This settlement will put cash in the hands of millions of consumers and music CDs in libraries and schools throughout the country, and will ensure that the challenged distributor/retailer practices will not resume,” Hornby wrote. The ruling, however, does not stipulate exactly how much consumers will receive or when the checks will be distributed. More than 3.5 million consumers filed claims, now estimated at $12.63 each.

(previous reported on here)

The only thing more ridiculous than Viacom’s decision not too long ago to rename The Nashville Network to The National Network is their new decision to rename the cable station Spike TV.

‘Today the first network for men has a name, and its Spike TV,’ Hecht said in making the announcement. ‘Spike TV captures the attributes and essence of what we want the first network for men to be. It’s unapologetically male; it’s active; it’s smart and contemporary with a personality that’s aggressive and irreverent. It’s a name we feel our audience will get and make a connection with. I like Spike! This is a first major step in our journey to super-serving men in a way no one has done before.’

No, wait. The only think more ridiculous than that is that Spike Lee is suing them.

In court papers filed Tuesday, Lee asked for an injunction against Viacom’s use of the name, saying he had never given his consent for it to be used.
“The media description of this change of name, as well as comments made to me and my wife, confirmed what was obvious — that Spike TV referred to Spike Lee,” Lee said in court papers.

Riiiiight. It’s all about you, Spike … er, Mr. Lee.

Lee, whose given name is Shelton Jackson Lee, included in court papers affidavits from people including former Sen. Bill Bradley, and actors Ossie Davis and Ed Norton. The affidavits said the signers had thought of Lee when they heard about Spike TV and some said they believed he had become affiliated with the network.

That’s because “some” of them are idiots.

Yeesh.

(via Plum Crazy)

The Comcast Media Center mentioned in this article is just a mile or two from our house. I drive by it fairly regularly.

Of course, I still can’t get cable modem coverage in my neighborhood. But I’m not bitter …

Charming. While the Bush Administration is willing to fudge or fail to push for confirmation or withdraw from international treaties they find objectionable, they apparently don’t have any problem with signing treaties that bind Congress’ hands regarding the DMCA.

But the FTA is also the first of its kind in another sense, as well. It is the first international trade agreement to demand that the signatories implement anti-circumvention provisions similar to those of the hotly controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”).
By pursuing anti-circumvention measures in a bilateral trade agreement, the Bush Administration had taken a new step in the progression by which the ownership and use of intellectual property have been increasingly politicized in recent years.
This step will have international, as well as domestic consequences: If Congress approves the FTA, it will not able to alter the DMCA without violating its obligations to Singapore.

And it’s fast-tracked, too. Swell.

And it gets even better.

Unless and until the FTA is enacted, courts will be able to narrow the DMCA’s scope to respect free speech and the public domain. After the FTA, however, that will be impossible: it is not the judiciary’s role to decide whether the United States should honor its treaties.
If Congress promises, in the FTA, to stick to a harsh version of the DMCA, the judiciary cannot renege on that promise. Again, this dynamic would be less troubling if we were dealing with straightforward legislation relating to ordinary products and goods – not legislation that implicates serious constitutional issues because it relates to intellectual property.
If the FTA is ratified, the judiciary will be out of options when it comes to ameliorating the effect of the fair-use-stifling DMCA. Congress will then have only one option: vote to override the treaty, a complex and wide-ranging trade agreement that regulates commerce between two nations.

(via BoingBoing)

Both to try to make a profit from their online content and to boost the nearly-non-existent value of subscribing to AOL, various magazines in the AOL Time-Warner stable are all going to go to subscription access only on-line. No more Time essays, no more People papparizi, no more Sunset recipes except for those who either pay or are hardcopy magazine subscribers.

“Information wants to be free” is a nice sentiment, but it don’t pay the stockholders.