silent night

i asked about this a few years ago, but it seems to be getting worse.

are talk radio stations prohibited from playing music?

up until 2007 or so, our 3 talk stations all switched to christmas music for the last few days of the season. 20th-26th maybe. and one of them kept going with jazz until jan 2d.

from 2008 (ish), they all trimmed it down to a day, maybe 6pm on the 24th to 6pm on christmas night. i remember thinking "wow, the day's not even over yet and they're switching back to talk!"

i heard buzz at that time there was some sort of licensing issue. i took it to mean that a station now had to choose between talk and music a priori and could not switch formats at will. i dunno if christmas was a special exemption or if they were ponying up cash for some "1-day music" permit, but clearly they didn't want to stretch it out any more.

well, this year there isn't even THAT! it's now 23:45 christmas eve and NONE of those stations has music going!! reruns, garden shows, infomercials, the works. but no music!

plenty of carols on the music stations but not a one on talk radio. this cannot be coincidence.

anyone know for sure?

 

If I am not mistaken, they have to pay a royalty on every song that is played. Plus, they may get higher ratings for talk shows. I am sure they also pay to play syndicated talk radio, so they would probably be paying both if they played just music.

"Tracking the playlists

The difficult thing to imagine in all of this is how these organizations track all of that music to get an accurate record of how much royalty money needs to be paid to which songwriters and publishers. Each of the PROs use a slightly different system for calculations; we'll use the ASCAP system as an example. ASCAP uses two methods for determining performances: it either counts them or does a sample survey."

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/music-royalties7.htm

Bit more complicated than I thought! :-D Christmas music makes my left eye twitch, and makes me want to drink. Except for the 24'th (only after work) and the 25'th. :-D

I work retail, we make around 60% of our yearly sales in one month. December sucks for me.

 

yeah, but it's more than that. all those royalty/licensing issues are always a factor, but something drastically changed a few years back.

i suspect that talk stations went from being able to pay to play *one* song -- or pay for the specific *days* they switched over to music, at least -- to having to pay for an actual "full-time" music license. perhaps real music stations felt it was unfair competition having talk stations cut in for a week or two willy-nilly.

i *think* i also recall limbaugh at the time screaming about how he had to pay for a "whole year's worth" if he now wanted to play "one lousy song". not sure, but it seems vaguely familiar.

i am unsure what to google on to find this. or even my prior thread on the subject. if i'm not mistaken, i did finally find SOME reference (trade journal) abt the "imminent change" of the time, but i can't seem to fish it up. or fish up anything about how it's changed again this year, as something obviously has.

 

I will leave Limbaugh at the HBT door we used to have.

 

HBT?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HBT

nothing jumping out there. u using it for LGBT?

 

We used to have a Hot Button Topic area of MajorGeeks. The mods/owners decided it did not fit with the site.

I don't agree, but also don't have a website.

 

OIC. out of the whole list, the LGBT one was the only thing i cud even shoehorn in somehow! i figured u must be making a crack about his...er..."manliness".

seemed out of left field, but the other options fit even less.

merry happy, btw!

 

Comments self edited. Merry Christmas! :-D

 

Cat for those wanting all season Music, there is Pandora

And old fashioned CD's!

 

What is this CD you speak of? Is that a website? :-D

Just joking, I actually have some old vinyl LP's around somewhere.

 

"Certificate of Deposit"

It's a type of bank account...where you save up money for the eventual piracy charges!

 

Heck the banks around here almost charge you to keep your money! :cry