Sixty Day Reprieve
Internet radio has been given a sixty day reprieve. It remains to be seen whether or not it will save the small web casters.
“ People power’, “ The pen is mightier than the sword ”, “ 11th hour stay of execution” Drag out all your hackneyed clichés and drape them around the doors of Congress. Personally I think that Congress was surprised by the unilateral opposition to its proposed royalty fees to be met by internet radio. The forced closure by exhorbitant fees from Sound Exchange and RIAA by most of the internet radio stations effect not only the people of the United States but world wide listeners from Europe, Asia, Australia and South America.
Many English people will remember what happened there in the early sixties. I, along with many thousand others wanted to hear the latest rock and roll, pop and R& B songs from America, that the BBC refused to play. So what did we do? Promptly at six o’clock every evening we tuned into Radio Luxembourg when it broadcast its programs in English. From that station many of England’s top DJ’s got their start, David Jacobs. Jimmy Young, Tony Blackburn and the late Kenny Everett. Even well known Melbourne DJ Ernie Sigley did a two year stint there. Then, on Easter Sunday 1964 Radio Caroline went to air. Classed as a pirate radio station, Caroline broadcast from a small ferry boat, anchored outside of territorial waters. Again Tony Blackburn became a household name with Caroline. Even the American DJ Jack Spector taped a show in the US, specifically for Radio Caroline. Eventually the BBC was forced to change its format and launched Radio 1.
Maybe somebody in Congress who remembers all this suddenly had a vision of am armada of small boats anchored of the west coast of America and broadcasting to the world through the internet. Where there is a will, there is a way. The BBC learned its lesson in the sixties, let us hope that Congress learns it before web radio is killed off for good.