Radio: ASCAPO?

Last week 675 bibulous but well-behaved delegates of the National Association of Broadcasters gathered in San Francisco. Less timorous than usual, the N.A.B.-ers spoke freely and frankly, singled out ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) as the industry’s No. 1 problem. To ASCAP, which controls the performing rights to most copyright music, U. S. broadcasters paid $4,300,000 in royalties last year. Denouncing ASCAP as a monopoly, the conventioneers whooped it up for Broadcast Music Inc., the rival outfit N.A.B. recently organized. Loudly cheered was Delegate Sam Rosenbaum of Philadelphia’s WFIL when he cracked: “We’ve got composers, authors and publishers. Why not add owners and make it ASCAPO, sort of like Gestapo?”

So sore were delegates at ASCAP, whose royalty rates will be jacked up in January, that they would not talk to the outfit’s representatives. Also in the convention doghouse were the reporters of Variety, which plugged ASCAP in a special issue a few weeks ago. Firm were N.A.B. bigwigs in their conviction that ASCAP would either come to lower terms with them by New Year’s or be read forever off the air.

Symptom of N.A.B.’s growing confidence in itself was a play put on for the delegates at convention’s end. It did a good job of spoofing radio in general and FCC in particular. Sample chorus by the show’s FCCommissioners, made up to look like seven Disney dwarfs:

Just vote right every year,

And you need have no fear.

We are the boys who make no noise

But we get ten thousand dollars clear

To whistle while you work. . . .