Internet Radio Station Discovers Treasure

While awaiting the outcome in Congress of the Internet Radio Equality Act, many Internet Radio programmers are getting creative. Counter Clock Radio, a station utilizing the Live365 network, plans to show just what will go missing without the freedom and reasonable fees now enjoyed by Internet Radio broadcasters. One usually imagines recitations of "Mother Goose" when one hears the term - public domain. However, the Internet has made available an ocean of material that resides in the public domain. It can't all be boring. There's treasure down there somewhere.

One treasure, at least in Counter Clock Radio's opinion, is the full broadcast day of radio station WJSV on September 21, 1939. A radio station serving the Washington DC area in the 1930s and 1940s, WJSV recorded the entire broadcast day of September 21, 1939 to transcription records and donated them to the Library of Congress. The key feature of the broadcast is President Roosevelt's Address to Congress. Britain and France had declared war on Nazi Germany, and Roosevelt is asking for the repeal of the Neutrality Act.

The initial hours of the broadcast are hosted by Arthur Godfrey, who fills the time with small talk, birthday announcements, commercials, delivered with what sounds like a bad cold. Then in what would have been the late morning, a number of soap operas begin. These end at 1:30pm with the beginning of the news broadcasts that fill up the afternoon, before and after the address to Congress. Then there is a Washington Senators baseball game, followed by news, plays and music programs for the remainder of the evening. Counter Clock Radio will broadcast the complete day on May 15Th, May 16Th and May 17Th. The broadcast will refresh each day at 6:00am PDT. The The complete day's broadcast will last approximately twenty-one hours each day.

The computer audio files as they were originally downloaded from a public domain source suffered from low audio quality. The entire twenty-one hours has been remastered, and will be made available to websites that offer public domain material.

Remastering and broadcasting historical content like this is what the semi-professional and hobbyist Internet Radio programmer does best, and would be made more difficult, burdensome and expensive under the new CRB (Copyright Royalty Board) rules. While public domain content is not charged for royalties, the new CRB rules demand a $500 per year fee per station. This fee, as well as the higher rates, will ghettoize such content and the creativity that goes into it. The vast majority of programmers utilize the services of such companies as Live365 to pay a flat fee for royalties for a set number of listeners. This frees the programmer to mix content regardless of royalty consideration. Such freedom, and the variety it fosters, is in the best traditions of the Internet.

May 15, 2007 was to be the "day the music died". CRB royalty increases would have silenced thousands of Internet Radio Stations. Two weeks ago, The Copyright Royalty Board pushed the collection date forward two months until July 15Th. Execution has been stayed. Congress now considers the Internet Radio Equality Act, and the fate of professional, semi-professional and hobbyist Internet Radio Stations and DJs hang on this legislation. What's to become of the Internet's first baby - Internet Radio?