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<DIV>PRS</DIV>
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<DIV>SWINDON 105.5 is a non-commercial station; so we pay the basic agreed annual amount. </DIV>
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<DIV>We have received several communications recently from PRS asking for details of our general fundraising activities or local donations which pay for the general running/administration of the station. Nothing to do with programming or music playout. Each time of asking what relevance this makes to music played, no appropriate response has been received. </DIV>
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<DIV>I or one my team will be attending the seminar next week.<BR></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT color=#40007f><EM> <STRONG>Shirls</STRONG></EM></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT color=#0000bf><FONT color=#00007f><FONT color=#40007f face="comic sans ms">Shirley Ludford<BR></FONT><FONT face="comic sans ms">Mob: 07951 366289</FONT><BR></FONT></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT color=#0000bf><A href="http://www.swindon1055.com/" rel=nofollow target=_blank><FONT color=#00007f></FONT></A></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT color=#00007f>Station Manager. Trainer</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#00007f>SWINDON 105.5</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#00007f><A href="http://www.swindon1055.com/" rel=nofollow target=_blank><FONT color=#00007f>www.swindon1055.com</FONT></A></FONT></DIV>
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<B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">From:</SPAN></B> "andrew.wass@talk21.com" <andrew.wass@talk21.com><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">To:</SPAN></B> cma-l@commedia.org.uk<BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Sent:</SPAN></B> Friday, 25 March, 2011 14:40:39<BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Subject:</SPAN></B> Re: [cma-l] Free Community Radio Seminar<BR></FONT><BR>
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<DIV>Hi All,</DIV>
<DIV>At Desi Radio we are fortunate to have a large audience in West London, as a consequence we have local small businesses keen to advertise with us, our advertising income means that we pay a % of these revenues to both PRS and PPL each year. We feel aggrieved as not only should more of this money be invested in the station and its future, we also don't believe that any of the money finds its way to writers, arrangers, pulishers and performers that we play!</DIV>
<DIV>Desi plays a wide variety of Panjabi music, a lot of it traditional unattributed music, a lot of it made and published outside of India (PRS/PPL claim that they do collect on behalf of Indian authorities) we would like to see some evidence of where our contribution does go to!</DIV>
<DIV>We also have to prep quarterly returns, administer logging days and prepare through our accounts an annual return...... in exactlly the way a commercial station has to......... for thats the model it's based on. </DIV>
<DIV>In short we pay a great deal of money to whom and for what? in a way that takes energy and resources that could be used for social gain!!! Given the other issues that apply to stations around the country it feels like PRS and PPL need to reform the system for our sector!</DIV>
<DIV>See you at PRS on Tuesday.</DIV>
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<DIV>Best Wishes<BR>Andy Wass<BR>Administrator/Manager</DIV>
<P>The Panjabi Centre/Desi Radio </P>
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<B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">From:</SPAN></B> Phil Gibbons <phil@bcfm.org.uk><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">To:</SPAN></B> Two Lochs Radio <tlr@gairloch.co.uk>; ian@transplan.uk.com; Tom Buckham <t.buckham@futureradio.co.uk>; cma-l <cma-l@commedia.org.uk><BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Sent:</SPAN></B> Friday, 25 March, 2011 12:48:17<BR><B><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Subject:</SPAN></B> Re: [cma-l] Free Community Radio Seminar<BR></FONT><BR>
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<DIV>Thanks for this Alex,</DIV>
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<DIV>Certainly some interesting suggestions which I will represent next week at the seminar.</DIV>
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<DIV>Could you clarify some of your figures/claims for me please so I can back them up if needed/challenged? </DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Calibri><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"><EM>‘that most of the royalties paid by the smallest stations do not in fact go to the artists and record companies, but in fact are spent on PPL admin overheads!’</EM></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV>Where is this referenced? This is a PRS seminar and not PPL remember.</DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Calibri><FONT style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"><EM>‘the top earner gets over £0.5 million annually’</EM></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV>This is a disgrace if we can prove it. Where is this figure published please?</DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri><FONT size=3 face=Calibri><EM>‘Overall PPL (for which I have figures) spends 15% of its gross income on overheads, but I would guess that in the not-for-profit sector this proportion is nearer 80%. ‘</EM></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV>Again, let’s not forget this is a PRS seminar and not PPL. I would be interested in receiving these figures please Alex if you could send me the source.</DIV>
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<DIV>I will be there on Tuesday to represent the CMA in my capacity as Council Member and also as an interested stakeholder. I hope it will be a constructive and informative seminar and I will certainly bring everyone’s concerns to the table.</DIV>
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<DIV>Regards</DIV>
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<DIV>Phil</DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><BR><BR>Phil Gibbons - Station Manager<BR>phil@bcfm.org.uk<BR><BR>Bristol's Community radio station - Your voice - Your choice!<BR>93.2fm in Bristol<BR>Online at: www.bcfm.org.uk<BR><BR>0560 1126659 - Office Phone<BR><BR><BR>www.bcfm.org.uk<BR><BR>The Beacon Centre<BR>City Academy Bristol<BR>Russell Town Avenue<BR>Bristol<BR>BS5 9JH<BR><BR><BR>Bristol Community Fm LTD No. 05377534. Registered Charity No: 1123827<BR>Registered Address: The Beacon Centre, City Academy Bristol, Russell Town Avenue, Bristol, BS5 9JH. This email is confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. The contents of this message will not be in any way binding upon BCfm Ltd. If you are not the intended recipient, be advised that you have received this email in error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this email is strictly prohibited. The
information contained in this email may be subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.</DIV>
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<DIV><B>From:</B> <A title=tlr@gairloch.co.uk href="mailto:tlr@gairloch.co.uk" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:tlr@gairloch.co.uk">Two Lochs Radio</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Friday, March 25, 2011 10:57 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=ian@transplan.uk.com href="mailto:ian@transplan.uk.com" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:ian@transplan.uk.com">ian@transplan.uk.com</A> ; <A title=t.buckham@futureradio.co.uk href="mailto:t.buckham@futureradio.co.uk" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:t.buckham@futureradio.co.uk">Tom Buckham</A> ; <A title=phil@bcfm.org.uk href="mailto:phil@bcfm.org.uk" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:phil@bcfm.org.uk">phil@bcfm.org.uk</A> ; <A title=cma-l@commedia.org.uk href="mailto:cma-l@commedia.org.uk" rel=nofollow target=_blank ymailto="mailto:cma-l@commedia.org.uk">cma-l</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Re: [cma-l] Free Community Radio Seminar</DIV></DIV></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>Spot on Ian! </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>What is really galling is that PPL justify their substantial minimum raes (as opposed to proportional to use) by saying that it is necessary to cover administration costs with the smallest stations. In other words they are saying that most of the royalties paid by the smallest stations do not in fact go to the artists and record companies, but in fact are spent on PPL admin overheads! Although they are a 'not for profit' company like all of us, they do still maintain a large staff with well paid senior management (the top earner gets over £0.5 million annually), legal teams etc, who are paid for before remaining monies are distributed to rights holders. </FONT><FONT size=3 face=Calibri><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>Overall PPL (for which I have figures) spends 15% of its gross income on overheads, but I would guess that in the not-for-profit sector this proportion is nearer 80%. </FONT></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>Also last year PPL reported a £1m increase in revenue from radio broadcasters, despite by their figures, an 8% fall in commercial radio revenues. Also, for some reason they exclude the costs of their defined benefit pension scheme when calculating overheads.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV>PRS recorded around £15m increase in income over the same period of industry downturn, however it's overhead costs are lower, at around 10%, and it boasts of being "one of the world’s most efficient combined rights collecting operations". </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>To take some round figures to put this into perspective, a typical broadcasting licensee has a minimum charge of around £600 and there are around 200 very small licensees who are likely to have genuine proprtional use more like an average of, say, £100. Those figures would mean PPL is costing the sector £100k per year in admin overheads that simply go to pay for staff to collect the money, while only £20k is passed on to rights holders. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>Not a very efficient system, to say the least, and a substantial drain on the community sector, and that's just for one collecting body. Those are conservative estimate figures - the total efficiency waste for the whole non-profit sector across all three royalty collectors, including web stream royalties, could easily mount up to as much as the entire annual Community Radio Fund!</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>The royalty bodies are really able to maintain their present position only because they have the financial backing to stand the legal costs that would be involved in arguing the case before a Copyright Tribunal (which is the legal arbiter on what the royalty collectors can do), so the small stations (and even not-so-small) are not in a financial position to challenge them.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri></FONT><FONT size=3 face=Calibri></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>It is legally open to the user of any copyright works to declare that they are not being offered a realistic licence by the collecting body, and to deem their own reasonable rate of payment pending an application to the Copyright Tribunal (that's simplified, but is the basic provision in law). But of course there are high stakes in that for an individual station, and most of us would be financially broken by a week's legal costs if awarded against us. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>Three years ago, after a year of negotiation was getting nowhere fast, we told one copyright body we were going to go down that route, but before we got to formal legal procedings they came up with a compromise offer that suited us reasonably well at the time. I suspect that despite the potential threat of legal costs, they equally knew that the case could have brought them adverse publicity and set a precedent for other stations.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>PPL is well known for doing nothing to minimize the legal costs that are racked up. So much so that in one case in which their case was accepted, the Tribunal ordered them to pay the 'losing' parties' costs anyway because the Tribunal recognized that PPL had unreasonably racked up the legal costs by various tactics.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>If the whole sector stood together with joint financing of an action, or the CMA performed that function with the formal backing of the sector, a case could be taken before the Tribunal and I think it would stand a high chance of winning, but of course the stakes are still high.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>I would prefer to see CMA do for non-profit stations what the RadioCentre does for the (notionally)profit-making stations' MCPS payemnts. The RadioCentre pays MCPS a total figure for all its members, based on the total music usage across the board, and then passes on the costs to its members in strict proportion to their TSAs (it could possibly be done more fairly in proportion to income, but that would add a large admin overhead in cllating the figures). Doing this means that a very small community-based stations pay typically only £50-150 a year, while the big commercial stations pay a fair share.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>This would destroy the royalty collectors' defence of their high minimum costs as they would now have the overhead of dealing with only one body for the majority of the sector. This would cost more than administering one station, since there would need to be some auditing checks etc, but the costs would be a tiny fraction of the costs they claim in administering several hundred stations individually, and the individual stations should on average see a several-fold reduction in their fees.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>I think CMA should offer to take on this role, or if it is unwilling, they not-for-profit sector could set up its own aggregating body to handle this (and if successful, it could potentially develop to other things in future - such as group insurance schemes, or even advertising sales). CMA already has to do membership admin and could handle the PPL/PRS payments in the same as RadioCentre does with MCPS - simply adding the proportional charges to the annual renewal invoices, with automatically calculated amounts requiring little admin overhead. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>This should also benefit CMA and sector cohesion as stations would see a direct financial and admin benefit from CMA membership in addition to all the more nebulous lobbying and education work. In the case of RadiCentre, membership for smaller commercial stations is cost-negative because of the savings they make in MCPS fees by paying a proper proportional amount instead of an individual minimum fee-based amount.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>That's my pennyworth, anyway (or potentially £1m pound's worth if our sector got its act together!)</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT size=3 face=Calibri>Alex</FONT></DIV>
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