Not Going Silent on the Day of Silence

Iowa Public Radio’s four music streams will remain on the air, so to speak, on the Internet Day of Silence. We will be working harder to raise listeners’ awareness of the streaming royalties issue, and stress to them how it endangers our plans to serve them better.

Why not turn off? Well, originally we planned to. But the internal discussion began to turn the other way… and the final nail in the coffin was a email that Dennis Haarsager sent, in which he expressed his views:

Not to try to influence anyone else, but since you asked, we’re not going to participate in the “day of silence.” That seems to me to be punishing the listeners for something that neither they nor we did wrong. “I’m going to hurt you until you help me” worked with my little brother when I was 12, but I don’t think it’s effective with our donors. Weekly online listing is now about 30 million people, about the same as FM listening was, as I recall, in the mid-1970s (and, coincidentally, the same as public radio’s). Would we have shut down our FM station for a day 30 years ago if we had a beef with copyright royalties? I don’t think so.

Mark Fuerst of IMA also sent a note this morning, including a tally of which IMA stations are participating and which aren’t. I’m copying the main body of his email below to showcase his views.

If I were running a stream, I would support it. I would also actively support the work of Kurt Hanson and the coalitions that have been organized to roll back the copyright payment ruling. You can find links to all this at to http://www.kurthanson.com. IMHO, the copyright payments, as scheduled, will be crippling for the streaming radio industry, which is still just emerging as an important audio option. The cost to public radio and TV alone would be well over $1 million >a year< and grow to be much larger in the years ahead with most of that money coming from the stations that are making the most progress developing sustainable online business models.

My recent survey of 12 stations showed that NO ONE is even close to breaking even on their web services, with the possible exception of stations that are developing a national music presence online–KCRW, KEXP, WXPN, Folk Alley, KPLU, and a few others. Their business model rests principally membership dollars coming from listeners who live outside their coverage area and not on any form of corporate support or advertising. As a group, these are strong stations that can pay the royalties–that is, they won’t be pushed out of business as some of the indie music sites will. But is size of the copyright payment appropriate for their use of the music? No. It is far too high. Does the legislation that led to the copyright ruling properly balance competing interests and encourage the development of a robust streaming industry? No, in fact, it does just the opposite. Taking $50,000 to $200,000 out of their annual operating budgets of our most successful streaming operators will prevent them from investing in the full development of online radio.

What about the problem of “punishing the listener”? Given all of the audio options available to a modern listener, can we really say that turning off streams for >one day< is >punishmentthat< is "punishing the listener." And I hate it. On the other hand, it works and until we find a better method, all of you will continue to use that technique to mobilize citizen support for public media.

To me, the Day of Silence has a similar function. It says to all those who appreciate the infinite variety of programming made possible by Internet streaming: Wake up! Something you enjoy is in danger, and there are reasonable solutions that will avoid that danger. Call your representatives and get them working on those solutions.

If many stations and other online music sites honor the Day of Silence, that message will hit home, powerfully and effectively.

One of the arguments against turning off the streams at Iowa Public Radio was “punishing the listener.” I get that argument and I agree with it, but I also agree with Mark – our pledge drives are 20 days of punishment a year, and let’s not delude ourselves, as an industry, with chatter about “how wonderfully we do it and how many of our listeners just can’t bear to stop listening to it.”

Here’s why we won’t turn off the streams: as Dennis notes, we wouldn’t turn off our FM transmitters in protest of a federal funding cut, and we’ve spent years arriving at the understanding that our Internet streams are as important as any transmitter we have. Second, if the royalty decision stands, we won’t be turning off our streams. We will certainly cap the amount of listening, and the royalties will severely hamper our plans for expansion of service – a large chunk of which is connected to increased online service.

In the end, we felt that if we weren’t facing the possibility of having to turn off the streams permanently, we shouldn’t turn them off temporarily.

Do I feel good about this decision? No. I wouldn’t, no matter which side we chose. But I feel that, given our particular circumstances, we made the right choice.