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When did the rules change?

J

JeffM

Star Participant
When I was a kid, I noticed local radio and TV commercials that used regular "store" records as background and even foreground music. At Christmas, many local ads were scored off of Bert Kaempfert and Mantovani's Xmas albums, and one car dealer used the chorus "hook" from Patti Page's "Cross Over The Bridge" as more or less his jingle. ("Cross over the bridge to savings...") And local shows well into the 70's borrowed their "themes" from everyone from Leroy Anderson to Barry White.

Sometime in the 80's (?) all this changed, and everything had to be scored from production-library music, which (at least the stuff most stations here bought) sounded cheap and probably was. Was it ASCAP/BMI or the RIAA that brought this about, or changes in copyright laws? (This was long before the "Sonny Bono" copyright law, so I can't even blame him for that!) Does anyone have an authoritative answer?
 
I believe that stations that used popular music for ad backgrounds were violating copyright laws. But in small markets, it was, and is, fairly common practice.

But with popular music, especially Bert Kaempfert, as themes for daytime TV shows, it did seem more common in the 60s. Sandy Becker, a local NYC kid's host used Kaempfert's "Arfikaan Beat". The original Match Game on NBC in the 60s used "Swingin' Safari". And a local kids' program I grew up with in Iowa, Dr. Max (WMT-TV Cedar Rapids) used "The Happy Whistler", in the 60s and early 70s by Don Robertson, with what I believe was The Nashville Brass' version of "Happy Whistler" in the latter years of the show, late 70s-early 80s.

I would assume stations/networks had to make arrangements to pay royalties to use the songs as themes. That was definitely true with Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" theme. It was a little heard song written by Paul Anka. More here: http://www.jazzwax.com/2014/01/tonight-show-theme-evolution.html
 
JeffM said:
When I was a kid, I noticed local radio and TV commercials that used regular "store" records as background and even foreground music. At Christmas, many local ads were scored off of Bert Kaempfert and Mantovani's Xmas albums, and one car dealer used the chorus "hook" from Patti Page's "Cross Over The Bridge" as more or less his jingle. ("Cross over the bridge to savings...") And local shows well into the 70's borrowed their "themes" from everyone from Leroy Anderson to Barry White.

Sometime in the 80's (?) all this changed, and everything had to be scored from production-library music, which (at least the stuff most stations here bought) sounded cheap and probably was. Was it ASCAP/BMI or the RIAA that brought this about, or changes in copyright laws? (This was long before the "Sonny Bono" copyright law, so I can't even blame him for that!) Does anyone have an authoritative answer?
Click to expand...

I suspect that if you were in a big market, you couldn't get away with it because of the likelyhood of being heard by someone who knew you weren't supposed to be doing it (at least without paying royalties).

Smaller markets, less chance of getting caught.

As time marched on and the world shrank (and BMI and ASCAP began to be all over everywhere looking to squeeze money out of any business with a radio on), that chance of getting caught probably went up to the point where stations were being warned by their lawyers not to do it anymore.
 
Thanks, joe and uni, for your replies. I'm beginning to suspect now that there may have been changes in the 80's to the ASCAP/BMI "blanket licenses" for radio that may have caused this. After all, even back in the 60's and 70's I was recalling, there had to be licenses in place for any radio or TV stations to use copyrighted music.

Since my first post, I've also recalled a local dialing-for-dollars game show called "I've Got Your Number" which used an instrumental of that song (no idea whose version) as its theme and which ran literally for decades. And of course there is still some of this (i.e. Limbaugh's use of The Pretenders' "My City Is Gone," unless it's been replaced by a sound-alike version; wonder what deal he made?)
 
JeffM said:
Thanks, joe and uni, for your replies. I'm beginning to suspect now that there may have been changes in the 80's to the ASCAP/BMI "blanket licenses" for radio that may have caused this. After all, even back in the 60's and 70's I was recalling, there had to be licenses in place for any radio or TV stations to use copyrighted music.

Since my first post, I've also recalled a local dialing-for-dollars game show called "I've Got Your Number" which used an instrumental of that song (no idea whose version) as its theme and which ran literally for decades. And of course there is still some of this (i.e. Limbaugh's use of The Pretenders' "My City Is Gone," unless it's been replaced by a sound-alike version; wonder what deal he made?)
Click to expand...

Is Limbaugh still using that after all these years?

Well, anyway, it could well be that he's been paying royalties all this time.
 
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