MUST CLOSE?

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 25 July 1935, Page 5

MUST CLOSE?

B CLASS RADIO STATIONS * Companies’ Ban on Unauthorised Use of Records BACK PAYMENT DEMANDED AMOUNT WOULD BE ENORMOUS (By Telegraph—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, Today. . Radio station 3ZM and all other-pri-vate or club supported B class broadcasting stations in the Dominion are faced with the prospect of closing down almost immediately, following receipt of notice from the gramophone industry forbidding the unauthorised use of records in programmes transmitted. It appears that action by the Government is the only possibility of keeping these stations on the air.

In addition to a ban on the use of records, companies have requested stations to furnish details of all records broadcast without authority during the past thx-ee years, and a demand has been made for ten shillings per record side for each time the record has been used in a programme without authority. Failing receipt of an undertaking to cease unauthorised broadcasting or the details asked for, the companies reserve the right to take legal action for an injunction, damages and other relief to which they may be entitled.

In the case of station 3ZM, which has been on the air for two years and fours months, the amount to be paid for records broadcast in the past would be approximately £250 a week, or. a total of about £36,000. As far as other stations are concerned the amount will vai’y according to the number of records broadcast.