ASCAP Surrenders

Last week, after months of table-thumping on the part of his colleagues, in the dining room of Washington's Raleigh Hotel ASCAP's Lawyer Milton Diamond sat down to a quiet dinner. His companions were Victor Waters and Holmes Baldridge, assistants to Thurman Arnold. By the time coffee was served they had agreed that ASCAP should consent to a decree designed to obviate a Government anti-trust suit against the society.

Elated was the Department of Justice. The decree gives the Government just about everything it demanded. Chief points: ASCAP shares licensing privileges with publishers and writers, hence no longer exercises exclusive bargaining rights over its songs. No longer will ASCAP's board of directors be permitted to perpetuate themselves in office, and song writers will be eligible to join the society on the strength of one published song instead of five. As a sop to ASCAP, the decree includes a clause forbidding all ASCAPers from having any truck with BMI, the broadcasters' own music pool. Also ASCAP had to shell out a $5,000 fine, 19 director-members $1,000 apiece. But on one major point, ASCAP will have its way: in the future the networks will have to pay for the ASCAP music they originate; the charges will no longer be passed on by ASCAP to interconnected stations.

Having wangled ASCAP into a consent decree, the Department of Justice expected the society to get together with the broadcasters pronto. But BMI showed no eagerness to adjust its music difficulties. BMI was taking time out to study ASCAP's decree in detail. If it proved to be more favorable than the one BMI signed a few weeks ago, BMI was prepared to demand an equal break.

Tin Pan Alley wiseacres figured that on the pay-as-you-play basis--which the networks wanted instead of the 7 1/2 percentage of network gross which ASCAP had asked under its proposed new contract--ASCAP-ers would receive about half of the $4,500,000 they got from radio in 1939. Stephen Foster's Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair has been a stand-by of the networks in fighting ASCAP with songs in the public domain. Lovers of American music recalled that this number had been written 87 years ago by a composer who was not only free to bargain with publishers and players of his music, but died without the price of a meal in his pocket.

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