In the earliest versions of these licenses, stations paid fees as a percentage of their revenues. In the early 1990’s, after decades of negotiation and litigation, the TVMLC was able to get ASCAP and BMI to provide stations with an industry-wide fixed fee license accompanied by a meaningful per program license. This per program license allows some stations to achieve significant reductions in fees paid to ASCAP and to BMI by direct or source licensing the music used in local and syndicated programming. Over the last 15 years, these two changes taken together have accounted for over a billion dollars of savings when compared to what stations would have paid under the previous revenue-based industry licenses.

More recently, the Committee has negotiated blanket licenses with BMI and ASCAP that will allow stations to provide a formula for crediting stations for individual direct or source licenses, rather than requiring them to direct or source license all of a particular society’s performances within a program in order to get any credit.  This new rate was designed to assist stations that do not qualify for reductions under the current per program license. This new license fee for BMI takes affect on July1 of 2014 while the ASCAP license rate takes affect in January of 2015.

In agreements negotiated with ASCAP and BMI in 2012, new license fees were agreed to through 2016 and 2017 respectively.  These negotiations resulted in blanket fees for ASCAP and BMI of $170.2 million in 2013 increasing to a total of $170.7 million in 2016, the last year of the ASCAP license agreements.  BMI’s license extends through 2017 at the same fee of $78.7 million from 2013-2017.  Thus, total ASCAP and BMI fees for 2013 are 13% less than the total fees for 2003, the reduction in blanket fees from 2004-2013 amounts to more than $100 million.  Reductions in the factors used in both the BMI and ASCAP per program formula will lead to additional savings for the industry.  These reductions are in addition to the opportunity provided by the new alternative blanket licenses described above.

The Committee negotiated industry-wide agreements with SESAC from 1997 through 2007. In 2008, SESAC decided to negotiate directly with stations rather than continuing to negotiate with the Committee. Since SESAC is not subject to a consent decree, as ASCAP and BMI are (see the History tab for background and the PRO/ASCAP and BMI tabs under Consent Decree for details), stations were forced to negotiate individual licenses with SESAC in order to protect themselves from copyright infringement, many times at fees that are in excess of what the Committee believes would be reasonable under an industry-wide license.

In December of 2009, three television broadcast groups, Meredith Broadcasting, Scripps- Howard Broadcasting and Hoak Media (since purchased by Gray television) filed a class action antitrust suit funded by the TVMLC. In February of 2015 the court overseeing the lawsuit approved a settlement that provides local stations with much of the relief found in the ASCAP and BMI consent decrees. The settlement, which covers the period 2016- 2035, provides stations with protection against copyright infringement lawsuits while license fees and terms are being negotiated, calls for interim fees while negotiations are ongoing, and requires that SESAC offer a meaningful per program license beginning in 2016. Although the settlement does not include the federal court determinations of reasonable fees, it does establish the right to binding arbitration if TVMLC and SESAC cannot agree on license fees and terms. Fees established in arbitration will be binding for four-year periods.

As part of the settlement, SESAC paid $58.5 million into a settlement fund and approximately $42.5 million of this was distributed to television stations by TVMLC.  The purpose of the settlement was to compensate television stations for the alleged artificially inflated license fees they paid to SESAC since 2008 as a result of the alleged anti-competitive conduct.

TVMLC began measuring music performances in local television in 2005 and has continued these surveys periodically through 2011.  These surveys are based on a statistical sampling of local station programs to determine the size and changes in audience weighted minutes of music and are critical for our negotiations and any required litigation with the PROs. These studies use a randomly selected station sample as the basis for calculating the value of performances in local television.  It is extremely important that the stations randomly selected provide the information requested as these studies have provided us with the information required to reduce blanket fees in recent years.

TVMLC is responsible for allocating the industry-wide ASCAP, BMI and SESAC blanket license fees negotiated by TVMLC.  The allocation methodology, which is subject to a Federal Court’s review for ASCAP and BMI, is based on a combination of television market size and individual audience ratings within each market.  These monthly charges are calculated on a calendar year basis. 

In addition to the annual monthly allocation of these fees, the TVMLC calculates an ASCAP adjustment applicable to December of each year.  That adjustment rewards stations that fully support the Committee through contributions and penalizes those stations that do not contribute.  This court approved adjustment is designed to equitably distribute the cost of operating the Committee among all of the stations that qualify for the industry wide licenses negotiated by the TVMLC.  Charging additional fees to those stations that contribute less than the industry average funds the ASCAP credits to those stations that exceed industry contribution averages.