Dr. Demento Streams To Go Pay or Silent (Dec 27, 2005)

At least I can subscribe to Sirius to get Stern on a dependable satellite feed in 2006 and get a good quality audio stream. It's not so easy to get Dr. Demento on the Internet starting in 2006 unless you care to shell out some bucks for the privilege.

In May of 2005, XM satellite radio dropped the Best of Dr. Demento radio show, which usually consisted of a rerun from years' past as well as a few select shows from the current year. With Sirius apparently not expressing any interest in carrying the show, the production compnay of the Demento show, Talonian Productions, has come up with a few ways for fans to stay demented...if they care to pay for the privilege.

Last month, drdemento.com, the show's official website, began offering some of their old shows as well as current shows in crappy low-fidelity quality for $2 a show. This week, Talonian has decided to make their streaming radio affilliates pay for the privilege of carrying his radio show on the Internet.

According to Jason from Oldies 1520 in Delta Valley, Talonian Productions has told Jason and ten other radio stations that stream Dr. Demento that they need to stop streaming the Demento show (but they can stream something else) from their website when the show airs over their terrestrial broadcasting sticks, or pay $10,000 a year in licensing fees to continue carrying his radio show on the Internet. Talonian also gave the streaming radio stations an option to drop the show totally, or continue broadcasting it locally only, meaning, that Q1520 would have to stop the Internet stream from 4am-6am Pacific time (6am-8am Central time for Q1520 listeners) when his show comes on.

All of the streaming radio stations have been presented with the same options.

Some radio stations can carry Dr. Demento on the Internet after paying $10,000 a year, but how would the radio station recoup the licensing fee to pay for the costs of carrying his show on the Internet on top of whatever fees the station is paying to carry his show locally?

No station in San Diego or Los Angeles carries the Dr. Demento show, and with Talonian strong-arming radio stations into making their affilliates pay to stream, it's unlikely that we'll get to hear his radio show on the local airwaves again. Many smaller radio stations carry his show, most of which cannot afford to stream their radio signal on the Internet, so they won't have to pay $10,000 to stream the Demento show anyway. The ones that do stream, however, have to face an option of either turning off the stream when Demento comes on or substitute alternate programming when Demento comes on over the local airwaves in their market. KFMB 760 in San Diego carries many syndicated shows such as The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly on their local terrestrial stick, but replaces the Internet feed with alternate programming when shows such as these come on.

The syndicators of some of these popular shows that the reason that they don't want their shows streaming on the Internet is to protect their radio affilliates from competeting against each other for those who listen to them on the Internet. Some radio stations could theoritically make their streams available only locally through IP address detection methods matching the listener's IP addresses with the cities in which they reside to determine whether they can listen to their online feed or not.

Talonian believes that they can do the same with Dr. Demento, forcing streaming radio stations to pay a high price to stream his show or drop it from the stream when it comes on.

Radio stations can, however, either absorb the high cost of carrying his show on the Internet, or make the listeners pay a subscription fee to listen to the stream when his show comes on. Either way, the listener is the one that could be left in the dark, forcing them to settle for American Idol runners up on KIIS and Channel for new music instead of tuning in a crowded Internet feed to get their weekly dose of dementia. Some radio stations could put on substitute programming on their free Internet feed instead of Demento, but putting dead air on the Internet for two hours is basically verboten in the radio industry, as listeners would think that the station is off the air, and will surf to another radio station anywhere and possibly not come back to the station with dead air on the Internet.

Radio stations that have been broadcasting on the Internet since the late 90s have been taking a beating as organizations such as ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC have demanded that royalties be paid per song streamed from their radio stations or purchase a yearly blanket license to cover the song streaming fees. Then, AFTRA, the union featuring mostly bad actors from television and movies acting in commercials, told the streaming radio stations that the DMCA act of 1998 allowed AFTRA to collect exhorborant amounts of royalties for commercials that are streamed with AFTRA actors. Clear Channel responded to this disturbing news in 2001 by telling all of their radio stations to turn off the Internet streams, and most of the 20 radio stations that once carried Dr. Demento's radio show on the Internet were reduced to about 3-4 that bothered to continue streaming on the Internet.

Many radio stations came up with ways to turn off the commercials from the Internet when they came on such as substituting music or simply going dark for 2-3 minutes at a time. But since 2001, more radio stations began streaming once again, but some were restricted from carrying certain syndicated programming. Some radio companies had a novel way of getting around the problem with commercials on the Internet: reproduce the commercials without any AFTRA actors.

Still, shows such as Dr. Demento were available to be carried on the Internet without any additional payment, but next year, even that won't be available on the Internet for free. I'm guessing that this show will simply disappear from the Internet in 2006 since $10,000 a year is a high amount of money for any radio station to pay for to carry his show on the Internet. With competetion from iPods, satellite, and other sources competeting with radio, radio needs to control their expenses and invest in whatever programming will help them in the long run, and IMHO, Dr. Demento won't be part of the future of many radio stations in 2006 if the affilliates can't stream his show for free anymore.

Jason of Q1520 in Delta Valley says that the station would have to generate $192.31 each week the show airs on the Internet from their website q1520radio.com. "We have been trying to generate income from the stream from a sponsor that offers the possibility of free items in exchange for signups," says Jason, the PD of Q1520. "But this month, only one Dr. Demento fan, Jim Waters, >has assisted with that. Others have suggested that we put up a "donate via Paypal" button of some kind and they would consider donating. While it's something to consider, I just don't see that kind of generousity being possible. (19 people would have to donate $10 each week; or 40 people donating $5, etc).

"I told the syndicator we would likely continue airing the show, but stop streaming, and we will have to look into the technical details of doing that. We are currently considering all options. It would be interesting for me to hear any suggestions you might have.

"Online streaming is very important to us at WQMA OldiesRadio 1520. We've designed a station that has some incredible weekend programming featuring the best radio personalities on the planet all weekend with cutting edge streaming options using a choice of several platforms. I will continue monitoring the situation closely to see what other stations choose to do now, and what options are available to us."

Online streaming of oldies stations is imporant to the oldies fans in San Diego who are without a local radio station for oldies since August of 2005. I'm not too surprised that no local oldies fans are bothering to donate to a radio station for an online feed, given the fact that there are many other oldies stations on the Internet streaming for free by doing a Google search for them.

How many small radio stations can afford to pay a monthly $500 streaming fee for their streaming provider and have their advertisers absorb the costs of streaming. I'm not sure of the number, but somehow, small radio stations such as KPRI 102.1 have been streaming for years and somehow making enough money to keep the stream on. Now, add an expense of some $850 a month to carry one weekly two-hour radio show on the Internet and you can see that it translates to about $100 an hour alone for Dr. Demento, which is an hourly rate far more than what most radio stations are willing to pay for talent outside of a daily four-hour morning radio show.

How many people listen to weekend morning and evening radio? Not enough for anyone to be paid $100 an hour for a radio shift during the hours most people are not listening to the radio.

Talonian demanding such as hefty licenseing fee for Dr. Demento is a slap in the face to many funny song musicians who won't have their new songs exposed on Dr. Demento's syndicated radio show on the Internet for free radio listeners anymore. I was afraid that the time would come that we would no longer be able to listen to Dr. Demento's radio show on the Internet for us out of market listeners, but Talonian is shooting itself in the foot with this idiotic demand. I'll have to depend on other sources to learn about new comedy music or else I'll start buying Kelly Clarkson CDs.

We know Dr. Demento's radio show is still popular on the Internet, but given the option of paying for a crappy low-fidelity feed that suffers from network congestion, sound clipping, compressed sound, or listening to a live 24 hour feed of someone else's comedy music collection, I'll choose the latter. I'll have to depend on the comedy artists e-mail lists and rmd posts to learn about the new music coming out in 2006.

With so few major radio markets carrying Dr. Demento's radio show, I wouldn't think that Talonian had that much leverage to tell a radio station that they can't stream a show they paid to carry on their terrestrial broadcast stick without paying a streaming license for the show. If I was an affilliate, I would have dropped the show immediately and replaced it with something like Swami from FM 94/9 or Music Without Boundaries with Kenny Weissberg.

Some radio stations can make a feed the listeners have to subscribe to in order to listen to syndicated radio shows, but a monthly carriage fee of some $850 is 170-$5 a month subscribers that need to be realized in order for the station to break even with Demento.

I don't think I can afford $5 a month to pay for a low-quality radio station feed or to shell out $10 for poor-fidelity Dr. Demento shows. I'd rather pay that much to subscribe to a digital TV package.

Or save up my funds until someone releases the entire 110 episode library of Eight is Enough on DVD. I'm not kidding about that.