Interact with AIR Online

AIR Member Spotlight: Wes Horner        Wes Horner is a seasoned professional with a stellar radio résumé. His background includes stints as an executive producer on projects for WGBH in Boston, NPR and Smithsonian Productions. Today, he works as a full-fledged independent, developing new documentary and music programs.         "In my work to develop a new national series for public radio, I have two projects in the pipeline of contrasting genres. One is a new, Europe-based music performance series, rich with location-recorded sound portraits of people and places. The second series is THE FARM, a wonderful collaboration between five public radio stations in diverse agricultural regions across the country. THE FARM is designed to answer questions such as, ‘Where does our food come from?’ or ‘Who are the people who plant it, water it, feed it, pull it out of the ground or herd it, and deliver it to market?’ Each collaborating production team will profile one farming family in their area, tracking their lives and work over a full, yearlong cycle of the seasons. If fundraising is soon successful, as we hope it will be, the resulting documentaries and features will be distributed for broadcast in 2008.        Both the musical event series and THE FARM are completely dependent on the work of fellow independents. For me, one of the pleasures of production is putting together teams of collaborators: producers, techs, writers and talent. They may be independents like myself, station-based or network staff. Some are people with whom I’ve worked before, and some are new collaborators I get to know through new projects, such as these nascent ones." Online Legal Seminar: Ernie Sanchez Posts Answers to Your Music Use Questions Responses to some of your legal questions are now online at http://interact.airmedia.org/. Here’s a preview: Question:         A member of group that I work with just posted one of our finished videos on YouTube. They see it as "good publicity." I looked at the license that was agreed to and am not too pleased by what YouTube demands. You can find the license here.        As I read this, YouTube can take our content and do pretty much anything it likes with it. Given the proliferation of content-sharing sites like YouTube, MySpace and even PRX.org, can we get your interpretation of exactly which rights a producer is giving up when he or she accepts an agreement like this? Sanchez Responds:        The specific legal conditions that apply to any given content-sharing site are set by the individual site operators. The quotation you have offered from the YouTube license is very explicit in requiring the content provider to give up all ownership rights, except the right to use the content on a nonexclusive basis, for your own purposes. Although the language in the license does not say so, you are in effect giving up the practical right to make money from your content because who will pay you for a nonexclusive license to the content when anyone can get the same thing from YouTube without having to pay for it? If you want to make money from your content, or control who makes use of it, you do not want to forfeit your rights by posting that content on a sharing site such as YouTube. AIR Gets E-mail "I went to the AIR website and had no idea how much material was on there. The pitch page is invaluable. Thanks for your help!" -Ryan Scammell  New AIR member You can send your comments and questions to airblast@airmedia.org CORRECTION: AIRblast 1.11 incorrectly stated that the Interlochen Residency was in its 3rd year running. It was actually in its 4th. Funding for AIR comes from our members and the generous support of The New York State Council on the Arts, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.