Jack Valenti Defends Performance Rights to Congress

The battle for your performance rights has been raging since the inception of ASCAP and BMI.

In 1986, the next wave of assaults arrived by the broadcast industry in a House and Senate Bill, H4 3521 and S1980, to once again try to strip composers of their royalties. Wanting a mechanism they themselves would abhor, the broadcasters attempted a “nickel on a string in the ASCAP jukebox” to get all their music next to nothing while reselling THEIR programs over and over again in the syndicated marketplace garnering millions of dollars while paying a ONE TIME pittance for the music.

In this clip, Jack Valenti exposes the ruse by informing Congress that the broadcasters’ overbearing “hardship” of the ASCAP blanket license is a penny for every dollar of profit. At the end of this clip are “on camera” pleas to Congress from Quincy Jones, Lionel Richie, Dolly Parton and the legendary Henry Mancini.