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Hi everyone,
With the wildly differing payback rates for different cable channels, i was wondering if someone could offer advice on the best cable TV channels to try and get placements with, and conversely the worst ones, the ones that do not generate any royalties at all.
Thanks 🙂
In my experience stay away from anything Scripps.
http://www.scrippsnetworksinteractive.com/
HGTV, DIY, Food Network, etc… All direct license AFIK. Also I don’t think ESPN pays any back end. Someone will correct me if things have changed at those networks.
I heard some of my stuff on ESPN..it never showed up on a cue sheet and it’s been a long long time so I’m assuming they don’t pay any back end too..
Scripps does direct licenses. ESPN does also.
This means that the network pays an upfront fee. The network does not pay backend royalties because they do not pay any money to ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc. The only money paid is money from an upfront licensing fee.
Who collects the upfront fee? It depends on who these networks get the music from. If they get the music from a library, the library gets the upfront fee. If the network gets the music from the composer, the composer gets the upfront fee.
My thing is that if a library does do a deal with networks that only do direct licenses, why do they not split the fee 50/50 with the composer?
Well, sometimes the networks do a blanket licensing deal with the music library. This means that the network pays one fee to the library for access to all of the songs that the library has. The network can pick whatever songs they want and use them without paying any additional money.
Networks that only do direct licenses should NOT be allowed to do blanket license deals with music libraries. These deals provide all of the upfront money to the library while the composer makes no backend royalty money. That is sad.