Re: WJIB's Bells

["'A. Joseph Ross'" <lawyer@world.std.com>]

On Mon, 9 Jun 1997, Bill Piacentini wrote:

> What the jibguy could do is put a commercial together that includes the
> bells and see if WRKO or WEEI would air it.  Now wait! Don't laugh! The
> commercial would "cowtow" to the WRKO/WEEI format such as "You've dialed
> (680/850) for the best(sic.) (talk/sports talk) and information in Boston;
> and when you want to relax...[THE BELLS]...you turn to 740 ...[THE
> BELLS]...WJIB...[THE GULLS](fade to silence)...Have you had your 'JIB today?"
> What the heck, what do you have to lose, if they accept it (the commercial)
> there's no problem.
> If they don't...you are right where you are now.
> Am I too naive? 
 
Well, first of all, you lose the probably considerable cost of buying air
time on WRKO or WEEI.  I don't know how much it costs, but I suspect it's
more than fits the rather sparse budget of WJIB.

Second, you may trigger a fight with a large company, which can afford
much heavier litigation costs than Bob can.  And you may provoke them to
use the bells to preserve their rights, just to keep Bob from being able
to use them. 

Kinda like a story I remember from about 20 years ago.  It seems that back
in the 1950s, there was a show on NBC radio called "X Minus One," which
featured dramatizations of science fiction stories.  The show was
sponsored by =Galaxy=, a science fiction magazine, and many of the stories
in fact had appeared in Galaxy.

Now jump to the 1970s, and Galaxy has decided to revive X Minus One as a
syndicated radio show.  They got one episode done when they heard from
NBC, which claimed that it owned the rights to the name X Minus One.  In
order to maintain the right, they began airing a rerun of X Minus One once
a month or something like that on NBC radio (In Boston, it was carried on
WCOP, which was then an NBC affiliate.).

Now, it had been 20 years since the name had been used.  But NBC had much
more money to pay for litigation than Galaxy.  So Galaxy backed off.

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  A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                                          617/367-0468
  15 Court Square                                       lawyer@world.std.com
  Boston, MA 02108-2573                        http://world.std.com/~lawyer/
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