copyright question

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Sun, 28 Mar 2010 01:39:43 -0400, "A. Joseph Ross" <joe@attorneyross.com> said:

> More than that.  Plough, I believe, sold to Tanger, who changed WCOP 
> (by then WACQ) into WHUE.  Then Tanger sold to Greater Media, who 
> turned it into WMEX, etc.  So it's possible that the current station 
> owners, or anyone else along the chain, own the rights to those old 
> survey sheets, depending on the nature of the sales contracts, 
> particularly whether the buyer acquired intellectual property or just 
> the license, physical property, and real estate.

Indeed, it's also possible that those rights belong to the (successors
of) the owners of any of the ex-Plough stations -- if, as Plough
Broadcasting was being wound down, the last stations sold also
included the corporate entity that owned the copyrights.  It often
happens that broadcast stations are not sold in themselves, but
rather, the controlling interest in some corporation which controls
the limited partnership which owns the three LLCs which each own
various assets that make up the station.  Often these ownership
structures are maintained by the new owners, sometimes under the same
names.  (Recall that many Clear Channel stations are still licensed to
Citicasters, a corporate name which dates from the bankruptcy of Taft
Broadcasting.  Citicasters merged with Jacor, and became a paper tiger
through which most of Jacor's FCC licenses were held; when Jacor
merged with Clear Channel, it remained in this role alongside Capstar
TX Limited Partnership and a number of other sister entities.)  

(On the other hand, sometimes owners sell or trade the stations
directly, but keep the shell corporations -- we all remember that
WROR-FM used to be licensed to Greater Washington Radio, Inc., a
remnant of a trade that Greater Media did with Evergreen
Communications involving the 99.5 in Washington.  Greater eventually
did the pro-forma assignment to bring 105.7 under the same banner as
their other stations.  For similar reasons, 92.9 and 99.5 here were
for a while owned by Greater Los Angeles Radio.)

-GAWollman