UPDATE: Norwegian broadcaster explains halting Beatle podcasts

  The Norwegian podcasts featuring the Beatles' music catalog
   that were announced on Monday won't be airing after all.
   (Photo copyright Apple Corps, courtesy Shorefire Media.)

As Norwegian broadcaster NRK put it, "Some thought this was too good to be true. And it was…"

It certainly looks that way.

NRK, the Norwegian outlet that announced Monday a series of podcasts that would feature the entire Beatles catalog, has issued a statement on their website explaining the "Our daily Beatles" podcasts were halted today because the shows, originally aired in 2007, aren't covered under their agreement with TONO, which limits broadcasts to only shows aired during the last four weeks.

Additionally, the company said the podcasts were stopped until some legal issues could be clarified.

On a webpage posted in English on their website for "our international readers," NRK wrote that "Our new agreement with rights holder TONO gives us rights to publish radio and TV shows we aired a long time ago. But the agreement NRK has with rights holders IFPI and FONO only allows us to publish shows that has been aired the last four weeks. And since “Our daily Beatles” was aired in 2007, we have to pull it from the podcast."

They added, "This is not how we would like things to be! But we can’t break our agreements with the rights holders."

In an further statement issued in Norwegian and translated by WogBlog blogmaster Roger Stormo, they said the decision was also due to legal issues that needed to be clarified.

"We have chosen to stop the podcasts of "Our daily Beatles", due to advice from our own legal department. There are still some clauses that are not completely clear, and in order not to bring in something that may disturb a good negotiation climate, which again may interfere with future agreements, we have decided to withdraw the podcast of  'Our daily Beatles'," NRK said.

The broadcaster said it is currently in negotiations with IFPI for a new agreement. The previous one expired Dec. 31.

The company said it has agreements with three major rights holders TONO for Norwegian composers and writers, FONO for Norwegian record companies and IFPI for international record companies. NRK says it recently agreed to a new pact with TONO "where we pay a considerable amount of money to be able to use music from TONO’s members on TV, radio and new media. This agreements gives us the right to podcast shows with music, as long as it isn’t more than 70% or 42 minutes per hour."

"Both NRK and TONO (are) very happy with the new agreement," the statement says. "It gives NRK the possibility to create new services online with our huge archive. Composers and musicians earn a lot when we play their music on NRKs 3 tv-channels, 13 radiochannels and online."

But NRK explained the agreement says that shows must have been aired within the previous four weeks to be used.

"The Beatles comes under our agreement with IFPI, which says that we only can put up shows for download that were aired the latest four weeks, and where the music is less than 70% of the show’s length. 'Our daily Beatles' were aired in 2007 (not 2001 as we wrote yesterday), so we have to pull the podcast. If it was aired today, we could have podcasted the next four weeks within the agreement."

NRK then posed the hypothetical question, "So why not send the show again on one of your channels?"  Their answer: "This is a question people have asked several times already. We could have done it, but choose not to."

The broadcaster talked about its current negotiations with IFPI. "Our former agreement actually ran out the 31. December 2008. We do hope to get an agreement that is just as good as the TONO agreement ... Both consumers, NRK, artists and record companies will win if we can make our archives available for the public. NRK has several hundred thousand video clips in our archive, and if we only can put up the latest four weeks for podcasting/download, the new services will only have 1% of our content. Which is - lame."

"We need agreements - like the one we have got with TONO - where we can put our archives online with few limitations - for your listening and viewing pleasure!," NRK said.

 Clearly, we haven't heard the last of this one.

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