ACRAs cancelled over radio royalty battle
Commercial Radio Australia has informed its stakeholders that this year’s Australian Commercial Radio Awards won’t be going ahead due to an ongoing legal battle over music royalties.
In the note to its members, obtained by Mumbrella, CRA said the awards will be paused for 2025, in order to “reallocate resources” towards “crucial priorities, including significant cost pressures incurred from ongoing legal matters with the PPCA.”
CRA will also use the time to “review and refresh our awards categories, judging process, and events execution”.
The Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA) and CRA have been battling over the Fair Pay for Radio Play Bill 2023. The bill would remove the existing royalty cap paid by Australian commercial radio stations.
Current copyright legislation caps the total to 1% of a station’s yearly revenue.
PPCA, representing musicians and rightsholders, argues that the cap is unfair and outdated, having been introduced over half a century ago. The CRA argues an increase in royalty rates for music played will “threaten the sustainability of our stations”.
CRA told its members the awards hiatus “was not an easy decision” to make, and that it will take the time to “reimage how we recognise excellence in Australian audio”.
The annual ceremony was set to be held in October, with last year’s event at the Star in Sydney seeing over 70 category winners announced.
Previously known as the RAWARDS, the ACRAs were launched in 1989, and have become the pinnacle event of an awards weekend that doubles as the largest gathering of commercial radio professionals in the country.
Kyle and Jackie O at the 2022 ACRAs
This comes the day after Music Victoria announced its awards would not go ahead in 2025, after last year’s event was marred by a “well-executed” voting fraud, that saw five out of six publicly-voted categories awarded on the night, and then rescinded once the fraud was uncovered.
CRA declined to comment, when contacted by Mumbrella.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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ACRAs wasn’t cancelled because of some ‘long running’ battle with PPCA!
The major ‘stakeholder’ members of CRA are are running on wafer thin budgets! We know it, you know it, everyone knows it! – We can all read the financial reports. We all see the job loss announcements, the creeping debt loads, the dividends evaporating and the share price declines.
The industry’s input costs continue to rise, while at the same time, senior executives are Hell bent on spending obscene amounts of money, in the vain attempt to become ‘number one’ in the weekday breakfast slot of two markets. Meanwhile, other aspects of the businesses, like profitable non-competitive markets, have the life blood slowly sucked out of them!
One wonders if the whole concept of radio surveys has now just become an exercise in self-flagellation by CRA members.
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So much to unpack here;
The self indulgence is over for at least one year – please refer Ricky Gervais………
Rather than focusing on ACRA entries ARN staff “might” want to concentrate on ratings and revenue to provide Shareholder value
The PPCA legal battle is going to be tough to win
The news.com.au article today was interesting in timing
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Well Melbourne shows and talent wont care, they haven’t been recognised or celebrated for years while this Sydney-centric event continues to celebrate old school mediocrity year after year.
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