Producer Handbook: Minimum Public Television Rights

Public Television
Minimum Public Television Rights

To use the copyrighted works of others, you must obtain rights as required for public television. Licenses should begin with the date of first broadcast and should be made out in the name of the person or entity that will be the copyright holder of the final program. For public broadcasting, you must typically obtain the following:

• Public television’s standard is six public broadcasting releases in four years (a release being unlimited broadcasts within a seven-day period). The four-year period begins on the date of the first release. Public television used to require four public broadcasting releases in three years. PBS may still accept programs offering four releases over three years in certain limited cases - such as programs produced under some guild agreements, which still define the public broadcasting licensing period as “4 in 3.” If granting six releases over four years will have a serious impact on your budget please discuss this with your production liaison.
• One year of off-air record rights. This allows K–12 educational institutions to tape and use programs for educational purposes within one year after the airing of the program. Historically, public television required seven-day off-air school record rights. In the interest of providing educational value with their programming, PBS has firmly switched to the one year policy. Some educational distributors feel that one year off-air record rights may compromise the potential sales of videotapes to schools. Others feel that a PTV broadcast with one-year off-air record rights can enhance educational sales. The NAPT Production License Agreement requires one year off-air rights due to CPB and PBS requirements. The net result of this change is that you will be obligated to clear the educational rights for your program and all elements in it in all cases in order to cover the one-year of off-air record rights.
• Promotional Rights. This is the right to incorporate the material in promotional spots, website, and other materials designed to promote viewing of the program. Producers must also obtain the rights for NAPT and CPB to use the finished program for institutional promotion purposes.

Note: To preserve the possibility of future distribution, you may wish to simultaneously negotiate for additional uses beyond public broadcasting even if you are not contractually obligated to do so. Such uses may be: educational audio-visual for distributing the program to schools and libraries; home video; foreign broadcast; semi-theatrical distribution (for audiences where an admission is charged); cable and commercial broadcast sales, and the right to use certain images, footage or music in promotional efforts on the Web or other forms of internet distribution. At a minimum, you may wish (or be required) to establish the availability and “step-up” rates for additional uses so the groundwork for future distribution is laid in advance.