TV stations in spat over storm footage

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By David Burke | Saturday, June 9, 2007 12:31 AM CDT | () comments

Two rival Quad-City television stations are at odds over a live video transmission of damage caused by the June 1 tornadoes in Muscatine and Louisa counties.

In a letter dated June 6 from legal counsel for WQAD-TV, Moline, to KWQC-TV, Davenport, the former station, an ABC-TV affiliate, accused the latter, an NBC-TV affiliate, of pirating the transmission of live aerial video taken from a helicopter that afternoon.

“When our helicopter was beaming it to our tower, they took their equipment and intercepted the signal and rebroadcast it, repurposed it on their air,” said Dale Woods, WQAD’s president and general manager.

The helicopter was operated by WHO-TV, an NBC affiliate in Des Moines, which, like WQAD, is owned by a company called Local TV LLC. Video footage later was made available to all NBC affiliates, including KWQC.

“There was no question that we were going to use the video coming from WHO,” said Allen Wiese, KWQC’s executive vice president. “We knew about it and we certainly had communications with WHO.”

After consulting with his news department Friday morning, Wiese said some of the live coverage was used while KWQC was on the air with storm coverage for 61/2 hours straight that Friday afternoon and evening.

“They (the KWQC news department) did end up taking part of the ‘HO feed live. That part is correct,” he said. “I need to look into this further to see if there was anything unethical about that. We don’t think so, but we need to talk to a few more people and re-evaluate that whole day.”

A letter from John Foere Jr., legal counsel for WQAD, to KWQC general manager Rene LaSpina cautions KWQC that the use of the live footage was a violation of the Copyright Act of 1976.

“Our client is the copyright owner of the aerial footage produced by its own news crew aboard its own helicopter,” Foere wrote. “Your distribution of WQAD-TV’s aerial footage without WQAD’s permission violates WQAD-TV’s exclusive rights. This infringement of our client’s exclusive rights subjects KWQC-TV to actual or statutory damages (which may be up to $150,000 per copyrighted work infringed), as well as an injunction and the obligation to pay our client’s attorneys fees and costs.”

WQAD’s Woods said there are no plans to take legal action against KWQC.

“It’s certainly not our intent to do that right now,” he said. “It’s more of a notification, letting them know that there are federal regulations that prohibit the pirating of other ... stations’ video.”

KWQC’s Wiese said an investigation was taking place at the station Friday over the use of the live video, as well as the station’s own possible response.

“We’re still in conference with our legal team on where we can go from here,” he said. “From our standpoint, and from everything we’ve investigated, we didn’t do anything unethical or wrong or anything.

“We don’t condone pirating other people’s video. We’ve never done it, and we certainly don’t want to have the reputation of ever doing it.”

Wiese said WQAD overreacted to the use of the video.

“I don’t really think they looked into it very closely,” he added.

Woods said it was similar to a theft of property.

“You feel like you get your vehicle stolen,” he added.

David Burke can be contacted at (563) 383-2400 or dburke@qctimes.com.

Click here to see the WQAD letter sent to KWQC regarding the footage.