Lis­ten:
MP3 One Seg­ment

1. This broad­cast updates an inves­ti­ga­tion into Ger­man cor­po­rate con­trol of Amer­i­can “opinion-forming media.”

The title of the pro­gram is derived from a key pas­sage in the Nazi tract Serpent’s Walk (soft­cover, National Van­guard Books, copy­right 1991, ISBN# 0–937944-05-X.) Mr. Emory believes that the book, sup­pos­edly a novel, is a blue­print for the strate­gic pol­icy Nazi ele­ments are cur­rently pur­su­ing. In this regard, it would resem­ble The Turner Diaries, also pub­lished by National Vanguard–the pub­lish­ing arm of the National Alliance, the most impor­tant Amer­i­can Nazi orga­ni­za­tion. The Turner Diaries was the model for Tim­o­thy McVeigh & Co. in the Okla­homa City Bomb­ing, as well as the Nazi group The Order. In Serpent’s Walk, the descen­dants of Hitler’s SS take over the United States in the mid-21st cen­tury, after going under­ground, build­ing up their eco­nomic strength, and gain­ing con­trol over the Amer­i­can media.

2. This process is described in one of the book’s key pas­sages. “About ten years ago, we swing a merger, a takeover, and got vot­ing con­trol of a super­corp that runs a small but sig­nif­i­cant chunk of the Amer­i­can media. Not openly, with bands and trum­pets. . . . but qui­etly, one huge cor­po­ra­tion cud­dling up to another one and gen­tly munch­ing it up, like a great, gub­bing amoeba.” (Serpent’s Walk, p. 42.)

3. Bor­row­ing from Shakespeare’s famous quote “if music be the food of love, play on,” the pro­gram hybridizes The Bard’s pas­sage with the “munch­ing” process alluded to in Serpent’s Walk. FTR-241 focuses pri­mar­ily on the Ber­tels­mann firm’s posi­tion in the music busi­ness. “Munch­ing up” on-line music firms and form­ing alliances with oth­ers, the firm’s BMG sub­sidiary is the second-largest record­ing com­pany in the world. (San Fran­cisco Exam­iner, 5/7/2000, p. B-1.)

4. Ber­tels­mann dis­missed Arista Records chief Clive Davis from his posi­tion at the helm of the firm he founded. (The Los Ange­les Times, 5/3/2000, p. C6.)

5. In Serpent’s Walk, the SS cap­i­tal orga­ni­za­tion accom­plishes the trans­for­ma­tion of the com­pa­nies it “munches up” by “replac­ing exec­u­tives, push­ing some­body out here, bring­ing some­body else in there.” (Serpent’s Walk, p. 42.)

6. Davis is being men­tioned as the poten­tial head of a new joint-venture with BMG, a pos­si­ble move that has not qui­eted the furor over his ouster. (Los Ange­les Times, 6/28/2000, p. C5.)

7. After not­ing that a judge ruled against the MP3.com firm in a suit brought against the com­pany by BMG and other music giants (The Wall Street Jour­nal, 5/1/2000, p. A3), the dis­cus­sion turns to two deals con­cluded by BMG on the same day.

8. Seat­tle firm Real­Net­works Inc., a soft­ware man­u­fac­turer for pub­lish­ing and access­ing inter­net audio and video, announced an agree­ment with Ber­tels­mann sub­sidiary Arista to obtain exclu­sive inter­net rights for that company’s artists (for a lim­ited period of time.) (The Los Ange­les Times, 5/1/2000, p. C6.)

9. On the same day, BMG made pub­lic an agree­ment with Click­Ra­dio Inc., an inter­net radio ser­vice, to give that com­pany rights to BMG’s entire cat­a­log of artists. (The New York Times, 5/1/2000, p. C6.)

10. Ulti­mately, BMG and MP3.com nego­ti­ated a com­pen­satory arrange­ment for the on-line access­ing of CD’s. (Finan­cial Times, 6/10–11/2000, p. 1.)

11. BMG struck a deal with Music-Bank to access CD’s on-line. (San Jose Mer­cury News, 6/9/2000, p. C6.)

12. A venture-capital sub­sidiary of Ber­tels­mann AG owns a minor­ity share in Music-Bank. (The Wall Street Jour­nal, 7/26/2000, p. C14.)

13. In addi­tion, BMG has pur­chased CD Now, another on-line music seller. (Finan­cial Times, 7/21/2000, p. 18.)

14. Ber­tels­mann had ear­lier tried to obtain CD Now through its joint ven­ture with Uni­ver­sal Music (Getmusic.com.) (The Wall Street Jour­nal, 7/20/2000, p. B1.)

15. Ber­tels­mann is merg­ing its e-commerce activ­i­ties into a sin­gle entity, empha­siz­ing its shift in strat­egy toward pro­vid­ing inter­net con­tent. (Finan­cial Times, 6/5/2000, p.21.)

16. The pro­gram high­lights the up-and-coming Ger­man music firm Edel’s alliance with Rup­pert Murdoch’s News Corp. (The Wall Street Jour­nal, 5/23/2000, p. B12.)

17. The broad­cast con­cludes with review of Ber­tels­mann his­tory. Ber­tels­mann patri­arch Hein­rich Mohn was in the SS and the firm was the largest pub­lisher of books for the SS and Wehrma­cht dur­ing World War II (The Nation, 12/28/98).

18. The pro­gram also reviews the polit­i­cal views of the company’s offi­cial his­to­rian, Dirk Baven­damm. In books pub­lished in 1983, 1993 and 1998, Baven­damm blamed World War II on Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt, “U.S. impe­ri­al­ism,” and the “Jewish-controlled” U.S. media, which, he said, gave a dis­torted view of Hitler. Baven­damm also said that Hitler’s pol­icy toward the Jews was made nec­es­sary by FDR’s war-like poli­cies toward Ger­many. Like the other broad­casts in this sequence, the mate­r­ial in this pro­gram should be reflected on against the back­ground of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion. (Recorded on 7/30/2000.)