Broadcasters Know Both Sides to the Benefits of Fair Use
By Matthew B. Harrison
TALKERS, VP/Associate Publisher
Harrison Media Law, Senior Partner
Goodphone Communications, Executive Producer
At 8:15 am, a radio host plays part of a television interview and explains why the guest’s answer deserves scrutiny. By noon, another program has clipped that host’s commentary and is taking it apart. The first use feels like doing the job. The second can feel like somebody helping themselves to your work, especially when they sell advertising around it.
That tension gives broadcasters a useful perspective on OpenAI’s October 30 statement, “Fair use benefits everyone.” The company assembled arguments supporting fair use in its copyright litigation involving news publishers, emphasizing benefits to creators, researchers, and the public. It is advocacy from a party to the litigation, not a judicial ruling. But the broader proposition deserves consideration from an industry that regularly experiences fair use from both directions.
For a talk host, the benefit can be immediate. An audience may need to hear the disputed answer, see the advertisement, or examine the passage before the host’s criticism makes sense. Requiring permission for every such use could give the subject of criticism considerable control over the discussion. Fair use provides room for qualifying commentary and reporting without that permission, although calling a segment “news” does not automatically establish the defense.
Now move to the other microphone. Your station secured the interview, paid the producer, developed the questions, and cultivated the audience. Another outlet extracts the most revealing exchange and uses it to challenge your coverage. Your investment matters to the business, but it does not automatically give you the power to prevent criticism that qualifies as fair use.
Change the example again. Instead of analyzing your interview, the other outlet uploads a substantial uninterrupted portion, adds a brief introduction, and offers listeners much of the experience your station produced. That raises a different question about substitution and the market for your work. The analysis considers the purpose, the nature of the original, the amount and significance taken, and the effect on its potential market, rather than simply counting seconds or checking for a credit.
This is where broadcasters can contribute something valuable to the AI debate. They understand why access to existing expression supports new commentary, and why producing that expression costs money. They also know that a competing program can win listeners through better reporting or sharper analysis. Competition alone does not tell us whether someone has improperly used protected material.
OpenAI and its supporters argue that training models serve a different purpose from publishing the works used to train them. Broadcasters can take that argument seriously while still asking what material was copied, how it was obtained, and what uses the law permits. Training a model, generating an answer, and publishing that answer involve distinct conduct. A persuasive argument about one does not automatically resolve the others.
The practical discipline is consistency. Before borrowing, identify what the audience needs to encounter and what your program contributes. Before objecting to someone else’s borrowing, examine whether they are criticizing your work or supplying a substitute for it. Neither the presence of advertising nor your understandable irritation settles the question.
That experience on both sides of the microphone is central to my book, Playing the Clip, which examines fair use in the daily work of media creation. Broadcasters need meaningful protection for what they produce, and meaningful freedom to examine what others produce. Fair use benefits the profession by helping preserve both, even when its application to our own work feels less comfortable.
Matthew B. Harrison is a media and intellectual property attorney who advises radio hosts, content creators, and creative entrepreneurs. He has written extensively on fair use, AI law, and the future of digital rights. Reach him at Matthew@HarrisonLegalGroup.com or read more at TALKERS.com.
AI can make someone else’s story sound like you. What have you added?
For the third consecutive year, TALKERS will serve as the Presenting Sponsor of the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System (IBS) Conference. The event – IBSNYC – the longest running and most important national gathering of campus radio and mediacommunicators, will take place February 25-27, 2027, at the Sheraton Times Square hotel in the heart of Manhattan. It will bring together almost 1,000 outstanding broadcasters from university, college and high school radio-TV stations and departments of communication. Its power packed agenda of speeches, panels, workshops, exhibits, award ceremonies, and networking opportunities will cover the ever-expanding spectrum of platforms and issues unfolding before young practitioners entering the field of modern communications. This outstanding event is a must-attend for bright industry newcomers who are serious about developing careers in a landscape marked by unprecedentedly rapid change as well as established players determined to keep up with what’s coming and discover new colleagues.
TALKERS VP / associate publisher Matthew B. Harrison will again join the roster of outstanding IBSNYC speakers. Harrison, senior partner in the firm of Harrison Media Law, is a media and intellectual property attorney and author who advises radio hosts, digital content creators, and creative entrepreneurs. He has written extensively on fair use, AI law, and the future of digital rights.
TALKERS founder, publisher, and radio industry icon, Michael Harrison will deliver one of the conference’s two keynote addresses. The speech, titled, “Five Things Every Communicator Must Know to Survive and Even Thrive During the Next Five Years,” promises to be a riveting, eye-opening highlight of the conference.
A Tokyo ruling has revisited a question that Bette Midler raised decades ago.
Your competitor breaks a story. You can report the facts, but you cannot assume that running its article through AI makes the resulting script yours to use. A rewrite button is not a rights-clearance department.
while playing venues such as the Bitter End and TV shows like “Midnight Special,” the band has gained a multi-generational fan base over the past six years due in large part to exposure on talk radio. Talk show hosts have been attracted to Gunhill Road’s engaging themes, sharp lyrics, and provocative YouTube videos that tackle the hottest issues of the day. These include the rise of idiocy, scourge of scammers, threat of censorship, dangers of AI, noise of politics, cruelty to animals, aging, and more. Since 2020, more than 1,500 talk shows, stations, and networks have aired Gunhill Road songs in whole or part, extracted segments for bumpers, and interviewed a member about its provocative messaging.
You post five clips from yesterday’s program. Four do fine. The fifth, an argument with a caller, explodes. It gets more views, more comments, more shares and more click time than anything else you posted.
By Matthew B. Harrison
A local advertiser sends over a ready-made commercial. The music is catchy. The script is polished. The production value is surprisingly good for a company that spends most of its day installing garage doors.
For years, Harrison Legal Group has informed media creators about the legal risks of using copyrighted clips, songs, images, and broadcasts without permission. The issue became central enough to inspire my book, Playing the Clip: The Definitive Digital Media Creator’s Guide to Fair Use (TALKERS Books, 2026). The premise was straightforward: modern media runs on borrowed material, but borrowing comes with legal exposure.
TALKERS magazine associate publisher) Matthew B. Harrison, a work designed for today’s news/talk media environment where audio, video, screenshots, and quotes are not just supporting elements – but serve as the actual content itself. This technique has become particularly prevalent on YouTube and even cable news/talk TV but increasingly appears in audio form as what used to be called “actualities” – sound from another source.
book explains the legal concept of fair use not as a permission structure, but as a legal defense raised after copying has already occurred – an uncomfortable but essential distinction that underpins the entire analysis.
Cumulus’s relationships with advertisers, goodwill, and market share, and push it towards financial collapse. The District Court accordingly enjoined Nielsen’s anticompetitive conduct. 
Nielsen’s brief attacks those findings as speculative, asserting that Cumulus never showed any real risk of bankruptcy or any other non-compensable harm, but one of those irreparable harms has now come to pass: After a motions panel stayed the injunction, Cumulus declared bankruptcy—citing “the Nielsen network tying policy” as a significant contributing cause. The other harms identified by the District Court remain today and have become increasingly urgent, as Cumulus will lose access to Nationwide this September.” TALKERS associate publisher and Harrison Media Law senior partner Matthew B. Harrison comments, “Cumulus has fundamentally shifted the posture of this case. What began as a forward-looking claim of irreparable harm is now being presented as a realized outcome, following its Chapter 11 filing. The appellate court is no longer being asked to prevent potential damage, but to assess whether the harm that has already occurred can be attributed to Nielsen’s challenged conduct — or to broader economic pressures facing the radio industry.”
The rise of independent, talk show-style political commentary on YouTube has created a new class of media actors who do not see themselves as broadcasters, journalists, or publishers. They see themselves as creators. That distinction is real in terms of identity, tone, and platform. It is not real where it matters most: liability.
AI is now embedded in the modern newsroom. Not as a headline, not as a novelty, but as infrastructure. It drafts outlines, summarizes complex reporting, surfaces background details, and accelerates prep for live conversations. For media creators operating under relentless deadlines, that efficiency is not theoretical. It is practical and daily.
TALKERS magazine, the leading trade publication serving America’s professional broadcast talk radio and associated digital communities since 1990, is pleased to participate as the presenting sponsor of the forthcoming Intercollegiate Broadcasting System (IBS) conference for the second consecutive year.
For years, “protect your name and likeness” sounded like lawyer advice in search of a problem. Abstract. Defensive. Easy to ignore. That worked when misuse required effort, intent, and a human decision-maker willing to cross a line.
Every media creator knows this moment. You are building a segment, you find the clip that makes the point land, and then the hesitation kicks in. Can I use this? Or am I about to invite a problem that distracts from the work itself?
The Problem Is No Longer Spotting a Joke. The Problem Is Spotting Reality