NaSTA 1990

YSTV hosted the NaSTA conference in 1990. It ran from 4th - 6th April 1990, and included a trip to Bradford's Photographic Film and Television Museum (now the National Media Museum).

There were a grand total of four categories proposed for the awards - Live Programmes, News & Current Affairs, Drama, and Freestyle. Each station paid £15 to enter the awards which gave them the right to enter each category once. If they wanted to enter it more than once they had to pay an extra £10 per entry. The winners were decided by a weighted vote with each station receiving a vote, and a category judge having a weighted vote.

The conference hit the rocks early in 1990 when the YSTV Station Director David Robert resigned and left the university to become a singer/songwriter.

Copyrighted Music Controversy

Back in the late 1980s/early 1990s the host station had to organise paying a licence fee for copyrighted music to The Performing Right Society Limited (PRS) and the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society Limited (MCPS). Back in 1987, after the they realised student television was using copyrighted music illegally, YSTV had arranged a deal with them which meant that NaSTA stations could use copyrighted music if they paid £30. Unfortunately the 1989 NaSTA hosts, GTV, did not pay the copyright fees/collect the money leading to YSTV publishing a somewhat passive aggressive article about copyright in a 1990 Conference newsletter. It was in 1990 that YSTV once again negotiated with the PRS and MCPS and got the fee down to £18 per station (or unit as they were known then!)