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The Who Halts Webcasts
Various reports said Daltrey had mixed feeling about the broadcasts, offered through thewholive.tv at $10 each, with all proceeds going to charity. It all came down to how much money Townshend was willing to pay up front for the project because there was “no promise of any investment from inside or outside the Who” according to the guitarist.
“It is simply that while on tour it is too much to carry on my own,” he wrote on his blog.
Townshend originally sounded annoyed, writing that Daltrey “seems to think when I provide bandwidth for the Who website, and for Live streaming, he is being exploited in some way and wants a piece of the future ‘profit.’ Don’t think there is much chance of profit when it is all aimed at charity.”
Townshend gave readers a hotmail.com e-mail account they could use to encourage Daltrey to change his mind.
Townshend, a self-described “Internet nut,” later backed off, blogging that it was mostly a lack of communication, and the Web site was shut down because it was too much to handle while on tour.
“I respect Roger’s very real ambivalence about it. But of course it frustrates me, the Who is a partnership, neither of us get exactly what we want,” Townshend wrote. “Until Roger and I have some kind of agreement on webcasting I will stop pushing it.
“Roger is my partner in the Who. He is not my partner in anything else. We love each other but we are not regular social buddies like Bono and Edge, we do not discuss or share ideas, and we have no unified joint vision or strategy for the Who or for creative projects in general.”
The guitarist said a “new and greatly revised” version of the band’s main Web site, thewho.com, would reflect more of Daltrey’s ideas and would be up and running prior to the bands first U.S. dates in September.