crossword: what is: BMl rival (abbr.) 5 spaces: a ? c ? p.

I am certain that your answer is ASCAP.

ASCAP is the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.
BMI is Broadcast Music, Incorporated. Both are organizations which
collectively represent copyright-holders in the music industry.

Google search strategy:

Google Web Search: "ascap" + "bmi"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=ascap+bmi

I hope this information is useful. If anything is unclear, please
request clarification; I'll be glad to offer further assistance before
you rate my answer.

Best wishes,
pinkfreud

Hi, Birdma,

There's no doubt that pinkfreud is right. Here's a source you might
use if you're stumped again:
http://www.onelook.com
It's a free online dictionary that allows wildcard queries. In your
case, you'd go to the main page and enter "a?c?p" (without the
quotes), then click the search button. Here's the search that that
provides:
http://www.onelook.com/?w=a%3Fc%3Fp&ls=a

You get thirty-six possibilities, and the acronym "ASCAP" is one of
them. That might seem like a lot, but you can exclude some of those
with common sense. For the ones you might not recognize, you can click
them to find a definition.

In case the term "BMI" is new to you, a Google search for "BMI"
://www.google.com/search?client=googlet&q=BMI
leads you to the Broadcast Music web site with search result #1:
http://www.bmi.com/home.asp

By the way, when current New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz
was asked whether it's all right for a solver to look up a word in a
dictionary, he quoted one of his NYT crossword editor predecessors,
Will Weng: "It's your puzzle. Solve it any way you want."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/magazine/08PUZZLE.html?pagewanted=print

Good luck with the crosswords!

Is there anything that Pinky doesn't know?

ascap  is the answer. I have a web site "yesmelbourne.com ". On this
site amoung many other things is a crossword helper. Just type in your
clue and under that type in 5 question marks if the answer required
has 5 letters.Hope this helps. My email address is on the bottom of my
web site. Stay cool. bye.