Berkeley-Pacifica’s 2015 board elections are scheduled to end on January 4th, 2016 after being extended for as long as possible. The troubled process has been marked by many members having extreme difficulty getting ballots, which haven’t been received by as many as 25-30% of the network’s 55,000 members. Two stations, WBAI in NY and KPFK in LA may not have hit quorum yet, so members at those stations who haven’t voted are encouraged to look for online voting instructions they may have received on October 22nd, or fill out an immediate request for them at elections.pacifica.org. Pacifica in Exile’s candidate recommendations can be found  here.

The reason the quorum status is fuzzy is because elections vendor Simply Voting took a 3 week vacation from December 18th to January 4th and has not reported on the number of paper ballots received in the mail. Online-only totals have both stations short of listener quorum by about 200 ballots each and KPFK also short on staff quorum by 21 votes.

Anecdotally, at least 9 of KPFK’s board candidates have reported they didn’t get their *own* ballots, including Will Ryan, Christian Beck, Steven Frantz, Sandy Childs, Rob Macon, John Vollbrecht, Mansoor Sabbagh and Mike Mora and Leslie Fox (who finally secured replacement ballots late in December). Programmers Lila Garrett, host of Connect The Dots, Nita Vallens, host of Inner Visions and Henry Slucki, host of Access Unlimited also reported not receiving ballots.

At KPFK, the December 13th arbitration with SAG-AFTRA was postponed due to the arbitrator’s personal illness and is now expected to get underway in January of 2016. In the meantime, the financial situation at the station under Radford continues to worsen dramatically with the December fund drive running for 17 days and booking only $316K of the hoped for $500K.

Program changes made by Radford (multi-host Uprising) are having revenue-lowering effects. Almost a third of the $316K was raised by one programmer, Christine Blosdale ($101K) who pitches 3-5 times a day during the station’s fund drive cycles, often in recorded repeat programs. Other programs with some fundraising success included Democracy Now at $36K, The Aware Show at $27K, Sojourner Truth at $25K and Something’s Happening at $14K.

Union staff report that 3 and a half months after being involuntarily cut to half-time, they have still not received EDD job-sharing forms for partial unemployment benefits promised to them in August, as they struggle to survive on annual salaries now reduced to about $25K a year. Radford recently announced to the national finance committee that work hour reductions would continue for another 9 to 10 months.

Union staffers having  a very un-merry Christmas  received a poorly worded invitation from GM Radford to a Christmas party at a neighboring restaurant which had been rented for the evening. The note (see below) told staffers the shindig was “guaranteed to be almost as good as a holiday bonus”.

To: staff, programmers
Sent: Monday, December 21, 2015 5:36 PM
Subject: KPFK Holiday Party! Wednesday 6-10

“From: G M 

On Wednesday, December 23 we’ve booked Spitz from 6:00-10:00 p.m. for a post-Solstice/pre-Hanukkah/pre-Christmas/pre-Kwanza Holiday Party!

Celebrate getting through this year at KPFK with some munchies, a couple of drinks, and the wonderful staff and volunteers from KPFK.

Guaranteed to be almost as good as a holiday bonus. And it’s just two doors down from the station.

–Leslie

When the finance committee asked Radford what would happen if the station continued to miss fundraising targets and was unable to solicit half a million dollars in on-line donations during 92 days of “silent drive”, the GM replied she would default on repaying $25K to the Material World Foundation for a grant not used for the intended purpose and “not give the union their money”.

A week earlier, Radford told the same committee she would not fulfill back orders for premiums owed to the station’s subscribers unless compelled to by legal action.

Pacifica’s national board has not commented on these declarations from the manager hired by Margy Wilkinson in June of 2015 with no radio station management experience.

The national board seems mostly occupied this month with its own configuration, calling two special meetings in December to select two 2016 national board members from the network’s 200 programming affiliates. The board administratively screwed up and never sent an announcement to the 200 different stations that nominations were open, and accordingly received only one application submitted under mysterious circumstances.

The application was from  the internet-only station Uhuru Radio. Uhuru Radio, which is the online voice of the African Peoples Socialist Party, is run by a for-profit commercial enterprise, Burning Spear Productions LLC. The station’s program schedule contains no Pacifica produced or distributed radio programs.

The quickie appointment isn’t compliant with Pacifica’s bylaws and seems mostly designed to preserve the current board majority by cranking the process for a political ally. Here are the requirements to fill the affiliate board director seats from Article 5(4) of the bylaws:  “For the purposes of this section, an “affiliate station” shall be defined as any non-profit non-commercial broadcaster that broadcasts programming provided or distributed by the Foundation pursuant to a written agreement with the Foundation”.

In New York, WBAI’s Community Advisory Board issued a report summarizing the station’s problems and hoping to incite some action. The report can be read here. It was accompanied by fund drive dailies for the station’s fall drive, which showed daily net proceeds of $8k, with a one-day high of $16K (which used to be considered a slow day).

A third document purports to show membership numbers from 2011-2015. But while no one debates the downward trajectory, most acute in 2014 and 2015, the report from the station doesn’t square very well with Pacifica’s financial statements which show fairly flat listener revenues  with no more than a 10% annual decline, followed by a violent crash in 2015 of 43%.

Common sense indicates that a 15-20% loss in subscriber numbers annually should result in about a 15-20% loss in subscriber income annually, but apparently not in Pacifica bookkeeping. Here’s a table of the counter-intuitive results from the contradictory reports:

2011-2012  15,080 members $2.650 million in listener support

2012-2013  13,035 members $2.486 million in listener support

2013-2014  10,521 members $2.269 million in listener support

2014-2015   8,663 members  $1.307 million in listener support

Pacifica in Exile readers may write to the board at [email protected].

For readers who may wish to do more, any donor to a California-based not for profit organization like Pacifica may file a complaint to the open file at the Registry of Charitable Trusts at the Office of the CA Attorney General. Pacifica’s case number is CT011303. The form and instructions for filing may be downloaded here.

T o subscribe to this newsletter, please visit our spanking new website at www.pacificainexile.org

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Started in 1946 by conscientious objector Lew Hill, Pacifica’s storied history includes impounded program tapes for a 1954 on-air discussion of marijuana, broadcasting the Seymour Hersh revelations of the My Lai massacre, bombings by the Ku Klux Klan, going to jail rather than turning over the Patty Hearst tapes to the FBI, and Supreme Court cases including the 1984 decision that noncommercial broadcasters have the constitutional right to editorialize, and the Seven Dirty Words ruling following George Carlin’s incendiary performances on WBAI. Pacifica Foundation Radio operates noncommercial radio stations in New York, Washington, Houston, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area, and syndicates content to over 180 affiliates. It invented listener-supported radio.