Berkeley-The March 17th meeting of the Pacifica National Board was marked by virulent conflicts between members of the Siegel/Brazon majority as the philosophy of “organzational darwinism” begins to play out within the network. The majority members found solidarity in their determination to maximize their number of votes on the national board, but dissolved into bitter arguments about the network’s fiscal woes.
In the first order of business, the board attempted to solve the mess it caused in New York by setting up an “email election” for New York’s national board reps to replace the January 26th election boycotted by the NY wing of the Siegel/Brazon faction. The national board majority has brought WBAI to a complete halt by seeking to overturn the results of the last election by seating the last place finisher from the 2012 election into the vacant seat, instead of the first runner-up from the recently completed election in 2015. The national board is attempting to undo the 13-11 independent majority in order to deliver the Siegel/Brazon faction a 12-12 tie. Since January 28th, the national board has been operating illegally with 18 or 19 members and no equal representation from the NY station.
The board then turned to the network’s 6-months-late attempt at an organization budget and the proposed motions to sell, liquidate or lease the two stations in DC and NY. Former Siegel and Yee attorney Jose Luis Fuentes, a KPFA listener rep, struck out at his own faction. Fuentes objected to the long audit delays and called the IED, past and current CFO’s, and the national finance committee negligent for failing to get the audits done and forfeiting millions in Corporation for Public Broadcasting grants. Fuentes came within one vote (which was reversed at the last minute) of rejecting all 7 motions from the finance committee. The board then narrowly passed (by one vote with multiple abstentions) a motion that gave DC station WPFW 60 days to turn around its financial situation or face “major restrucuring that could include liquidation, sale or lease”.
The call was marked by frequent disconnections of the 4 remaining independent national board members. Former PNB chair Bill Crosier resorted to sending email to a public list-serv stating he had been knocked off the call. Crosier said “You need to call me back so I can participate in the meeting. This is very unfair. Is this the new and improved way to squelch dissent? This is my fourth request for you to call me back so I can re-join the meeting. We were told that if we were disconnected, you would call us back immediately. As you know, with the new system I cannot make the call myself”. Crosier’s public email can be seen here.
The board majority also argued about whether the “Auditor’s Letter to Management” was a confidential document or not, after the CFO quoted from it and Fuentes objected. Chair Tony Norman ruled that the letter was not a confidential document and was upheld by the rest of the board. Accordingly, Pacifica in Exile will make available the FY 2014 “Auditors Letter to Management” when it becomes available for the review of Pacifica’s members, as it is no longer considered a confidential document.
You can listen to a highlights reel from the meeting here.
The national audit committee met on Tuesday night, but they figured out none of them knew anything at all about the audit they were supposedly supervising so they spent two hours deciding when to meet again. The Siegel/Brazon contingent devoted their energy to trying to prevent the committee from meeting directly with the auditor.
Pacifica’s CFO, reported to be in New York City this week with board chair Tony Norman to meet with the Empire State Building about the WBAI tower lease, abruptly canceled a planned public meeting planned for March 21st with WBAI listeners, staff and local board members.
KPFK’s local station board meeting was held on March 20th. The independent majority recently seated after a landslide election victory in 2015 passed a package of nine different motions addressing a wide variety issues including: motions to mandate online sexual harassment training, the prompt delivery of ordered premiums in compliance with FTC mail order rules, adherence to a cash management policy for events, a motion to instruct their 4 national board directors to uphold the Pacifica bylaws in all their actions on the national board and condemning the exclusion of WBAI directors from national board deliberations. They also made recommendations that KPFK management restore Something’s Happening to the midnight to 6 am slot and restore Uprising to its former host five days a week to increase financial stability, and hire a webmaster to maintain KPFK’s website.
The passage of the 9 motions caused deep distress to Radford’s roommate and KPFK volunteer coordinator Adam Rice who called the board “motherfuckers” during angry public comments and was eventually removed from the facility. Safe Harbor host Chrisanne Eastwood attempted to differentiate between the terms “motherfuckers” and “motherfuckas” and indicated she thought Rice was simply using vernacular language for “dudes” and did not intend the comments to be derogatory. Rice’s comments can be heard here. KPFK’s Assistant Engineer and board staff rep Jonathan Alexander commented afterwards: “Right now I am more than a little concerned that our volunteer coordinator is so stupid that he brought a crew to tape him calling us motherfuckers and to complain about no phone room volunteers. His job is that he represents KPFK everyday”.
KPFK’s financial position appears to be highly alarming. Local board treasurer Fred Blair’s report can be seen here. In it, he reports KPFK’s bank balance at $127,000 on March 7th, exactly 3 days after the station completed a month-long fund drive that garnered $602,000 in pledges. The bank balance has since been updated to $85,000 as of March 16th by GM Radford. The station’s expenses are in the range of $250,000 per month. Management response has been for a “quiet drive” with on-air pitching to the station’s bedraggled website for the entire month of April until the next fund drive begins in May. It isn’t clear the station will be able to raise thousands of dollars a day in online pedges. Radford has assigned different daily online pledge goals for the station’s various programs, leaning heavily on programs her Siegel/Brazon faction often criticizes or say they “want off the air” for the larger online pledge numbers.
Radford’s general manager report to her local station board was marked by the bizarre presentation of little blue charts claiming that KPFK and/or Pacifica had “10 times the amount of subscribers twenty years ago than they do now” and that “KPFK had 65,000 members in 2010”. KPFK had about 20,000 members in 2010 as documented by the required election quorum in 2010. It has about 16,000 now. Pacifica’s 1996 audited financials (available here) show KPFK with $1.3 million annually from subscribers 20 years ago as compared with $2.6 million in Pacifica’s last audited financials from 2013.
Recent special programming went deeply awry when KPFK’s attempt at a live broadcast of an LA Human Rights Commission community meeting on gang injunctions and suspicious activity reporting opened with a 20 minute meltdown which saw the biggest radio signal west of the Mississippi River loudly blare a Michael Jackson song over the government meeting, run a fundraising cart right over a presentation and then simultaneously broadcast an Alternative Radio program with Dave Zirin and the meeting broadcasting at the same time in cacophany. That this continued for so long indicated the station was not answering phone calls and neither PD Alan Minsky nor GM Radford were overseeing the live broadcast on March 19th from 11am to 2pm. You can hear part of what was broadcast here.
Pitched-aside public affairs host Sonali Kolhatkar has “rebranded” her Uprising program as Rising Up and indicated on March 20th that the program, which airs on KPFK two days a week and KPFA five days a week has been collecting grants independently of Pacifica Radio and looks to sign an independent distribution agreement with Free Speech TV. KPFK’s GM Radford scotched the previous deal with FSTV by trying to force them to air the replacement hosts she installed on Wednesdays through Fridays. KPFK continues to pay Kolhatkar a full-time salary. At least half the receipts of an Indiegogo campaign to transform Uprising into a televison show were snatched out of the restricted bank account by Margy Wilkinson and used to pay KPFK’s health benefits and telephone bills in the fall of 2014 despite Kolhatkar’s protests.
Listenership stats from 2015 documented the station’s listenership trends and reported the station’s single highest share of Southern California radio listeners was earned at weekdays midnight when Roy of Hollywood’s Something’s Happening used to come on the air. Higher than the AM drive time anchored by Democracy Now at 9:00am. This is the time slot Radford chose to eviscerate to “try out new programming” ignoring station time slots containing low or in the case of the 10-11pm hours almost nonexistent listenership stats. The chart can be downloaded here. Something’s Happening raised over $25,000 for the station in the last fund drive in its abbreviated hours of 3am to 6am, five times what replacement program Safe Harbor raised. A petition to restore the popular program to its regular hours can be found here.
However “organizational darwinism” works out, it is looking like one ugly process. To remind you to keep laughing and keep fighting for a Pacifica Radio that can not only heal itself but also help to heal the world, take 30 minutes to enjoy this Twit Wit radio satire from way back in March of 2014 when Pacifica’s national office was occupied in an effort to keep the network from being dismantled.
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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.