February 11, 2017

For Immediate Release

Contact: Bill Crosier, Interim Executive Director  Email: [email protected]  Telephone: 713-305-5346

Pacifica Foundation Appoints New Executive Director To Grapple With Financial Challenges

Berkeley-The five-station Pacifica Radio network opted for change in 2017 by removing Lydia Brazon, the interim executive director since 2015 and replacing her with 2010-2012/2016-2017 Director William Crosier.

The change comes as the network faces an unprecedented political situation in the United States, which is reeling from the assault of the newly elected Donald Trump administration on constitutional freedoms and governmental assistance programs. Pacifica’s alternative news, information and cultural programming provides perspectives rarely heard in mainstream media and features the voices of artists, activists and public intellectuals.

The network, founded in 1946 in Berkeley, California, faces an increasingly acute financial situation, with litigation recently filed by the Empire State Building for unpaid transmitter tower rent for station WBAI, and an investigation in progress by the California Attorney General’s Registry of Charitable Trusts over delinquent financial audits.

Crosier commented: “Pacifica’s mission of alternative educational broadcasting is crucial to the future of this country. I will do everything in my power to ensure the Pacifica Foundation’s survival until I can hand over the network to the care of a new visionary leader. I thank my colleagues on the Pacifica National Board for their faith in me. I know we have serious challenges ahead, but I look forward to working together with Pacifica staff and volunteers to catch up on the things we’ve been neglecting, and guide us to a better place”.

Crosier holds a master of science degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington and thirty-five years of experience in the development of computer-based electronic and electro-mechanical hardware and software systems for biomedical research. He is a long-time radio aficionado and the former chair of the board and President of the Houston Peace and Justice Center.

The Pacifica National Board made the change on Friday evening during a national teleconference. Outgoing director Lydia Brazon had held the interim position since October of 2015.

###

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.