Originally posted July 15, 2014

Berkeley-The Pacifica Radio Network is entering its second week with no paid executive director. There is no board meeting scheduled to select one, leaving unelected retiree board chair Margy Wilkinson doing a dilettante job as the network struggles to survive. At the KPFA local station board meeting on July 12, director Jose Luis Fuentes, an employee of former corporate counsel Dan Siegel, said the volunteer ED was a “cost-saving measure” and suggested the job would not be filled until “there was less bad PR”. Fuentes previously made the motion to terminate the executive director (twice) and the job has been filled by two individuals for three intervals over the past 4 months, none for longer than 10 weeks.

Members objecting to the board majority’s chaotic actions over the past six months, which will lead to the network’s dissolution, can sign a petition here. 

Terminated KPFK general manager (and former KPFA general manager) Richard Pirodsky stated his departure from the Los Angeles station was also a “cost-cutting measure”.  KPFK will in the future be led by the now-operations manager, whose previous job duties largely focused on facilities maintenance. The operations manager position at KPFK will be unfilled.

Charges continue to fly around regarding the failure to issue financial statements and proceed with an annual audit more than 9 months after the close of the last fiscal year. Most of the excuses seem unsubstantiated. The current PNB treasurer stated there were “no general ledger entries” as of October 2013, but the board received financial statements drawn from the national office general ledger in February with complete numbers through 12-31-2013 for every station, but his own KPFA, which was behind on data entry. The profit and loss statement for the 1st quarter of the current fiscal year (October to December 2013) can be viewed here. 

Departing KPFA/KPFK general manager supplied his assessment of the reasons for the audit delay on May 16, 2014 in this email to a KPFA staffer.

From: Richard Pirodsky <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, May 16, 2014 at 8:09 PM
Subject: Re: 
To: 

Hi XXX

Upcoming fund drives at both California stations will dispense with  volunteer pledge drive phone rooms. Donations called in during the fund drives will be handled by a corporate call center. The Comnet corporate call center will charge a percentage for each donation they process. The fees were not disclosed. The removal of volunteer phone-answerers from KPFA’s fund drives after 65 years was said to have two reasons:

— the “clogging” of phone lines by donors talking with telephone volunteers about station programming.

— PCI compliance — which relates to the speed with which credit card pledges are entered into the computer and processed. It’s not clear why fund drive room coordinators, who are paid by the station, cannot enter credit card donations in real time on a terminal in the fund drive room.

KPFA’s $20,000+ investment in a new telephone system, worked on for the last three years, was said to be for the primary purpose of improving pledge drive operations.

At a sparsely attended meeting on the evening of July 14th, the building trade union, one of the most conservative of the locals, swamped the SF Labor Council to force the recision of the June Labor Council resolution requesting the reinstatement of labor/community programming in KPFA’s morning drive time. The council voted to rescind the resolution.  The building trade union is known for its support of the Keystone-XL pipeline,  targeting progressive SF Supervisor David Campos in his run for state assembly due to lack of loyalty to real estate developers, and for close relationships with the oil refineries that dot eastern Contra Costa County. The Morning Mix’s Andres Soto has been a thorn in the side of the refineries and was broadcasting regularly about community opposition to refinery expansion.

The Green Party of Alameda County endorsed the statement earlier passed by the San Francisco Green Party. The statement begins:

“Think globally, act locally” is as relevant today as it was in 1915, when Scots biologist, sociologist, and town planner Patrick Geddes wrote Cities in Evolution.  “We need locally produced, locally relevant programming to help us make specific connections between our daily lives and politics and those of the international community and the planet.”.

The full statement can be found here.   

KPFA’s former local station board chair Richard Phelps wrote an article in June laying out concisely some of the history of the programming and labor struggles at the Berkeley station.

 The national headquarters continues to transition towards a ghost town with three of five accounting employees having left their jobs and a fourth expected to do so as well. The workplace investigation into numerous complaints about hostile work conditions in the small office was completed in March, but the report has not been shown to the board of directors nor to the five complainants, only three of whom remain employed by the network. Affiliate director Janis Lane Ewart viewed the report via a directors inspection earlier this month, but has not revealed the contents.

A community town hall meeting will be held on August 2nd at the Berkeley Federation of Unitarian Universalists and live-streamed. 

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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.