Originally posted September 7, 2014

Berkeley-At Thursday night’s PNB meeting, the national board approved on somewhat nebulous terms a loan to Pacifica Foundation Radio of $156,000 from Southern California real estate magnate Aris Anagnos, the employer of board member Lydia Brazon. The reason for the loan was the payment of employee taxes for severance checks for 19 employees laid off from NY station WBAI in July of 2013. The loan is against WBAI’s future revenues, with $25,000 payments due after every station fund drive for the next year. The loan would cancel out for the next year a significant part of the potential cost savings from the hoped-for relocation of WBAI’s transmitter and antenna from its prohibitively expensive spot atop the Empire State Building. Continue reading Racking Up The Debts →

Originally posted August 30, 2014

Berkeley-When local activists blocked the Zim Piraeus from unloading the majority of their freight at the Port of Oakland to protest Israeli massacres in Gaza City, KPFA board operator, apprenticeship program coordinator and LSB staff rep Frank Sterling wanted Pacifica’s Berkeley station KPFA to be there chronicling the port blockade in real time. Sterling’s proposal to produce the coverage, which finally aired the morning before the 4-day community/labor blockade began, underwent a difficult internal battle at the station, that included a rantby Save KPFA-affiliated local board member Jack Kurzweil that the proposal to cover the demo was “wrongheaded” and an initial veto by management. Sterling went public with his distress in a heartfelt email where he said KPFA was breaking his heart, and after emails from the community flooded the station, the decision was reversed. Save KPFA-affiliated local board member Mark Hernandez expressed anger at Sterling for his efforts describing the appeal to the community as “not a good career move” in a Facebook discussion group. Sterling is paid for four hours a week of operational work. Continue reading Bad Career Moves →

Originally posted August 25, 2014

Berkeley-Conflicted attorneys Siegel and Yee are preventing workers at LA station KPFK from going ahead with a recall election for elected staff rep Rodrigo Argueta, whose actions on the PNB have not pleased many of his constituents. Despite a filed petition with the required number of signatures from paid and unpaid staff at KPFK, the law  firm is preventing the recall election on the grounds that Argueta is not accountable for how he votes on the national board. Siegel and Yee’s trumped up letter of retainer as counsel is dated prior to the board discussion and board member Hank Lamb has disputed that the board ever authorized it.  Continue reading Kangaroos Instead of Audits →

Originally posted August 16, 2014

Berkeley- The rogue board occupied itself on Thursday with a midnight-special lynching, picking the cheery time of 11:45pm EST to devote a solid 12 minutes to voting on a meaningless statement of censure to KPFT director Richard Uzzell and Affiliates Director Heather Gray. The censure gained the support of only half the members of the board (11 out of 22), divided entirely along factional lines, and prevented the objects of the “censure motion” from speaking in their own defense, with Uzzell being shouted down and Gray receiving an abrupt 90 seconds prior to the vote, at which point she was shushed into silence. The vote was followed by a shrieking match audible on the audio, during which unelected chair Wilkinson implores former PNB vice-chair Bill Croiser, the volunteer streamer, to “turn off the stream”. The board oddly reversed the normal schedule, holding the closed session at the open session time and the open session at the closed session time, presumably to do the censuring at the latest possible hour of the evening. Audio released by Berkeley’s Save KPFA faction omits the hysterical screaming match and the shouting down of Uzzell and Gray (the entire audio is available here).  The manipulated  snippet from Save KPFA features an amnesia-laden statement from KPFA programmer Brian Edwards-Tiekert that suing Pacifica is bad behavior – Edwards-Tiekert apparently forgetting about the multiple lawsuits and grievances (at least 8) that he, himself, was a party too. Uzzell’s tongue-in-cheek response can be found here. Continue reading Nothing But Shrieking →

Originally posted August 10, 2014

Berkeley-As rumors of the intended sale of Pacifica stations have spread widely, members of the rogue majority (with the exception of Houston director Hank Lamb who has been upfront about his desire to sell off NY station WBAI), have insisted the rumors are untrue. But when given the opportunity to put their money where their mouths are, unelected board chair Wilkinson and treasurer Edwards-Tiekert declined. At KPFA’s local station board meeting earlier today, an advisory motion by United for Community Radio-affiliated board member Dave Welsh (former Ramparts editor and SF Labor Council delegate) requesting a policy “that under no circumstances will the broadcast licenses of the five stations that comprise the Pacifica radio network be put up for sale or lease”, treasurer Edwards-Tiekert substituted and passed a motion replacing it with a request to the national board to “to explore and prioritize all options and sell a license as a last resort“. Continue reading Selling Stations →

Originally posted August 3, 2014

Berkeley- At the Pacifica National Board’s July 31st meeting, noticed by chair Wilkinson as a “special meeting” due to “urgent business” and “a report being prepared by CFO Salvador”, the rogue board majority pushed through a massive change in the executive director job description. The rewrite by board member Lydia Brazon, who has been a fixture in Pacifica’s dysfunctional personnel processes for the last 15 years, claimed to prioritize fundraising, but actually removed supervisory authority over the CFO and all accounting and financial staff from the executive director. The old and new job descriptions can be found here and here.  Continue reading Help Not Wanted →

Originally posted July 31, 2014

Berkeley-Pacifica Radio, the nation’s oldest and first listener-sponsored noncommercial radio network  finds itself on a precipice as FM radio moves steadily towards increased digital distribution. The network’s Sound Exchange discount, which permits the financially troubled network to stream copyrighted music on the Internet , will not continue for long if Pacifica does not recover grant funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The 2006 Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) established Sound Exchange to collect fees and discount programs available to CPB-funded stations insulate the network from additional operating costs. Continue reading The Day The Music Died →

Originally posted July 25, 2014

Berkeley- At the Pacifica National Board meeting on Thursday night, the final seven bylaws amendments proposed by national board members bit the dust, with only one surviving of the dozen proposed – an amendment that would allow a 2nd bylaws amendment process later this year (because the first one was so successful). Continue reading Running Round A Hamster Wheel →

Originally posted July 20, 2014

Berkeley- Houston listener representative Hank Lamb has introduced a motion to the Pacifica National Board to remove Margy Wilkinson as the PNB board chair and two-time interim executive director of Pacifica Radio. Lamb excoriated Wilkinson in an email he made public saying she had abused her authority as chair, withheld documents from the board, forced illegitimate votes, and “blackmailed the board”. Lamb also stated “Our majority is surreptitiously holding secret meetings to determine outcomes of official meetings in advance and illegitimately controlling agendas and acting in concert to prevent equal Directors a fair opportunity to have their issues discussed and solutions found”. Continue reading Removing The Unelected Chair →

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. Continue reading No ED Until The Bad PR Stops →