Global Village founder Betto Arcos announced his last day on-air at KPFK on September 29th, one day after colleague Derek Rath did the same. Arcos founded KPFK’s Global Village music strip in 1997.
Doors drummer John Densmore called in to say goodbye to Betto during the broadcast. Continue reading Dominos Fall at KPFK: Betto Arcos Announces Last Show Today
Berkeley – Several KPFK employees were greeted Monday morning with anonymous letters in their company mailboxes with a September 23rd postmark from Santa Clarita, CA. The anonymous letters contained an email sent from their fomer interim general manager and long-time operations manager Zuberi Fields to interim ED Margy Wilkinson and CFO Raul Salvador. The email, dated December 15, 2014, consists of an inquiry into the costs of layoffs for a number of employees specified by name as: Mark Maxwell, Grant Fitzgibbon, Daniel Fritz, Rita Neyter Skiles, Bridgette Ramasodi, Janee Taylor, Ian Masters, Ali Lexa Al-Hilali, Kevin Walker, Margaret Prescod, Sonali Kolhatkar, Bipasha Shom and Margaret Le Pique. Continue reading How To Terrorize Your Employees
Berkeley– 22 months after scheming to depose her predecessor and replace her with herself and secretly setting up a nonprofit corporation to scoop up one or more Pacifica broadcasting licenses or other assets, Pacifica’s lame duck board of directors is facing the consequences and moving to mortgage real estate. In a startling national board meeting last night, reality overcame fraudulent financial statements trumpeting a “profit” for the year and chirpy election propaganda from Wilkinson’s faction sent out just a day prior. Continue reading Margy Wilkinson’s Pacifica Skids Off The Rails
The Progressive Radio Network broadcast an hour discussion of Pacifica in 2015 on September 22nd. You can listen to it here or on the prn.org site. Continue reading Mid-Week Update: KPFK/PRN
Berkeley–Global Village host Derek Rath was the latest long-time staffer to blast KPFK and Pacifica management, saying in a September 8th email that “you are either not thinking straight or you are trying to bring down the station”. Rath’s whole email in which he describes management and the boards as “out of sync with reality” can be read here. Continue reading Not Thinking Straight
Berkeley- The news coming out of KPFK in Los Angeles is muddled and episodic, but Pacifica in Exile will try to relay what information is available.
GM Radford, responding to last night’s revelation of a proposed station shut down on October 1st, sent out a chirpy “go team” type to station staff this morning, detailing that the station would go into a “no-premiums-at-all” minidrive on September 24th that would continue until they raised $30,000 and then they would stop the fund drive and re-start it on October 5th with the goal of $750,000, $175,000 more than the station raised in the 5-week fund drive that concluded on August 21st. Radford instructed each programmer to pitch “four times an hour” during the mini-drive. Continue reading KPFK: The Plan, Such As It Is
This email came out of KPFK today. It attributes GM Radford saying that KPFK, the largest radio signal west of the Mississippi, may go dark on October 1st. According to Pacifica’s financial statements, the station generated $2.7 million dollars in revenue through July 31st of this year, with an additional 19 days of fund drive in August. Continue reading KPFK: The Whole Thing May Be Closing Down
The California Employment Development Department has denied Pacifica’s application for work sharing benefits for employees slashed to half-time due to Pacifica’s failure to negotiate with SAG-AFTRA prior to implementing reductions. Continue reading EDD Denies Pacifica Worksharing Benefits Due to Union Busting
Berkeley – Pacifica executive director John Proffitt has resigned less than a week after returning from a three week vacation.
Proffitt held the position for four months. Continue reading Coup Redux
Berkeley – Employees at KPFK, Pacifica’s LA station currently embroiled in arbitration with the SAG-AFTRA union, were startled when general manager Leslie Radford handed out “personnel action forms” on September 9th. In the signature line for the executive director, Lydia Brazon signed her own name, without changing the title or indicating she is not Pacifica’s executive director. An example is here. It has been cleansed of any personally identifying information to protect the employee who provided it. The employee in question, as with most union employees in the SAG-AFTRA bargaining unit, refused to sign the form. Continue reading Lydia Brazon, Executive Director
