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
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
Berkeley -“There have been so many grievances filed it will make your head spin” were the words of one of KPFK-FM’s two SAG-AFTRA union stewards on Friday September 4th, a week after the LA entertainment union stated it was taking Pacifica Radio into arbitration alleging union-busting and contract violations. The handling of staff reductions has been an unmitigated disaster, with laid off employees receiving notices days late with incorrect job titles on them, Pacifica not applying for promised workshare benefits until one day before all employees were shifted to half-time, and employer-provided cell phones shut off this week with no notification. Continue reading Grievances To Make Your Head Spin
The state of KPFK’s finances gets curiouser and curiouser.
This morning, KPFK GM Leslie Radford emailed that the $134,000 bequest from the Rosen Estate to KPFK, which she announced to both KPFK’s finance committee and local station board, does not exist.
Update September 8th: The bequest check was for $21,000 dollars. Received July 31st. Deposited August 13th. There is no explanation for why KPFK general manager Leslie Radford ran around for two weeks after the check was deposited declaring it was for $134,000.
September 2, 2015 – by Karen Ocamb
Since 1959, KPFK, the Pacifica radio station in Los Angeles, has broadcast a wide range of liberal and hard-left-leaning programming under the rubric of multiculturalism. KPFK, for instance, airs the only LGBT-specific broadcast in the Greater L.A. area—IMRU, produced by award-winning out journalist Steve Pride.
But constant rebellion doesn’t necessarily entail respect among the programmers and community board members of the commercial-free, listener-sponsored station, so Pride created a Hate Speech Prevention policy. It took seven months to pass, but the interim policy was in effect on Aug. 15-16 when KPFK aired an unchallenged homophobic rant in which a psychiatrist compared homosexuality to bestiality, among other offensive comments. Continue reading Frontiers Mag: KPFK Airs Homophobic Rant As The Station Faces Financial Failure
Enclosed is a copy of an alternate KPFK financial statement issued by GM Leslie Radford to the local board on August 17th. Radford states she received the return from “the National Office”, so this document demonstrates the time stamp on the “double-booking of April and May income” said to be the cause of the surprisingly profitable income statement that confused the National Finance Committee on August 25th, is between August 18 and August 24th, after KPFK’s latest temporary bookkeeper was terminated for embezzling.
Pacifica released a preliminary income statement for the 10 month period from October 1, 2014 to July 31, 2015.
The income statement, presuming the network’s famously bad accounting records can be relied on, shows the station’s Los Angeles unit KPFK-FM, which just placed every employee on half-time and laid off three due to a “dire financial crisis,” with an operating surplus of $182,000 for the year and the largest amount of listener support in the network, over $800,000 more than the nearest competing division, Berkeley’s KPFA.
Continue reading Pacifica Releases Financial Statement Showing KPFK With $182K Surplus At July 31
This sound clip from the August 17th KPFK staff meeting includes the announcement of the reduction of a KPFK staff to part-time and three layoffs, with staff reactions, including the union steward.
This sound clip comes from an August 17th KPFK staff meeting and contains a description of the bookkeeping problems at KPFK, including embezzlement and staff reactions to the news.
Berkeley -The severe financial distress at KPFK-FM, which resulted on Monday in an announcement by Margy Wilkinson-appointed general manager Leslie Radford of the immediate reduction of all KPFK employees to 50% work schedules and the layoff of three employees, has been accompanied by growing evidence of a year and a half of financial mismanagement of the station, Pacifica’s highest earner as recently as 2013. KPFK abruptly fired its second consecutive temporary business manager after finding out about monthly checks issued to an outside person by the business manager, along with unauthorized cash advances never paid back. The business manager was personally hired and trained by former CFO Raul Salvador to “fix” the accounting mess at KPFK in the fall of 2014, and per a motion passed by the national board in 2014, reported directly to Salvador rather than the station’s general manager. Continue reading Two Credit Cards Are Better Than One
