Tag Archives: roy of hollywood

Pacifica in Exile Newsletters

Sunshine In Los Angeles

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Berkeley – A turbulent 21 months at KPFK in Los Angeles has come to an end with a change in the station’s general manager position made on February 27, effective immediately. Leslie Radford was hired in May of 2015 to be KPFK’s general manager by outgoing IED Margy Wilkinson on Wilkinson’s last day. The hire was against the wishes of incoming executive director John Proffitt, who was literally driving from Texas when Wilkinson made the hire. Proffitt had asked Wilkinson to allow him to interview the KPFK candidates, but she did not do so and hired Radford, a former Siegel/Brazon-affiliated national board member, to the KPFK job.  Continue reading Sunshine In Los Angeles →

Pacifica in Exile Newsletters

Winning Isn’t Everything

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December 26, 2016

For Immediate Release

Winning Isn’t Everything

Berkeley – After disenfranchising NY station WBAI of 75% of their national board representation, Pacifica’s national board held elections for two 2017 affiliate directors. The two affiliate directors will be the tie-breaking votes on the 2017 PNB after the independents won resounding election victories in Los Angeles, Houston and New York. Incumbent affiliate directors Efia Nwangaza and Temba Tshibanda both voted not to seat the directors chosen by NY’s newly elected delegates, who they feared would not vote for them to retain their affiliate seats in 2017. Sole NY representative Cerene Roberts brought motions twice last week to eliminate elected NY directors not affilated with her NY branch of the Siegel/Brazon faction. A legal letter sent by LA attorney Jerry Manpearl to the board prior to their second vote to disenfranchise WBAI can be seen here.  Continue reading Winning Isn’t Everything →

Articles

Petition To Restore Something’s Happening

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On_The_Air

Restore “Something’s Happening” Hours

Hosted by Roy Tuckman

 

We the signatories, are petitioning KPFK’s General Manager Leslie Radford, Interim Program Director Alan Minsky and the Local Station Board to fully restore “Something’s Happening” show hours hosted by Roy Tuckman.

The station has received many complaints and distressing calls and emails from its listeners and subscribers expressing their dissatisfaction about recent cuts to the show.

The show was originally broadcast from midnight to 6:00am Monday nights/Tuesday mornings through Thursday nights/Friday mornings but since January 11th, only from 3-6 am.  The show had the highest share from midnight to 1:00am , which is the percentage of radio listeners who are listening to the station. Roy’s program was the only post-midnight show in the entire 5-station Pacifica Network to raise a significant amount of support during fund drives , which no other Pacifica station has been able to do until this  day.

Roy Tuckman has been working on staff at KPFK for 44 years after volunteering for the previous 10 years. He has been a paid programmer for 39 years. He is a staunch supporter of democratic media at KPFK. The station had no all-night weeknight programmer for the first 18 years of broadcasting until Roy was asked to try out the position in 1977.

Roy’s prize-winning show exemplified the spirit of the Pacifica mission and should be fully restored.

Respectfully,

King Reilly M.D. KPFK listener and subscriber

Please sign the petition here to tell the KPFK GM and IPD to restore Something’s Happening’s show hours.

 

Pacifica in Exile Newsletters

Landslide in Los Angeles

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dove

Berkeley-Pacifica’s 2015 board elections ended with a bang when the KPFK election delivered a huge supermajority (17 out of 24 seats) for the Committee to Strengthen KPFK/Candidate Slate group in a stinging rebuke for the majority Siegel/Brazon faction. The last time any Pacifica local board had a supermajority was more than five years ago. Continue reading Landslide in Los Angeles →

Pacifica in Exile Newsletters

Zulu Sex Therapy

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dove

Berkeley-Notes left on a conference room white board overnight at KPFK-FM in Los Angeles outlined GM Leslie Radford’s plans to replace the station’s longstanding and popular Roy of Hollywood overnight program Something’s Happening with programs on sex, therapy, and poetry labeled “Zulu” and “Friday Night Fights”. The contents of the white board can be seen here (picture below). While it isn’t clear why Radford would leave the information exposed except to create a hostile work environment, the proposed changes target the most lucrative of the station’s evening programs. The proposed change would reduce revenues, delaying if not finishing off entirely the station’s broken promise to SAG-AFTRA union staff that they would be returned to normal work schedules. Continue reading Zulu Sex Therapy →

Audio

“We Want Him Off The Air”

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In a candidate forum, Siegel/Brazon candidate Chuck Anderson said the station “absolutely did not want” to keep paid programmers, called overnight programmer Roy Tuckman “goy of hollywood” and said “we absolutely want him off the air”.

Tuckman, who goes by the nom de plume Roy of Hollywood runs KPFK’s overnight programming from Monday to Thursday from midnight to 6am and is the only Pacifica programmer nationwide to substantively monetize the overnight hours.

Anderson mis-stated numbers: 70% of KPFK’s budget is not for “paid programmers”, it’s for salaries as a whole including engineers, membership/subscriptions staffers, managers, IT, traffic etc. The station, when fully staffed, has about 9 FTE for paid programming, about 1/2 of the payroll.