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
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
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 -“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
After two wildly differing financial statements were issued by Pacifica in less than a week, a third version has now come out disappearing last week’s inconvenient surplus.
For good measure, the new statement changes the listener support numbers issued on August 17th for every single month from October 2014 to July 2015, sans one, and claims “double-bookings” in 9 of the last 10 months.
Continue reading Alterna KPFK July Income Statement Number 3
