Saturday, January 25, 2014

CPB? What CPB??

Have you noticed that the station recently started airing government-supplied public service announcements? The first time I heard one, it occurred to me that WBAI's incompetent management was—at the last minute, of course—trying to make up for past failures to meet requirements. I also noted with interest that some of these spots contradict the "teachings" of Null and other station quacks.
Today, Andrea Katz, one of the salaried albatrosses, confirmed my assumption by posting a message to the "public affairs" hosts. Read it (below) and see if you agree that it bares a certain desperation and confirms a history of neglect. 

If the CPB attempts to verify whatever this woman sends them, the agency might just stumble across some interesting and more serious infractions. We can start with the selling of air time to labor unions, running a scam merchandizing operation, collecting money without delivering the products purchased, and that's just for starters. 


Null, anyone?

Here's Andrea Katz's note of January 22, 1014:
Hi - 

This email is for those of you who host public affairs shows - the rest of you can delete this now!
I am working on a report for the CPB but unfortunately I do not have the daily program descriptions from the archives to export the data from. It seems that there has not been a regular practice of posting them.


Bob Hennelly will be contacting you soon about updating this policy and getting anyone who does not have an account to enter them, access to do so. Please send me any and/or all program descriptions that you have from July 1, 2013 through to today. A single sentence is all that is needed.


It is urgent as we have a CPB deadline to meet and your effort to help out would be appreciated enormously, besides being critical to our compliance.


Stay Warm - 


Kind regards, 

Andrea Katz 
Interim Development Director

1 comment:

  1. My, oh my, talk about revelations ! Gary Null and Associates, and Democracy Now! Productions, and their relationships with the Pacifica foundation is likely a matter worthy of investigative journalism. The ascendance of Summer Reese and the gullibility of whatever progressives and left wingers are associating with the Pacifica's board of directors is staggering. Gary Null has been a restaurateur longer than he has been associating with the BAI and Amy Goodman was BAI's news director for 10 years. Andrew Phillips has an interesting role - he claims to have discovered Amy Goodman and helped her launch her own show and he also claims to have helped Null launch his so-called "progressive radio network", apparently both, Phillips and DeRienzo helped Null launch his internet radio network, except that Null appears to have gotten rid of them so as to maintain the sole proprietary control over the internet radio network. And then there is the revelation that Andrew Phillip0s an the KPFK management have encouraged and pushed Christine Blosdale to raise funds by marketing her clients work as premiums, and then there is the matter of, I think I saw, a salary of ten grand or so, that Andrew Phillips has received in his tenure as the BAI's Interim Manager for five or six weeks that he was there. That's a staggering amount for a station that can not pay its bills, though I would like to know, how much the station managers at the WNYC and WABC earn. When I first heard Andrew Phillips, it occurred to me that he is trying to turn the BAI and Pacifica into a Euro-style radio outlet in the mold of BBC, but a lot more progressive. I immediately realized that this effort is doomed, since he is not dealing with a European, but an American audience, and its cultural mores and tastes are quite different. I also thought that Andrew Phillips is a an outsider and a newcomer, and as an outsider he is not aware of the resistance that he will face fro the BAI's and Pacifica's staff and managers. The latest revelations, however, show that contrary to my initial impressions, Phillips is not at all an outsider to BAI and Pacifica, and was not aversive to hawking premiums to his audience in his own time as a manager at KPFK. So, he should have known better, that BAI and Pacifica would not support him in his endeavors, and that Summer Reese would stab him in the back. The question is, who was supporting him and what led him to believe that he could over-rule the Gary Null and the inertia at BAI? I would like to know who Steve Brown is, his source of wealth and his relationship with Null. Are they partners? Comrades in arms? Allies? One subservient to the other? Another interesting issue is the nature and background of the Pacifica's governing board, that has let its' stations become a fertile ground for the opportunists, who make their money by preaching and hawking their wares to the lunatic fringe among the audience.

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