Murillo's road to nowhere?

This morning at 7, as WBAI approaches yet another fundraising marathon, the station's interim PD, Mario Murillo summoned the elusive Berthold Reimers to the rented uptown studio, where a clueless Michael Haskins holds forth at that hour.

The purpose was to spend an hour talking about the forthcoming drive and taking listener calls. Reasonable people might well have expected to hear Murillo and Reimers update what little has seeped out regarding the current financial situation, and tell us what was going to be done about it.

No such luck. Again, this was an hour of mostly meaningless blather where one had to read between the lines in order to catch a glimpse of the real situation.

As so often before, I naïvely hoped we would hear what the new iPD has in store for the program schedule. This PD du jour has been with WBAI before and there were indications that he was ready to tackle an acknowledged series of mis-steps. Thus, one had every right to expect that there would be an initial weeding process to at least initiate program improvement.

Again, that turns out to have been foolish optimism. The truly awful host/producers will, apparently, not be shown the door—in fact, some of them received praise!

Murillo indicates his displeasure with so many programs being imported from outside sources, and he agrees with a caller who bemoans the lack of interaction with the "community". However, he does not seem to feel any need to expand that community, except for adding an emphasis on Central and South America. In other words, WBAI should stay on its narrowed path.

He wants to see more family business take place via social media rather than at 99.5. When the "Talk Back" program is mentioned, Murillo dates it back to the Nineties, when he was the station's Public Affairs person. The truth is that "Talk Back"—under the same name—goes back to the Sixties, when he was a kid.

Reimers mumbles his preference for the written word. This is the alleged GM who rarely is heard on the air, doesn't answer or even acknowledge e-mail, and is loath to take phone calls, because there are "crazy people" out there.

When a caller brings up the station's overwhelming emphasis on all things black and brown—a bias not readily missed by any regular listener—Haskins predictably goes on the defense. As you may have observed, Michael G. Haskins' horizon is quite narrow and dark. He has made it quite clear by his actions and words that membership in WBAI's "community" is determined by ones racial origin. Well, he does allow for the occasional black-by-choice character, like Mimi Rosenberg, who often says the right things, but in such a way that they promptly exit out the other ear.

Listen as Haskins pretends not to understand what the caller is saying, and note Murillo's reaction. And they still wonder why the audience has shrunk down to a call-in few?

Finally, there's this clip, which I have included just to show how utterly clueless the $100,000.00 a year Berthold Reimers is.

I hope you caught Reimers citing premium/product delinquency figures. Remember when he and his cronies attributed his first two years of invisibility to his having worked on the "premiums problem"? He and his inner circle claimed that he had all but put an end to the shipping arrears. That fantasy was later echoed by Mitchel Cohen and others who fought against Reimers' firing. Now we hear him mumble that a later 12,000 item backlog of unshipped "gifts" has been reduced to a mere 3,900! In other words, we were lied to, again. and this is practically on the eve of a new marathon. Not very encouraging for those who plan to send in money after the iPad lottery deadline.

You can still hear this hour in its entirety by going to the station's archive at WBAI.org and selecting the 7 AM entry for October 2. 

What do you think? Am I being too critical?