Suppose a program has captured your interest and you have spent an hour or so listening to it, but the station cuts it off before it reaches its intended end. What does that tell you about the station's concern for its listeners? What does that tell you about a station that constantly asks you for your money and, in doing so, assures you that you are important, that this is your radio station?
Well, the sad fact is that WBAI has stagnated and sunk to the depths of incompetence. It now has victims where it once had devoted listeners: people of all stripes who hungered for and received intelligent programs covering a wide spectrum of subjects.
Before it was dumbed down and narrowly aimed at a small segment of the area's population, WBAI was a real community station, but self-serving abusers have given a new meaning to the term, "community." Now, in their limited minds, it only covers "black and brown" people whose knowledge of the world around them is a blurry funhouse mirror, far removed from reality. This is what allows the likes of Michael Haskins, Pamela Brown, tobacco advocate John Kane, reparations rally-rouser Ron Daniels and members of the newly formed Murillo puppet troupe and side show to spew their nonsense throughout the week. It is also what compels intelligent listeners to feed their thoughts elsewhere.
Here is Michael Haskins, one of Pacifica's most pedestrian pundits, opening Murillo's can of worms on Tuesday morning, June, 23, 2015. A velcroed WBAI staffer, he has spent about 30 years on the payroll without grasping the fundamentals of broadcasting. But he's a gofer not a loafer, and easily led by people like Murillo, Null and anyone whose posterior he can moisten to his own advantage.
Listen as he demonstrates his ineptitude. First, he cuts the previous program short in the middle of someone's statement, then he fumbles to get out a station break and introduce his own hopelessly harebrained show. He would not have lasted a day at WBAI when it was run professionally.
Matt Birkhold, who I think is of a sepia hue (if not a male Mimi), tells Pam Brown what it really means to be white in America.
Painful.
I’ve said it before and shall say it again – WWRL. It didn’t work there and a more rabid version won’t work at WBAI. However, WBAI only needs just enough people to buy just enough junk to pay a minimum of bills and postpone or slide on others.
ReplyDeleteWhat people really focus on enough is that you have one of the best (maybe best) spots on the dial (99.5 FM at 50KW) and simply can’t get enough donations to break even. Nothing is more telling than that as to how small an audience they attract. It’s really that simple. Add the age and health factor into the mix and you’re in decline.
Haskins? Who cares? He’s nothing but a lucky dope. WBAI is the only station where he will ever have a job. When WBAI is gone or cleaned up, his radio career is over.
The Pam and Matt type ignorant crap is frightening, but not how you intend. Look at it in the inverse as I do. This is the kind of shit that makes white people hate blacks. It’s the black version of KKK ranting about “lazy niggers.” Same ignorant generalizations painted in a different color. Separationism is all it is.
Another telling thing is how all the other mass shootings don’t mean a thing to these self-absorbed scumbags. They have no interest in people being killed, only selected people being killed, so they can get political and financial mileage out of others’ suffering. It’s time to pull out the Olympic scorecards and play Rate the Slaughter….
Ultimately, these are the kind of people that can never be happy or take any joy out of life. They are miserable and shall remain thus.
SDL
Oops. Should be "don't focus on enough"
DeleteSDL
Leave Haskins alone - he is a hard-working dude who found a good gig. Considering the backgrounds of all the scum that work there, he can have that job. Murillo, Keyes, Reimers, Ryan, Rhodes, Knight and Marksman are and were crooks. As said earlier, they can all go to HELL!
ReplyDeleteArmand DiMele has passed away - RIP! Curious to know what people thought of him!
ReplyDeleteThis to me, sounds like that guy they had on the morning show yesterday .
ReplyDeleteGo to you tube and type in ,
In living color Oswald Bates Keep your butt in school .
Armand DiMele was so important to the mental health field that not a mention of his DeMise is mentioned in any print publication anywhere.
ReplyDeleteKGT
Michael GeeWhiz's bungling of the morning show gives WBAI its charm and uniqueness.
ReplyDeleteKGT
A thought popped into my head. I often say the listeners are aging and will start dying off. However, in the past year and a half, the on-air personalities are starting to die off. Imagine if Null should die? Holy crap!
ReplyDeleteSDL
The Grim Reaper must be a disgusted listener.
DeleteAngels Weep.
ReplyDeleteI liked Armand Demiele, a lot! WBAI website has a good biographic article about him. I was planning to drop $150 and talk to him for an hour about my artwork. No other shrink's opinion I really want to hear regarding that.
ReplyDeleteSome of his broadcasts were tiresome, primarily due to their self-indulgence, but the key to realize with him or any other on the air psychologist is that you can't read your way to becoming a good psychologist, you need face time for that, and like with certain other things, how and what you actually do to make the magic happen is not what you think or say happens. So, both Freud and Jung were awesome clinicians who could read you like a book, but you wouldn't get that, or learn their technique from reading 95% of their theoretical writings, that most aficionados read. Like with certain things, they themselves can't tell you exactly what they do and how they do it, but if you observe them in action enough, it will rub off on you.
Having said all that, Demiele did not do psychotherapy on the air and his on air advice was typical of the type of show that he was doing, which should be taken on the level of personal philosophy show.
re: biographic article about Armand DiMele, it is a plagiarized rehash of his Wikipedia page.
DeleteKGT
Thank you, BB. I knew little about him other than that he loved jazz—so, that spoke well for him. :) I'm not sure that his program was of a nature Pacifica should carry, but, from what I gather, he was good for the station.
DeleteI wasn't crazy about De Miele's show but I rather liked him. He seemed like a sensitive, decent sort of person. And he actually listened to people.
DeleteSpeaking of which: I didn't think anyone could talk over his interviewees more than Gary Null does until I heard Richard Wolff's interview with Joe Donnelly this morning. Professor Wolff might be a smart man, but I think he learned his people skills from economics textbooks!
I think it was Henrik Ibsen who observed that if everything you know was learned from books, you know nothing at all. Or something like that.
DeleteThis evening’s PNB meeting was called for consideration of the proposed pilot/experimental affiliate limited underwriting program which has been under active development and in active discussion with and within Pacifica and its relevant boards for something on the order of eighteen months.
ReplyDeleteThe question has previously been referred back and forth, and tonight’s meeting was specifically to have been for a straight up-or-down vote.
John Proffitt had indicated at the recent in-person meeting the importance of the pilot program, that he was convinced it was wholly appropriate for Pacifica’s mission and that it was vitally important both for Pacifica and for its affiliated community radio stations in respect of their missions and of their financial survival.
At tonight’s meeting Ursula Ruedenburg emphasized repeatedly that there could be no further delays, that there must be a decision, and that any further delay would be, de facto, a down vote for the proposed pilot program.
John Proffitt emphasized that same point.
It was clear that a large number if not in fact nearly all of the members of the PNB hadn’t troubled themselves to actually rouse themselves to read the proposal and they asked many questions that were irrelevant to the actual proposal, and/or reflected a total lack of understanding of the proposal – a point Rudenburg made with some force, particularly given the urgency both she and Proffitt had assigned to the need for an immediate up-or-down vote.
So… surprise surprise surprise, after lengthy faux-parliamentary confusions the vote was to send the proposal back for further study, discussion, and possible amendment.
Some day…
This was of course precisely what Proffitt and Ruedenburg had stressed must not happen, that there must be a final vote, up or down.
There was a brief moment at the very end of the meeting when Proffitt was heard attempting to speak, but was apparently cut off.
It seemed fairly clear that he was exasperated and angry.
Of course, I’m only human, perhaps I misinterpret.
~ ‘indigopirate’