Can you believe it? Berthold Reimers, who ignores phone calls and e-mail, and is nowhere to be found for days on end, preaching to his staff about indifference to the customer! He is not just an idiot, he's a remarkably dumb one!
An unvarnished blog that dips into the past and comments on the present of WBAI-FM, a once significant, intelligent New York radio station that for years has suffered chronic abuse from within and now nears extinction. Your comments are welcomed and will not be censored.
So... for inspiration a successful preacher/inspirational speaker/hustler.
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Maxwell
Apt.
~ 'indigopirate'
Here is Steve Brown's response to "Berthold’s mendacious email to staff," as he posted it publicly:
ReplyDeleteTo Anyone Who Still Cares –
Below is Berthold’s email to WBAI staff about the upcoming fund drive. I am astonished to see that he believes that the quote with which he begins that email presents him in a favorable light – when it actually damns him and reveals how he is screwing his staff.
As Berthold quotes in “WHY CUSTOMERS QUIT,”
(1) “14 % of customers leave because of product dissatisfaction” – which in our case means they no longer like our programs (which can no longer be heard anyway, because Berthold has preempted so many of them and turned them into fundraising pitches).
And,
(2) another “68% leave because of an attitude of indifference toward them by some employee.” Well, our employee, Berthold, certainly has shown an “attitude of indifference” towards our members by not fulfilling their premiums, many of which are years in default. Actually, what Berthold displays towards our member is not so much indifference as contempt.
No wonder 14% + 68% (or 82%) of our members have left us. Thanks to Berthold, we are down from ca. 19,000 members to fewer than 6,000. So it would seem that the first sensible step in getting them back would be to get rid of Berthold. Especially since he appears to be falsifying the facts, in his email below, by implying that he will let any producer pitch who has a premium. Well, Gary Null is on record as having 4 top premiums -- offered to WBAI without conditions -- and which will cost the station nothing (that is, the station will not have to buy them or fulfill them). Yet Null is still preempted.
That means WBAI will lose the potential $5,000-$10,000 a day that Null has often raised during his own one-hour program, plus double or triple that amount when each of his fundraising pitches is rebroadcast at several other times during the day (as has usually been the case). Why has Berthold decided to flush as much as $100,000-$250,000 down the drain in this fund drive – an amount that is equal to what Berthold says he expects to make for the entire drive(!)?
How does that make any sense? Berthold is screwing and betraying his staff, who he expects to work their butts off during this drive to earn every dollar, while he cavalierly throws away hundreds of thousands of dollars as if he were flicking the ash from a cigarette.
This is not aimless stupidity on Berthold’s part. It is intentional malice. And I assume that the same goes for our Executive Director and PNB majority, who are not only allowing Berthold to do this, but are abetting him. Can anyone doubt that this is part of a deliberate plan to sell WBAI … by first selling it down the road?
1) Your enthusiasm for Mr Null as an exemplar of probity aside, I assume you're aware that the 'statistics' cited are simply inspirational nonsense, thus particularly well suited to Mr Reimers, WBAI, and Pacifica.
Delete2) Are you under the impression any of these people are capable of anything resembling coherent thought, let alone 'intentional malice' or a 'deliberate plan’?
In short: Shirley, you jest :)
~ ‘indigopirate’
With the Davis & Bates team, expect plenty of hocus pocus items on offer.
ReplyDeleteReimers claim of spending many days and nights getting premiums out is hysterical, considering he is missing in action. Even his good pal Mitch Cohen doesn't corroborate that claim.
No matter what Null may bring in financially, it's better he be gone from WBAI once and for all. To put his potentially dangerous products on the market is morally inexcusable for any amount of money. If money is all that matters and not listeners' health and safety, then WBAI has no right to make any moral claims on any issue, political, health or otherwise. Brown obviously only cares about money, which makes him morally bankrupt.
SDL
(JustAListener)
ReplyDeleteReimers should write for "The Onion".
But at this point he's just a symptom of the rot of Pacifica.
Then Steve brown says about null's premiums: "the station will not have to buy them or fulfill them".
Really? So if someone pays $125.00 for a Null premium the station gets $125.00?
So why did the cessation of Null fundraising coincide with Null having to sell off his furniture?!
The past few fundraisers come in around $8000 a day and yet there is an insistence on projecting the unrealistic figure of $12,000 a day. The lurching from fundraiser to fundraiser can not continue. The programming needs to be changed in order to attract listeners and the programmers need a fair chance of getting listeners by not getting pre-empted so often. That is why I am supporting the idea of ongoing fundraising within the context of a program. Instead of long monotonous pitching which scares away listeners, a variety of pitches which fits the program's format would be used.
ReplyDeleteThe dispute over Gary Null has to be decided one way or another. It is hypocritical to be criticizing Gary Null while taking his money. A station that doesn't even have phone service at the moment should be a little more open to working something out.
You are being too reserved, I think—Pacifica's firing of Reimers is way overdue and the listener-supporters are owed total openness in working out the damage he has done with the Foundation's help.
DeleteYour suggestion re a change in programming and fundraising approaches is excellent and, amazingly, a reversion. It was proven to work decades ago, when it was Pacifica's modus operandi.
As I have stated before, I have become highly skeptical as to WBAI/Pacifica's chances of survival, because too much time has been wasted on self-serving activity. The listenership is gone, the damage is beyond repair.