Are LMAs in bloom again?

It was 2013, a year during which Summer Reese was Pacifica's iED and rumblings of dissatisfaction could be heard across the Hudson and beyond. It came from unhappy staffers and listener supporters, and lit a growing demand for the removal of Berthold Reimers. Ms. Reese came to WBAI, looked at the problem first-hand, listened to complaints, and took appropriate action: Reimers was fired.

Cronies stepped forward and began making outrageously baseless excuses for this man, who may well be the worst General Manager in the station's history. Then the Pacifica National Board's corrupt majority used its authority to join the apologists. Summer Reese's sensible decision was overturned and she became this Board faction's next target.

Earlier that year, Reimers' ineptitude and ongoing failure to grasp even the basic principle of Lou Hill's original concept had brought the station to a point where an LMA seemed a reasonable option, short of selling WBAI outright.

A Local Marketing Agreement is, briefly put, a contract in which a company (Pacifica) agrees to lease and operate a broadcasting station from its owner—a time-buy, of sorts. Designed to give the lessee an opportunity to reconstitute a broken operation, LMAs are akin to bankruptcies, the idea being that the reins will be handed back to a healthier owner (lessor).

The concern is that LMAs have been known to become a first step in the outright sale of the station, a prospect that spawns protest from people who see such an arrangement as a deliberate spark generated by a faction of inside schemers who have long been making nefarious moves to regress Pacifica to a West Coast operation, dumping such vital locations as NYC and Washington, D.C.

Here. for your perusal and enlightenment, are two of the better proposals that were received in 2013: One from Auricle Communications, the other from MNN (Manhattan Neighborhood Network), a well-run New York Community TV alternative.