THEY DESTROYED IT AND NOW THEY WANT A MEDAL!
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.
Did anybody notice that WBAI "covered the war in Yugoslavia"? Did anybody hear these clowns tell ex-WBAI'er the truth? Is King Kong grinning?
ReplyDeleteThat looks more like a horders home than a studio.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, one thing I notice about Credico is that he has both become WBAI's spokesman as well as a total liar.
Too bad the ESRT didn't give a comment and decimate WBAI's claims.
SDL
I think the departed audience made a pretty good case against those claims.
DeleteYes, Credico is a shameless sell-out—that earned him his spokesman status (not to mention, air time). I wonder what's behind his leaving Bates in the dust? Notice that he has definitely taken a back seat—he doesn't even intrude on the infomercials now.
I bet the intake from the current beg-a-thon is too low to mention.
BTW, who is the guy in the blue shirt seated in the mess they call a studio?
No, I don't recognize him. Too bad it wasn't Mimi doing her left wing William Shatner imitation. hey, do you think we could get Mimi to do covers of Shatner's versions of Mr. Tambourine Man and Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds?
DeleteFor those who don't know, Shatner did a legendarily bad album called The Transformed Man, where he hams up the lyrics like no one else could.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2OA-WCFYv4
SDL
That was an album which I remember only because it was so incredibly bad. I think Shatner made up for it by so masterfully re-inventing himself.
DeleteBTW, I never liked the original Startrek TV series—too unreal. Loved the movies.
In the interests of balancing out the monotonically negative air in these environs, here's a charming half-spoken song by Shatner: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7GnoLJIIS4w.
DeleteIt looks like the reporter just phoned in the story. The offices look OK in the close up shots. It looks Berthold was speaking in Katz's office. The shot in the narrow corridor wasn't very complimentary. Hi Steve. The studio looked terrible. Somehow you notice more of the studio in the video than when you're there in person. They could have fixed it up a bit for the NY1 crew. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteThe reporter, Zack Fink, started @ WBAI. He is a good guy, but he was disgusted by Samori Marksman and Mario Murillo while he was there. He could not believe how they behaved - he knows the real deal at WBAI.
ReplyDeleteSo now he works for the despised Spectrum company. Too bad that he didn't lift the green curtain just a bit to reveal "the real deal". Of course, this could also have been a propaganda piece for the bozos, which it wasn't.
Deletekinda funny how they used the color white for the w and black for the b .
ReplyDeleteBeing that a good portion of the programming is based on just that.
Black and pseudo black.
DeleteDoes anyone else here recall the talk that went on about a studio being "built" and that "architectural designer(s)" were hard at work?
ReplyDeleteThe photo does not show that this thrown-together "control room/studio" has a skylight through which one can hear such sounds as generated by ice cream vendors and street traffic. There also is no sound-proofing between this room and an often noisy corridor.
Again, this is sorry evidence of "management's" warped priorities... and let's not even begin to talk about the station's outgoing signal, which alone makes efforts to stay atop the ESB a joke.
These are leftist fanatics. One thing they have in common with right-wing fanatics is that what matters above all to them is to have the ‘correct’ positions.
DeleteThe actual consequences, successes or failures, likelihood of becoming or not becoming reality, are all largely outside their thoughts, and never enter their calculus if indeed they have one.
For these simple reasons they are of no consequence, and that fact tends to irritate if not indeed at times to enrage them.
On those occasions when such ideologies have consequences it’s overwhelmingly because some outside player or players makes use of them to their own ends – think of the Kochs on the one hand, or the sealed train on the other.
They’re hapless, they’re clueless, and it shows – no one listens.
What’s unfortunate is that in this particular instance national and local boards populated by the likes of Ralph Engelman and manipulated by the likes of Percy Sutton’s crew long, long ago abandoned the original principles which had made WBAI/Pacifica, for a brief time, an interesting and an important place for their own ends, leading to so sad a state of ugliness and irrelevance.
These things happen. It isn’t the end of the world, but it is rather annoying.
~ ‘indigopirate’
looks like the designer's got sucked down that black hole , along with the yellow magnet guys.
ReplyDeleteBerthold Reimers' cranial cavity has ample room for such fantasies, because there ain't nothing else there.
DeleteHow about a little redundancy? The ESB is served by the following carriers, all of which can provide T1 or better between the EBS and the "studio" :
ReplyDeleteAT&T, Broadview Networks, Cogent Communications, Covad, Earthlink Business, Level3 Communications, MegaPath, Rainbow Broadband, Time Warner Cable, Time Warner Cable Business Class, Verizon, and XO Communications.
So how about using more than one carrier between the ESB and the sorry excuse for the studio? Stop blaming Verizon for bad engineering on the part of WBAI.
I just called the Empire State Building and spoke to a very polite representative.
ReplyDeleteI explained that I had once been a devoted listener and supporter of the station, but that I felt betrayed by what the station has become.
I urged that the attorneys for the Empire State Building demand to see WBAI and Pacifica accounting documents such as balance sheets, income statements, and salary schedules.
I stated that real estate holdings of Pacifica could be sold to pay the station's debt to The Empire State Building.
I urged the ESB and its attorneys to offer no negotiations or compromises.
I still support Bill Crosier, but I must confess that I think he needs to address more clearly the problem at WBAI. Why, for example, Reimers and his gang of liars and vandals are still being allowed to run the station into the ground with total disregard for Pacifica's fundamental principles, WBAI's loyal, discerning listeners, and a spirit of creating meaningful departure from the norm. It wasn't always smooth going, but many of us—on both Coasts—worked hard to preserve and, indeed, enhance the dream.
DeleteI think Crosier has good intentions but lacks the necessary force of personality to deal with these people.
DeleteSDL
Crosier is getting it from all sides. KPFK folks are screaming racism because they erroneously believe all Spanish language shows will be cancelled. Some KPFT folks are directly challenging his firing of their interim GM. WPFW is arguably worse than WBAI and that's on top of ESB and audits. The last meeting with him here was all complaints about Berthold. Dealing with Berthold is probably number 32 on his list right now.
DeleteI realized that if you listen to WBAI you'll think there were only three or four black people of any consequence in American history. It's kind of insulting when you think about it.
ReplyDeleteSDL
They are doing themselves ,and the black race in general, a great disservice by playing a very small
ReplyDeleteportion of what the black race have contributed to the world .
They mostly highlight blacks that have anything to do with civil rights, for better or worse .
Some legit , most not .
There are so many more blacks they could highlight , but they won't because it would be very hard to transition the conversation into a race based conversation. One thing racist love to talk about is , race.
Unfortunately in wbai's case, it turns out to be a race to the bottom.
This is precisely a point I have been trying to make since I first noticed the race-based ignorance that was flowing from WBAI. It is why I consistently refer to them as hate mongering ignoramuses, a segment of the black population that allows its fixation on race to countermand what it perceives to be a just message.
DeleteThey are as big an insult/handicap to people of color as they are an asset to white racists—the KKK welcomed and, indeed, met with Marcus Garvey. The WBAI opportunists just don't get it, so; blinded are they by their not-so-veiled hate, that they foment and further the very segregation that fuels their narrow minds. In the process, they have also contributed mightily to the reduction of WBAI's audience to an all-time low.
You are absolutely right when you point out the ludicrous emphasis on a handful of known civil rights leaders while simultaneously dismissing the enormous contributions made by a large number of un-known non-whites. Think of how everybody's life has been touched positively by countless people whose names they don't know. The other morning, I heard Felipe Luciano and Tony Bates talk about the Harlem Renaissance and contributions of black entertainers. They were pitching a book that is so full of historical mis-information as to be embarrassing, but it was written by a man of black ancestry. Unfortunately, neither Bates nor Luciano knew enough to recognize how shameful this book is, so they compounded the embarrassment by voicing their own ignorance. They were selling this book to the station's dumbed down audience and, thereby, doing WBAI and its few remaining listeners a disservice.
I did not immigrate to the U.S.sixty years ago in search of "freedom". I grew up with the real thing in the countries of my birth and childhood (Iceland/Denmark) and I knew it had yet to catch on in the the U.S. I came to live in a land where ancestry, adversity and racial hatred had contributed to the birth of a culture the tips of which overwhelmed a kid in Copenhagen.
When I listen to the indoctrinated numbskulls whose nonsense reshapes the profile of WBAI, I am reminded of the cab driver who took me into the city from Idlewild (JFK) in 1957. Hearing my accent, he asked me, "So, how does it feel to be in a democracy?" When I asked him which democracy he was referring to, he informed me that there is only one, the "good old U.S.A", so I asked him to define "democracy". Listen to middle-class Trump supporters and you will hear an echo of the driver's response. I didn't detect hate, just appalling ignorance.
WBAI is dead and only the carcass remains, but I now think it needs to be hauled away.
Berthold is on the Finance Comm. meeting and is getting called out for not knowing his own numbers. According to the budget, we're supposed to be bringing $14-15,000 a day which hasn't been the case for some time.
ReplyDeleteAudio clip of Berthold's pitiful performance has been added to the post along with Bill Crosier's account of this week's meeting with the ESRT. Credico's theatrics apparently did not work.
DeleteDoctor Ivan Van Sertima , Looks like they found another Henrik Clarke ....
ReplyDeleteLove how Prescod was pitching a" brand new" 2011 film today,Cocaine Unwrapped.