POOF! Credico was gone...

Many of us have wondered why Randy Credico disappeared so suddenly. Rumors were bandied about and assumptions were made, but people in the know were only hinting.

Now, thanks to Mitch Cohen, we have a more focused explanation from Randy himself. It confirms some of what we were hearing and I, for one, find it completely in keeping with the my own observations and the impression that the rumors generated in my mind.

Here's what Randy gave Mitchell to post. He wrote it on his cellphone, so it needed minor corrections, mostly punctuation marks—I hope I got it right and look forward to the promised account.

Randy Credico wrote:

I should have chronicled this earlier and I'm ashamed that I didn't....

Earlier this year, I was in the office of GM Reimers and lame duck interim fun drive coordinator Tony Bates.

They told me they were moving Reverend Billy from Thursday at 5 p.m. to Sunday at 8 a.m.... they said Billy refused and he was no longer there.

I asked him why they would move him from his spot that had been on for so long and had built up a following and they pulled out a chart showing what he had raised over the last 8 months.

These charts are very deceptive

I said to them, well if he doesn't raise a lot of money you can preempt him during a drive, but don't fire him or move him to Sunday.

Well Tony, who basically has the general manager by the cojones got his way and Billy was gone..

Since then, he replaced Reverend Billy, being that nobody else was willing, to be a scab, with an unwitting repeat of a repeat on Tuesday nights at 7... that is Jimmy Dore's show, which is taped 5 days earlier than the original day, on Tuesdays.

No principled producer at WBAI would step into that spot and Mr. Dore was unaware that he was being used as a scab.

All the shows that have come in by Tony Bates in the last year have raised nothing, particularly his Pad show Trump watch, which everyone knows is the most amateurish show ever to be presented at WBAI

You look at his other shows, they raise no money but they are all still there.

I am doing this on my cell phone and when I get a chance on my computer I will really write a comprehensive retrospective of what happened.

Bates' shows at the station have been a complete disaster as has he, in general.

Much more on the Reverend Billy double cross and lie by the general manager and outgoing interim fund drive coordinator Tony Bates.

Furthermore, I would like to talk about Bates' outrageous comments about Naomi Wolf and the general manager's outrageous comments about two female journalist from Algeria...

Best,

R.C.

Mitchell wrote:

I concur with what Randy Credico writes here.

It is f'ng outrageous that Pacifica allows WBAI to continue employing Tony Bates as interim PD. I've been holding back while the Empire State Building travesty was unfolding, so as not to divert energies. But Pacifica's lack of proper supervision of those in its employ are a large part of the reason why WBAI (and other stations) are in the terrible shape they're in. (at the time I wrote former ED Margy Wilkinson about the critical importance of supervising negotiations between the GM and and ESB. She did nothing, and that's partly why we are where we are.)

I might add that noone from current BAI management saw fit to show up at Therese Chorun's memorial service yesterday. Therese was a staffer at WBAI inputting into database for many years, an environmental direct action activist, and volunteer at many other WBAI events. She died of cervical cancer a few weeks ago at age 55. It was so fine to see Indra Hardat, Ken Gale, Alex Steinberg, Matt Mazza and others from the true family of WBAI—not this faux family that's running things today. Geez, they couldn't even show up for her memorial. Unforgivable.