It's a lengthy one, but has some interesting information, including more rather damning stuff about Berthold Reimers' outrageous ineptitude.
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.
To quote the report: "As you would recall, we are operating on almost a 15 years
ReplyDeleteold version. We do not have a license and there is no maintenance contract"
That puts Pacifica on Microsoft Dynamics GP v10.0 or v.9.0, running on hardware at least that old.
GP moved from pure client-server to a web-enabled application in V12. The deity help them if that thing crashes as it would have to rebuild as-is, and then upgrade.
The positive note is that WBAI can build on Microsoft Dynamics GP 2018 (the most current version)since they have nothing in place.
Thanks for that hard info :)
Delete~ 'indigo'
Its hard to believe this report. Reimers can't possibly be this incompetent. Where do we even begin?
ReplyDeleteThe CFO doing the station budget without any input from the LSB or apparently the GM.
Telling the local finance comm he will show and then not showing up.
Since he has determined that more listen on-line than on the radio, he doesnt seem too worried about the station repeatedly going off the air.
Unilaterally deciding to get sponsors without any explanation how it will be done.
Giving $50,000 to Yellow Magnet and not even bothering to say what they did.
Using Quickbooks instead of getting PNB to upgrade Great Plains software
Setting unrealistic fundraising goals while staffers openly push for MNN deal thereby undermining the whole point of fundraising.
You wouldn't believe how his coterie of opportunists refused to see any major flaw in Berthold Reimers' mismanagement. I have written about this for a few years, but his apologists (including names you would readily recognize) always came up with flimsy excuses—at least one of these guys went so far as to declare Reimers an excellent manager. It is no wonder that WBAI is disappearing, at last.
DeleteI would point out that Summer Reese did in fact fire Reimers, did in fact move forcefully to address the failure to keep proper books and to meet audit and other requirements, and forced the layoff of most of WBAI’s staff to bring its budget into something resembling reality.
ReplyDeleteThe firing was rescinded, she was terminated, proper accounting and the meeting of audit requirements has yet to happen.
However one interprets these facts, they were, so far as I recall, the facts.
What they may say as to Pacifica is of course open to interpretation, but offhand I’d say it ain’t good – nor is the fact that John Proffitt, a thoroughly experienced and capable manager clearly abandoned any hope of reforming Pacifica after only five months of encountering fierce passive resistance, and that Bill Crosier’s experience was clearly comparable.
Tom Livingston is simply the latest.
Perhaps he will prove to be the miracle maker to transform Pacifica.
Place your bets…
~ ‘indigopirate’
I hope you're wrong. Even the most stubborn have to admit at this point that the programming doesnt work. The current mgmt is incapable of turning this around. They're fundraising for over a month while the staff is openly calling for the MNN deal on the air whenever the transmitter is working. Of course the numbers will be down. Meanwhile the PNB is totally clueless. They're still negotiating with their creditors after all the deadlines have passed. They're still working on audits and on and on. They don't seem to get that there is no time left.
DeleteThere are a thousand valid and worthwhile approaches toward renewal and these people see not a single one of them. A random list, anyone could do at least as well as these, arguably far better:
DeleteRevive and radically renew and repurpose the original broad-spectrum approach to culture.
Reach out to the innumerable cultural, educational, and other existing organizations and institutions and their students, bring them in, turn them loose. let the process be open and public, let if be an ongoing process of reinvention for a new time, and let that process be a vital part of programming.
Center on shattering, daring, brilliant freeform, once one of the central and most powerful factors. There’s a hell of a lot of talent out there, streaming even now. Draw from the best of that. Tie into what’s happening and what will come, not daydraming of slightly revised versions of Pacifica’s past.
Reach out to Wall Street and the bastions of capitalism, get their truly sharp intelligent minds and challenge them with truly intelligent opposing perspectives – lively valid conversation, discussion, debate, not a mere shouting match as we so often see.
Alternatively, center political programming on the theme of the emerging debate as to the possible transformational effect of the idea of the Universal Basic Income. This discussion has begun, has powerful backers even in Silicon Valley, and is gaining some traction in Europe, but so far little in the US.
Consider the challenge presented by the emerging model presented by China of Central Rule as opposed to the endangered fading model of Western Post-Enlightenment Representative Democracy.
Mix and Match from all of the above and a thousand others.
Above all, execute, and where it doesn’t work, reach out, try again, try harder, take chances, and execute.
The problem isn’t ideas. The problem is execution. The problem is lack of actual imagination, actual willingness to take chances and break shit, and an inability to execute.
The problem, for Pacifica, isn’t a lack of opportunity and possibility. Those are everywhere. Those are damn near infinite. The problem with Pacifica is Pacifica, and I see no sign ot that changing in any meaningful way. These are talentless people. They will either die/disentegrate or continue for some time, perhaps indefinitely, in something like their present Irrelevant Zombie State.
My guess, only a guess, is for the latter.
Is that a damn fucking shame? Fuck yeah. But it’s been a damn fucking shame for a very long time, in fact for most of their existence following the first couple of decades give or take.
That’s my view, of the moment, but then again I’ve been known to be wrong.
:)
~ ‘indigopirate’
Good suggestions, Indigo, but when there's a hole in the bucket, you can't expect a request for a refill to be honored.
DeleteEven getting rid of all the dross that is in place now cannot open the door to the kind of assistance WBAI must obtain to survive. These clueless, unimaginative, opportunists have had several years in which to examine the reason for a mass turn-out and they have opted to stay in a groove that represents a proven failure.
Many wiser, more experienced people have attempted to help but their suggestions have been routinely ignored by Reimers and whoever had his ear at the moment (currently Bates, possibly the worst), so the present crisis should not be the shock they like to pretend it is.
In short, there is little or nothing to excuse the lack of preparedness, from the ESB bill to the listenership exodus.
These are colossal idiots whose stupidity is exceeded only by those who opened the door and allowed them to stay. So I wholeheartedly agree when you conclude that, essentially, the problem with Pacifica is Pacifica.