He may have been a good bus driver, but Michael Haskins is a total idiot when it comes to radio. This morning, WBAI kicked off its umpteenth lengthy fund drive for 2018 and you will find it difficult to believe what Haskins did.
There is a link below—it speaks for itself, as it were, and all I added was the music. I don't know whose idea it was to interrupt Democracy Now! with a commercial for the city's most embarrassing, dishonorable radio station, but just as Amy Goodman asked a guest a question on Kavanaugh, the subject du jour, idiot Haskins breaks in with an ill-advised, poorly pitched commercial for WBAI, the station he so endlessly declares commercial free.
There were six minutes of DN! left to go, but Haskins—who loves to hear himself stumble of the English language—broke in and asked listeners to forgive the unforgivable.
It was a totally gratuitous, extraordinary demonstration of cluelessness and an insult to the listeners, who—given Amy's popularity—surely number more that Haskins' regular dozen.
Whether this was Haskins' own decision or one dictated by the equally clueless Berthold Reimers, the move was one of inexplicable idiocy, that does not bode well for a fund drive scheduled to run into November.
It also again raises the question of why Pacifica hasn't stepped in to decontaminate WBAI. Yes, they have put Linda Perry in charge of programming and she has made some improvements, but was this her idea? Did any reasonable person at the station protest?
Haskins spoke of loving the calls coming in, but were they mindless contributions or justified complaints?
The Michael Haskins school of journalism lesson 1 - interrupt important news to raise money from your handful of listeners, who wanted to hear the news commentary.
ReplyDeleteI guess the idea here was that people were attentively listening to DN, so if you interrupt and ask for dinero, they will listen to your incessant begging and fork it over. Wrong. You just pissed off the listeners. Dummy.
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As we like to say in Denmark, he didn't invent hot water.
DeleteOff topic, but: One minor thing that I find annoying is Reggie Johnson's poor grasp of the use of prepositions. He does not seem to be aware that it is "contributor TO" and "supporter OF". The pronouns are not interchangeable.
ReplyDeleteI agree, but Reggie—although he is deciidedly more skilled than Haskins—needs to be better prepared befor he opens that microphone. His inability to correctly pronounce names, even ones that are well known, is inexcusable.
DeleteHe should also ease up on the slogans. What, for example, is a “Pacifica statte of mind”? He routinely claims that it describes an asset WBAI has had since 1960 when, actually, the only thing that hasn’t changed in all those years is 99.5—a NYC frequency location that today leads the way to a pathetic pit of ignorance and incompetence.
My apologies to the very few current WBAI hosts/producers who grasp the concept that grew into Lew Hill’s Pacifica Foundation in the post WWII era.
DN is their most popular show by far. There is no excuse. It looks like a sign of desperation but the question is why do they feel that way? Isn't life supposed to be wonderful now that they cut their monthly expenses with all those loans? Don't blame Haskins Chris. The buck stops with the GM.
ReplyDeleteA good point, but why not go a step farther and take that buck to Pacifica’s governing body? It gave the nod to hiring Berthold Reimers—a disastrous choice that has only had negative effects on WBAI in the years since.
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