Wednesday, February 20, 2019

Diga Diga Doo Doo



Pacifica National Board Programming Committee
19 February 2019

Maxie III Explains It All For You

In this report from Pacifica's Executive Director, Maxie III, we have further insight into the approach, thoughts, and insights of the Executive Director.

He finds that Pacifica's people lack his professional education, experience, credentials, perspective, and insights, and seeks to educate and evaluate them accordingly and appropriately.

He finds them to be appreciative of his efforts and eager to learn.

His focus is on market identification and focus.

There is no consideration of talent or the recruitment of potential talent.

It's all analytics, you see... 'Best Practices'....

Listen...! Learn...!

As Pacifica sails Onward.

Toot Toot!

~ 'indigopirate'

17 comments:

  1. After all this time, how can he talk about market focus? There is no audience. No matter what metric you use, there is no significant audience of any kind. Clearly he feels the PDs are not qualified but he can't or won't get rid of them. I doubt the managers (GM & PD) are listening. All their efforts are focused on fundraising to pay the bills. It so absurd to talk about underserved markets when the overall numbers are so low. The programs in Spanish are just as bad as those in English. He needs to have a national PD to help guide an overall vision. If he doesnt have confidence in the managers then there is little point in training them to do what they should have been doing from the start.

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  2. With respect, simply to compare thoughts:

    Maxie III's mindset is that of an apparatchik. What in proper management slang is known as a 'tool'. He is of some, but limited value. Yet, what else would one expect Pacifica to be able to recruit?

    I'm inclined to disagree with the notion of a national program director being important and useful if it's to be in service of a 'unified vision'.

    A crazy quilt might make more sense. Not because it would be closer to the original wide mission goals of Pacifica, though it would, but because it's more easily and practically implemented – and there's much to be said for radio/media that is unlike the herd, and where you don't know what you'll happen upon, but it will probably be reflective of talent/quality, and of interest.

    I view their focus (fucked up and blurry though it is) as their greatest limitation.

    They, of course, see it as virtue and their path to salvation.

    All experience to the contrary notwithstanding.

    Very simple-minded true believers...

    ~ 'indigopirate'

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    1. You may be right about Maxie. I was speaking about what a good ED should do. I think there needs to be a mix of national and local programming. There also needs to be greater cooperation between stations. From the outside, it looks like five stations just doing their own thing and sharing a legal identity. I had no idea the managers even talked to each other. Considering the status of the network, I wonder just what it is they talk about. A unified or overall vision is what is needed and the managers need to be able to carry it out. It just doesn't sound like he has much confidence in the managers and the governance issues are clear for anyone to see. Maxie should be addressing that first.

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    2. On quilt v. strip programming, no-one on the Prog. Cttee or PNB or LSB's has mentioned whether anyone, esp. unpaid, is available for a yearly 48 x Mon. thru Fri.

      Also no-one has put forward, even as an illustration, a bundle of existing programs ('shows' in the infotainment jargon) to fill one hour for M-F. For example, Richard Wolff (Economic Update) - Doug Henwood (Behind the News) - Suzi Weissman (Beneath the Surface) - ... where do the other two hours' come from? Do some double-up? Or doesn't that theme get an hour slot, instead are their 20 or 30 mins segments distributed under some wider umbrella? In just this one example there are multiple matters to dispute -- as if station managers & anyone national has the time to make all these decisions & do all the requisite preparatory work. Without hiring staff the task is beyond the incumbents. And besides that aspect, do they have the management & negotiating skills? What's likely is the Buns & Gutter approach: administrative order, delivered summarily. Trump-style 'management': the workplace as a dictatorship -- even when profits, or net income, aren't at stake. With the prospect of a programmer strike.



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    3. Once again, not to pretend I have 'answers', but simply to compare thoughts and perspectives:

      Pacifica seems to me deeply wedded to its failure modalities in ways which it is clearly incapable of recognizing, let alone attempting to actually address.

      The fact is that to date they've been able to eke out 'survival' based on the fact that they've effectively inherited five very valuable properties (six if we count the archives separately).

      Grey Gardens, in a sense, I suppose, though rather less interesting...

      ~ 'indigopirate'

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    4. Ambiguous is talk of 'the five inherited properties', and if this refers to the Federal Communications Commission licenses then we need scare-quotes for both words. That's because a FCC license, in most circumstances, isn't property but a permission (a 'right' in Legalese), one granted by the FCC. That's why the licenses aren't capitalized (as an asset) by Pacifica, and so don't appear on Pacifica's balance sheet; and that's why they couldn't be collateralized by Pacifica when getting the $3.7m loan last March from the Foundation for the Jewish Community (operating as FJC; its 990 will be filed any day now in NY).

      Note that the nature of a license determines, in part, what happens with a signal-swap. If Pacifica is to raise cash this way, it swaps a license with that of another licensee, and it's no surprise that the FCC must agree to this.

      Which brings us to a crucial matter hitherto absent from the public discussion: if Pacifica wants a signal-swap, can it demonstrate to the FCC that it's a going concern? Licensees are subject to oversight by the FCC. When a licensee wants a change of conditions, such as swapping its license, it attracts greater scrutiny – akin to an audit. Pacifica's good intentions cut no ice when its last two auditor's reports carried "a substantial doubt" about it continuing as a going concern. On top of this, the report due in April can only be expected to make it three thumbs-down in a row. This FCC-danger has not been acknowledged by any recorded public meeting of the PNB, its committees, the LSB's.

      And there's another FCC-danger: the "substantial doubt" will soon enter stage left at the FCC Theater. Why? Because WPFW's license expires on October 1 this year. Remember, WPFW's financial performance is irrelevant: the license is Pacifica's. The going concern test interrogates Pacifica. And public objections can also be made – and not just at renewal time. (The other expiry dates: KPFT, August 1, 2021; KPFA and KPFK, December 1, 2021; WBAI, June 1, 2022.)

      WPFW is under threat. And no-one's talking about it publicly.

      King Maxie III has disclosed he has connections with CPB. FCC too?

      https://www.sheppardmullin.com/publications-articles-1.html (an olde discussion!)

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  3. The biggest problem @ WBAI is Amy Goodman. She has Pacifica by the balls. They owe her 3 million dollars. She and her brother stole Democracy Now from Samori Marksman. Maybe Andrew Phillips aka indigo pirate can investigate!

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    1. I am not sufficiently knowledgable when it comes to details of Amy Goodman's deal, but I know that she became an asset to WBAI and—judging by the colossal incompetence that switched the station onto its present dead track—I have a feeling that Mr. Marksman had a hand in building the present propaganda soap box.

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    2. You appear to be confusing me with someone named Phillips.

      That would be a mistake.

      ~ 'indigopirate'

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  4. Lisa Garr's "Aware Show" is presently on and she is pushing a $350 premium that will get anyone stupid enough to pay for it a 4 and a half hour "past life regression" session with Mira Kelley, a former attorney. Does the audience that Maxie Jackson III alludes to really want this kind of broadcasting? WBAI is going down faster than the Titanic.

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    1. I was half asleep this morning when I think I heard Garr or her guest recall having had neck pains caused by slave shackles.

      I'm not making this up.

      You're right, such residue would definitely not have been aired by the WBAI that used to be.

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  5. Let's check the PNB Calendar Chris:
    PNB Emergency Meeting called by Benito..Shatner..Diaz, William Termed Out Heerwagen and Angry Dewayne Lark. Uh Oh Meeting cancelled. I wonder..oh look..its spelled out in the calendar.

    ...Shortly after my email to the board, some directors began to discourage the NES from attending the meeting and others made their intention to stage a quorum attack evident.

    Although her availability was sought more than a week before the meeting, this afternoon, NES Renee Asteria Penaloza withdrew.

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  6. I did one of my rare tuning into WBAI a few minutes ago to hear Mimi hawking some crap or other. I guess they are asking for money yet again.

    Anyway, I decided to check the website for the up-to-date(?) schedule. It really looks like a game of musical chairs now. Same old crap reshuffled to some different time slots, with some extra crap, like Forlano and Hartman, tossed into the mix. Nothing interesting.

    SDL

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    1. Good to see you checking in, SDL. Yes, it's basically the old shuffle game and it includes infomercial reruns where no attention has been paid to date content.

      Heard Brady pushing some battery-operated healing gadgets and the race-obsessed Prescod still following their MLK in London trajectory. Also heard a couple of out-and-out commercial pitches (replete with ticket info). One was for a fundraising event benefitting "The Foundation for the University of the West Indies"—it was delivered in a lengthy pitch by Selassie, whose show can be quite good. Remember, Pacifica has an ongoing argument against not-so-incidental on air sponsorship. :)

      I think Linda Perry gave the PD job a well-meant try, but it is basically the same old thing from a slightly different angle. The leeches are still in place and sucking away. So, your observation is correct.

      Reimers, BTW, seems to have vanished, but not so the one-way path to his bank account.

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    2. NY is apparently just using old, recorded KPFK infomercials...since they don't work well in LA, why not try them elsewhere instead ?

      heard the one of having one's gut cleaned out for $200, promoted repeatedly by enthusiastic [had the free tx herself, of course ] Christine Blosedale - a staff & union rep of many yrs at KPFK - acting as a shill for weird services...then look up the person selling that 'pack' to see who she is -[or is not] and realize that a book is what is on Amazon for $25 and her practice is outside of LA city. This is dishonest and dubious selling...

      which at either station creates Distrust... and/or immediate-Exiting all connections with another fake-$$$-Commercialized-sales-'non'-profiting radio station.....

      but apparently many Pacifica loyalists are so sick, disabled, insecure and dis-empowered, some do BUY these hyped sales pitches by long term staff [not admitted Sales Reps] +
      [or they would not be re-aired repeatedly, right ?]

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    3. The fact that these tired infomercials don't bring in money does not prevent the powers that be from airing them.

      Don't forget that the bozos who steadily lower WBAI's intellectual level also, thereby, lower that of the listenership. That helps to explain why they actually succeed in selling some of the junk being offered.

      It does not take any marketing knowledge to conclude that one can only sell flawed products for so long—whether it is a self-published book riddled with misinformation or a miracle "cure". WBAI is not deterred by such obvious realities because the opportunists who call the shots have no morals.

      Now they are offering a $3,785 "political and spiritual" trip to Peru (cheques should be sent in to the attention of Reimers!) These station wreckers live in a world of their own. don't they? I wouldn't trust this scheme as far as far as you can toss a wallet.

      BTW, have you noticed that Null's little recovery fantasies are growing taller by the pitch?

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  7. There are two PNB meeting notices. The 'real' one called by Alex Steinberg and Grace for the stack
    includes a spending freeze proposal and a solidarity proposal. Cool. Occupy used to do that. Its a way to virtue signal about something no one really cares about.

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