Pacifica in Exile web site launched...

A new web site has been launched to help Pacifica listeners learn more of the inside info they need to know. If you are disenchanted and find yourself listening sparingly, don't give up hope. There are still people on the inside who care what becomes of your station and the Foundation that ultimately sets its course.

Listeners to WBAI and other Pacifica stations often have trouble understanding why there are so many internal problems. One major issue is that mismanagement has helped to create serious chronic debt and a personal need to cover it up. Air time given over to fundraising drives has increased and morphed into one- or two-hour long infomercials that often benefit outside marketers of questionable products and services. We see this practice escalating as returns to normal programming all but vanish. The listenership has dwindled to an all-time low at WBAI, but nothing is done to inspire its return. The level of programming remains sub-standard and even the station's own web site maintains management's secrecy. When some figures for the last (and, alas, ongoing) drive finally leaked out, we were given a multiple choice option as to what had been raised!

Fundraising marathons are by nature intrusive, but there was a time when the programming was intelligent and only one annual drive sufficed. There were always some problems that had to be discussed and solved, but there was a weekly live program for that: Report to the Listener. It's the kind of open discussion one can have when there are no secrets, but today, when even the WBAI GM's whereabouts is unknown, such a report and exchange is not possible. Oh, they have had a couple in he past decade, but—like the station itself—they were outrageously dishonest.

WBAI's management has the vision of a bat in sunlight. It is inept, irresponsible and corrupt. Unfortunately, much the same can be said of the Pacifica National Board's current ruling faction. One can blame Pacifica's problems on a number of factors, but most stem from problems with governance—the people who members of the stations elect.

The first step in remedying this (if it is not already too late) is to restore the intellectual level of the listenership and encourage participation in the Board elections. This is one important reason why a faithful group of true Pacifica supporters has launched a new web site. The Pacifica in Exile newsletter (Tracy Rosenberg's labor of love) has been around for quite some time, its purpose being to help concerned Pacificans get the news behind the news of Pacifica. This new web site is a new step in that direction.

The articles posted on the inaugural site will help you understand the issues, and rest assured that there are many more to come. I hope you become a regular reader so that you may keep up with who's doing what, and better prepare yourself to cast an informed VOTE in the upcoming delegate (board) elections.  —Chris Albertson

Here is a link to Pacifica in Exile.

WBAI Treasurer's Report - July 2015

WBAI Treasurer’s Report July 8, 2015

The National Finance Committee (NFC) met on June 23, 2015. At that meeting the Executive Director said that the auditing firm that did Pacifica’s FY13 audit, Armanino LLP, had not in fact paid their final fee for preparing that audit. The auditing firm will not agree to the Executive Director’s suggested time payment plan of the money owed them. They did discount the original bill somewhat, by about $5,000. The amount they are demanding from Pacifica now is $62,500. The Executive Director has been asking the General Managers to accelerate their Central Services payments so as to get the money needed to pay this bill. The firm will not begin to work on the FY14 audit until they have been paid in full for having done the FY13 audit.

The NFC passed the following motion to be sent to the PNB: “That KPFA be asked to advance one half of the money due for the FY13 audit. To be considered as advanced Central Services payments.”

The Executive Director told the NFC that the National Office is working on the preparations for the FY14 audit. The FY14 audit was not completed by June 30. Any CPB grant money that Pacifica would qualify for would be reduced at the rate of 1/365 per day after the June 30, 2015, deadline. The Executive Director said that this is equal to approximately $2,000 of grant money lost for every day past June 30, 2015, that the FY14 audit is late.

The NFC passed the following motion related to the proposed underwriting plan for the affiliates: “The National Finance Committee recommends that the PNB attach the following provisos to any approval of the Affiliates Underwriting Proposal:

I. Prior to implementation, management shall consult a tax attorney regarding whether income from this program might be taxable, and what we need to include to safeguard the organization's exempt status with respect to such a plan.

II. All contracts shall be structured so that Pacifica has no obligation to pay fees to affiliates unless and until it has collected the corresponding payments from underwriters.”

From the reports given at this meeting most of the Pacifica stations are not adhering to the timeline1 for the budget process. KPFT appears to have made the most progress among the stations. The WBAI General Manager has not sent me a draft FY16 budget yet. It is possible that WBAI will be late with its budget approval this year.

Currently I am polling the local Finance Committee for dates when the members can make a meeting. When the committee arrives at a date when a quorum can attend a meeting I will find a space for the meeting, and post that information to the appropriate places.

It is important that the General Manager send his draft budget to me ASAP. There are also some outstanding questions left over from the February local Finance Committee meeting. At the June 10, 2015, LSB meeting the General Manager reported that the Spring on-air fund raiser had ended with a tally of about $420,000. Three days before that on-air fund raiser ended the tally was $237,318. I look forward to seeing the General Manager’s written report showing how about $92,000 was raised in the final three days of that on-air fund raiser.

R. Paul Martin WBAI LSB Treasurer

1The FY16 budget timeline was included with the June 10, 2015, Treasurer’s Report.

PLEASE NOTE: If the figures given by R. Paul in the final paragraph of his report don't add up... it's because they are wrong. When this was brought to his attention, he issued an apology, an explanation, and a correction: 

In fact the tally shown three days before that on-air fund raiser ended was $328,043. In preparing the report I had copied the wrong cell from the spreadsheet. Sorry for the error.

The $92,000 figure is the difference between the last published tally, $328,043, and the General Manager's statement at the June 10, 2015, LSB meeting that the on-air fund raiser ended with a tally of $420,000.

At last Wednesday night's LSB meeting the General Manager said that the final tally was $417,536. This includes $24,350 that had not been included in the daily tallies (including the Saturday morning ticket donations which should not be included). In the past the "final final tally," the one arrived at a couple of weeks or more after the on-air fund raiser is over, was always lower than the initial tally. That this "final final tally" is much higher is interesting.

As the fat lady awaits her cue...

As the fat lady awaits her cue, listeners and producers alike are asking... "When will you die, BAI?"

Among the curious is Indigopirate, an Ariel-like spirit into whose fertile mind a song popped.

Imagine, instead of a pink Cadillac hearse, the construction of a new studio!!!!

If at first they don't cough up...

A. Berkman's July 4th post on the all-but-abandoned BlueBoard reflects the current listener-fatigue that is bringing the station farther down and—soon, I predict—out:
"Can They Put a Disclaimer Up at the WBAI.ORG Website? 
It would say: Attention! WBAI is not a real radio station, it is only a pale imitation of one. Please be alerted that 90% of the programming stinks, none of the health premiums have any validity to them, and conspiracy theory shows are unintended comedies. In order for you to maintain your sanity please do not listen to the station for more than two hours per day but if you do please consult a doctor immediately. Thank you."

Except for fundraising and political promotions, the WBAI web site has been outdated and inaccurate for years—so much so that its purpose now seems aimed at nourishing narcissism, selling products, and instilling the baseless optimism manager Reimers and his cronies use as a coverup for their chronic ineptitude.

Last week, in the wake of another failed marathon, the "GM who never was" launched a sneak attack on that remnant of listeners who dodged the extended Spring assault. At first, hourlong recorded quack attacks were launched at cracks of dawn and, as the week progressed and desperation remained unabated, the onslaught escalated. Earsores, forced into memories via previous Bertholian blitzkriegs, reappeared unannounced, moving stealthily down and about the station’s unchartered program schedule, indiscriminately bumping off the air the worthy as well as the shameful.

There is a whole lot of recycling going on: Fumari and Segal (the Amino Sisters) were brought back for more acid tests of listener tolerance. Likewise, ubiquitous expert Null did da capos as phones (recorded weeks and months earlier) rang assuringly and sidekick Haskins hee-hawed. Then—great Gwen Scott!—up popped the dreaded duo act of Nutdom hawking seemingly worthwhile but overpriced DVDs. Sure, you can get them at Amazon for one sixth the price, but why even mention that? Why be cheap? 

Inevitably, rumblings were heard from the tuned-in few, forcing WBAI to 'fess up and find justification for these pesky asides. Tell it like it is? NO… not an option where truth is a total stranger to fiction. Besides, who would ever believe that Reimers’ trick of the light-fingered hadn’t been a treat? What to do? Earmark this one for the new studio… no, not the porose, camera shy cluttered audio closet—this, we tell ‘em, is for the state of the art showplace that apostle Mitchel forever declares to be a miraculously inaudible work in progress. Hey, we'll even post a picture on our site... never mind the work we said was underway, or imaginary architectural design we commissioned, we'll pull something off the internet and make it look real good... people fueled... yeah, that has a nice ring to it!
   

From the WBAI web site.

So, a few years after the need for it became apparent, WBAI’s studio is as real as Mary Chase's rabbit, Harvey. A holographic figment of delusions, it is not on the air, it is air… hot air, like the station’s declared bank balance, Reimers’ financial expertise, Haskins’ intellect, the PNB "majority's" integrity, and any expressed concern for the listenership.

One wonders if Pacifica's past and very costly experiences with frivolous lawsuits has anything to do with Reimers' ability to keep his well-paid pro forma position. He was hired as GM over five years ago, with a mandate to rescue WBAI from near fatal mismanagement. He knew how to do it, he said, but that was only the first in an ongoing series of blatant lies. So, why is he still there as all hope of turning things around ebbs?

The only benefit to be had from making mistakes is that one can learn from them, but there are no lessons learned here. As many former listeners have observed, bad programming is a major problem for a station whose very existence is owed to bringing listeners an alternative to bland radio. Here we don't just have programs of inferior technical and production quality, we have small-minded, ignorant propagandists spewing politically expedient falsehoods and fomenting hatred—people whose notion of "community" is racially based and exclusionary. To them, there is but one ingredient in the New York melting pot.

Dragging the dreary, often fraudulent hour-long infomercials back for "encore performances" shows Reimers' failure to grasp even the fundamentals of the problem. WBAI is a station with a powerful, ideally located transmitter, capable of reaching a very large audience in the country's biggest broadcasting market. It also streams its signal throughout the world, but one would never know it, because WBAI is stagnant and it has lost its audience to a point where its listenership does not even come close to matching that of lower powered area college stations.

For years, WBAI aimed its programming not at any particular ethnic group, but at people of intelligence, those who hungered for truth and enlightenment. Did it succeed? I think so. Why else would the listenership dwindle so drastically when the station dumbed down its programming? Raising the intellectual level alone will not do it, but a thorough re-evaluation of the station's offerings ought to be given the highest priority.

Instead, Reimers ordered a repeat of past failures.

Nostalgia is wonderful. I often find myself indulging in it, but never to the point where it begins to replace reality. A good chunk of WBAI's program schedule comprises shows that can better be termed as fillers—valuable air time given over to the agenda-driven, the mercenary, the self-indulging, the opportunistic, the racism perpetuators.

Shows that should have died of old age many years ago, stay on the air, many of them because an ingrown host cannot face facts and let go.

This past week I heard from the rubble of Radio Unnameable Fass' fragmented voice repeatedly stumble through the call letters of small hinterland stations that may or may not have a closet-full of locals tuned in. Notice that he also gives a caller the wrong address for the station (it should be 388). Undeterred by reality and fueled (though barely) by a time-worn ego that hourglass sand cannot cover, the perennial flower child forms a sad figure as he serves up scraps from a distant past. Out there, in the dark void where people once listened and felt inspiration, aging actors now cling to life, vaguely remembering how things once were... in a different era, an earlier century, on a station that instinctively looked beyond the horizon and took them there.

Fass also ran the well-known Frederick Douglass 4th of July speech with several annoying interruptions for which he never apologized. That points to other WBAI problems, such as the sloppiness of announcer/board ops and a general neglect of listener needs. It is not uncommon for programs to start with as much as a half hour of segued music before anyone announces the name of the show or identifies its host—even basic FCC requirements are ignored.

When guests or hosts make outrageous statements, they are given the WBAI nod—nothing is questioned, nobody with an opposite viewpoint is given access to the station's so-called free speech microphones. For example, we have been fed idiotic uncontested runaway fabrications regarding 9/11 and other news events; Kathy Davis has burrowed through dormant management to two and a half hours of weekly airtime which she devotes to faux profundity; the devastating Haitian earthquake of 2010 was a political ploy; reptilians from another planet roam about our cities in human form; tap water can cure cancer and autism; etc.

When a guest on yesterday's "On the Count", stated that living under colonization in current Puerto Rico was almost worse than slavery, the host grunted his agreement. Apropos asinine analogies, we were recently told by a "respected" talkshow host that the gentrification of Harlem is tantamount to genocide.

Do you think Reimers listens to WBAI? It actually matters not whether he does or doesn't—he should never have been hired and that "Interim" tag ought never to have been removed.

Heart of what mind?

Kathy Davis is known for blabbering fiction week after week. She cleverly maneuvered herself into the Wednesday midnight slot that used to be wasted by a fake "anchorman", who hopped the Oblivion Express to Obscurity City. She also managed to keep her regular Monday afternoon show, so she now has two and a half hours a week in which to embarrass intelligence with her utter nonsense.

This morning, she announced that she is starting her own "practice" (presumably a pseudo-spiritual scam center), so we can expect her to start promoting that soon.

She also talked about WBAI, telling her sometimes guest/co-host (Robert Knight's girlfriend, Paulette), how white and radical the station used to be before she ever heard of it. I don't know where she picked up the revised history, but it is amazing, so I wanted you to hear it (assuming that your intellect precluded you from tuning in).

As you listen to this amazing history update, bear in mind that WBAI has always had black-oriented programming and black producers (on and off the air). The News Director was a black woman and—we hired our first black engineer (Tom Tracy) in the mid-Sixties, when I became manager. Knight apparently told his girlfriend that he was the first black console operator/engineer, but this was a man for whom reality was fiction.

I hope Sidney chimes in here and tells us how he had to sneak in through the back elevator! I think people like Kathy have lied so much and so often that they simply don't know what is and what isn't... if you know what I mean.

Listen to the revised history and have a bucket of salt by your side!