The creeps check in, but they don't check out...

Here—in the spirit of community unity—is a love letter addressed to Mitchel Cohen. I'm not sure what Mitchel did to conjure up the wrath of Bates, but his ongoing volunteer work and—right or wrong—concern for WBAI's welfare obviously rubs the salaried "Programming Manager" the wrong way.

I should point out that this is the same Tony Bates who pushed the Double Helix tap water cure-all on the station's vulnerable listeners, continues to broadcast and sell the Henrik Clarke/Dr. Ben fables as historical fact, and had to be fired when a signature-laden petition from fellow workers demanded it. While his ineptitude and dishonesty fueled the request for his banishment, we should not forget that it may well have been expedited by a witnessed incident of sexual harassment. We like to call it playing the Trump card.   

"General Manager" Berthold Reimers—ironically, a partner in crime against the listenership—brought this morally bereft cast member back, raising the question of who among them is the greater vandal.

Tony Bates (whose re-hiring was an under-the-counter move and is of questionable legitimacy) reveals in his letter just how unfit he is to hold any position at a Pacifica station.

CLICK ON LETTER TO ENLARGE

Reimers' balance?

WBAI Treasurer’s Report

January 11, 2017 

The National Finance Committee (NFC) met on December 20, and 27, 2016, and on January 10, 2017. The NFC meetings have been mostly about getting the FY17 budgets approved. At the December 20, 2016, NFC meeting a bequest issue which had been raised at a prior PNB meeting was on the agenda, but it was thought that it belonged in an executive session. The following motion was passed.: 

Motion: (Ken Aaron) “To move to closed session at the first 2017, meeting after the new NFC has been seated.” (Passed 5 for, 3 against, 1 abstention) I do not know which radio station or other part of Pacifica this bequest relates to. At the December 27, 2016, NFC meeting the WBAI draft FY17 budget proposal came up for discussion. The WBAI draft FY17 budget proposal shows the station with a total revenue about $350,000 greater than what the National Office says WBAI raised in FY16. This includes an increase in Listener Support of $178,360. The WBAI General Manager told the NFC that the station would also realize about $54,000 in revenue from Community Events. He also said that expenses would be about the same as they were in FY16. The bottom line of the budget is a deficit of $312,720. If we subtract the monthly accrual of approximately $36,000 for the Empire State Building (ESB) rent this would bring WBAI to a cash flow surplus of almost $120,000. These numbers look good, but they are not based on past performance, which used to be the criterion for budgets in Pacifica. According to the FY16 Profit & Loss statement from the National Office WBAI ended FY16 with a deficit of $190,788 after adjustment for the ESB accrual. 

The WBAI General Manager’s projected tally figures for the Fall on-air fund raiser and the December on-air fund raiser are higher than what was actually raised. The $54,000 in revenue from Community Events is unproven and for FY16 WBAI is showing a $250 deficit in Community Events. During the General Manager’s presentation to the NFC it was pointed out that a number of FY16 figures in WBAI Management’s budget proposal were at variance with those of the National Office. WBAI Management’s figures were always more positive than the National Office’s figures. The General Manager said that he’d send the NFC all of the Community Events information on spreadsheets along with his spreadsheets of the December on-air fund raiser to back up his projections of significantly more revenue. He said he’d send them to the NFC by January 4, 2017. Outside of a single Web page screen capture which was sent to the NFC during this meeting, the promised data has not been sent to the NFC. 

Another issue regarding the Community Events that are projected is that the General Manager is not sending out the required expense and revenue projections before the events and the actual revenue and expense figures after the events. The PNB passed a motion in 2012, requiring that this be done for all Community Events. I have been asking for information on a number of the off-air fund raising events for years, and I have gotten very little information from the General Manager. In some cases I have not been able to find out what the revenue was from some events that I have been asking about for more than two years. Also, some events are not run by WBAI alone. I have never been able to get information from the General Manager about the arrangements for events that benefitted WBAI along with some other entity, including the ratio of which co-beneficiary got how much revenue from the event. At this meeting the General Manager told the NFC that he does not use MEMSYS, the Pacifica standard for keeping track of the revenue from on-air fund raisers and the membership. This was an unexpected revelation. The NFC passed the following motion: 

Motion: “The NFC recommends to the PNB the adoption of the FY2017 budget for WBAI, with the provisos that revenue from other sources be broken out of listener support, that all actuals be included as soon as available, that Central Services payments to the National Office be adjusted when the PNB revises its formula.” (passed 4 for, 3 against) I voted against this motion because the WBAI FY17 budget is not based on proven revenue, there is inadequate disclosure of the details of the station’s fund raising activities, and it does not seem realistic to believe that the station will realize a $350,000 increase in revenue based on the unprecedented figures from the General Manager. It also needs to be pointed out that the FY17 budget projects pitching for 131 days. In fact the station will probably pitch even more than that. Pitching too much of the time tends to reduce the number of listeners which in turn limits the number of members, as can be seen from WBAI’s listener membership for the 2016, election. Unfortunately, other budgets in Pacifica also seem to be founded on something other than proven revenue. This may have a very serious impact on all of Pacifica and WBAI in FY17. At the January 10, 2017, NFC meeting there was discussion of the SCA motion passed by the PNB. This motion was reported on in the December 14, 2016, Treasurer’s Report. A part of the discussion about it at this meeting was the idea that the National Office cannot change the details of a motion passed by the PNB. There will probably be more discussions about the SCA/Central Services fees formula in the future. Because not all of the budgets have been approved, and because the calculations for the Central Services fees and how they relate to the PNB’s SCA motion have not been done, the NFC decided that it couldn’t present a consolidated budget to the PNB, and so the following motion was passed: 

Motion: (Michael Novick) “That the Chair be authorized to tell PNB we are not in a position to do the consolidated budget because we do not have the final budget proposals from KPFA or the National Office.” (Passed without objection) The NFC may be able to come up with a consolidated budget over the next several weeks. At this meeting the NFC was told by a Director that the Audit Committee has the FY14 audit and they are sending it to the interim Executive Director and telling her to have it posted. As of this NFC meeting the FY14 audit had not been posted to the Pacifica Web site. In order for eligible Pacifica stations to resume receiving CPB Public Service Grants the FY15 and FY16 audits must both be posted no later than June 30, 2017. Receipt of these grants would result in a six figure influx of revenue for some Pacifica stations, including WBAI. The local Finance Committee had set a meeting date of January 5, 2017, but there was no quorum for the meeting and so the meeting was cancelled. I will be seeing when the General Manager can attend a meeting with the committee and I will poll the committee for its next meeting date.

The December 2016, on-air fund raiser ran from December 10, through December 20, 2016. The tally, from the information Management has given out, came to $120,222, after 11 days of pitching which is a daily average of $10,929 a day. The goal for this on-air fund raiser, in the FY17 budget was $140,000 after 10 days of pitching, which would be a daily average tally of $14,000 a day. The General Manager has stated his opinion that WBAI is doing well with the daily tally at just under $11,000 a day. This is what the daily tally had been a couple of years ago, but the station wasn’t in good financial shape then. The preempting of so much of the regular programming for the on-air fund raisers that take up more than a third of the broadcast time over the course of a year does not promote the programming that WBAI is supposed to be producing. 

The WBAI Winter 2017, on-air fund raiser has been announced as running from February 6, through March 6, 2017, 29 days. The FY17 budget projects this on-air fund raiser to run for 23 days and achieve a tally of $322,000 and a daily tally of $14,000. Clearly WBAI’s FY17 budget, based on something other than proven revenue, portends an uncertain future for the station. That other stations are having their similar FY17 budgets approved makes the future look even more uncertain. Given that there are people at KPFA who are actively trying to break up Pacifica so that they can acquire KPFA as their own property, including one lawyer among them who is threatening to go to court to break up Pacifica if Pacifica doesn’t agree to hand that radio station over to his group, there really is no telling what the next few months will bring. The First Quarter actuals for FY17 should be out in around two weeks. If they continue the trend that was seen for FY16, then the FY17 budgets that have been passed are going to have to be drastically changed. The next NFC meeting will be on either January 17, or January 25, 2017, depending on whether the PNB meets on January 17. The date of the next local Finance Committee meeting will be determined over the next couple of weeks by a poll of the members of the committee.   —R. Paul Martin WBAI LSB Treasurer

I Berthold you so...

How many times have you heard WBAI's robobozos say, "You won't hear this on any other station"? Well, here's one reason. An unwritten script—Every fib is not ad lib.

Exiles returning?

NOTICE WAS IMMATERIAL

Berkeley - After throwing out two consecutive elections by WBAI's delegates to fill 3 WBAI vacancies on the national board, and rigging the 2017 affiliates director election by not allowing any independent WBAI directors to vote, PNB treasurer and board majority member Michael Novick admitted that "in retrospect", the board majority was wrong and the "flawed notice" was immaterial. In correspondence with a Pacifica employee, Novick said:

"I abstained on the vote not to seat the people elected at the LSB meeting in December. In retrospect I think the flawed notice was immaterial, as it had no impact on the outcome of the vote. Since I abstained, however, I am not in a position to move for reconsideration"

You can read Novick's full email here.  In the 15 days between the 2nd thrown out election and Novick's retrospective recognition, the LA activist is not known to have spoken out about his discomfort with the action or attempted to reverse the injustice. 

This sound file contrasts the excuses used to throw out the first WBAI directors election (held on December 7 and thrown out on December 13) and those used to throw out the second WBAI directors election (held on December 14 and thrown out on December 15). 

The affiliates director election for 2017 was held 4 days later, without any independent representation from WBAI. The two affiliate directors will likely be the tie-breaking votes on a closely divided 2017 national board. Election teller Terry Goodman released the full election count publicly, showing the results when all ballots were counted, including those of the WBAI independent directors. His public report showed that David Beaton was the winner, with Temba Tshibanda as the first runner-up. It can be read here. Beaton received 44% of the first place votes cast (7/16). The second runner-up, Tshibanda, received 31% (5/16).

75% of WBAI's national representation has been exiled from the national board for an entire year, in violation of Article 5, Section 1 of Pacifica's bylaws, which states the board of directors has a minimum of 22 members and equal representation from all 5 Pacifica stations and that the board may not change the configuration by resolution. The reason for the WBAI vacancies is the board's interpretation of the "six-year rule" or term limit, which states delegates (local station board members) may not serve for more than six consecutive years. 

KPFA's local station board has planned another un-noticed "retreat meeting" for this upcoming Saturday at an undisclosed location unavailable to the public. Wilkinson will attend the secret meeting. It is said former CFO Sam Agarwal will be an invited guest speaker. Agarwal left the organization in September after tussles with the Siegel/Brazon board majority.

The Pacifica National Board meeting scheduled for this evening looks to be a contentious affair with the lame-duck Siegel/Brazon majority attacking each other with members Kobren, Sorden (WPFW), and Casenave (KPFT) all offering motions to discipline, censure or overrule the "Save KPFA" branch of the faction over matters of the secret retreat meeting, remote call-in meeting participation and Wilkinson's continuing activity after her delegate term expired. Pacifica in Exile will have a complete report on the meeting outcomes early next week. 

The 2 WBAI directors elections are not the only elections the board majority threw out. They threw out all of them on December 13, demanding a recount of all 10 local station board elections and declaring certified election results from vendor True Ballot and national election supervisor Lynne Serpe "provisional". In the ensuing three weeks, the board majority has not backed down from their attempt to invalidate the election, despite much criticism. The enclosed report from the board secretary Janet Kobren spends 22 pages exhaustively detailing a long list of write-in candidates, none of whom received more than 5 or 6 votes (most received only 1 or 2).The report provides no evidence that a single result would be altered. The "report"  can be read here.  It is a demonstration of the expression "fiddling while Rome burns". California Corporations Code Section 5615 states that the certification of an appointed election supervisor is final. 

Pacifica has still posted no financial information for fiscal year 2014 (10-1-2013 to 9-30-2014) on their website, despite statements the tardy financial audit is "done. The page for financial information for 2014 remains blank at 26 months after the close of the fiscal year.

In other news, LA station KPFK is facing the imminent loss of its chief fundraiser, producer Christine Blosdale. Blosdale, one of the KPFK employees whose severance benefits were reinstated in the SAG-AFTRA arbitration, has raised between 30% and 45% of KPFK's revenues in the last three fund drive cycles, and for many previous years with special fund drive programs. KPFK has been running fund drives about every 60 days since GM Radford took over and barely meeting fundraising goals. The station has no ready solution for a sudden drop in receipts. In the station's December 2016 fundraising effort, Blosdale's programs raised $185,000 of $438,000 raised during the drive or 42% of the total. 

The LA station's draft budget was approved by Pacifica's financial committee with the draconian move of terminating all dependent child and spousal benefits for both full-time and part-time employees.  The proposal would make KPFK the only unit in Pacifica that does not provide health coverage to spouses and dependent children of full-time employees. The plan to cut benefits would put Pacifica in default of the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act  (commonly known as Obamacare) which requires employers of 50 or more employees to provide dependent child coverage up to age 26, for no more than 9.5% of an employee's annual salary. If any of KPFK's employees seek alternate coverage for their children on the state exchange, penalties would be triggered against Pacifica. The benefits cut would affect 6 full-time employees at KPFK who are currently covering dependent children and another 3 employees covering spouses. Employees include management, program hosts and administrative employees. All but one of the impacted employees filed grievances upheld in the 2016 SAG-AFTRA arbitration. Pacifica may be vulnerable to litigation alleging retaliation since GM Radford indicated the benefits were to "pay for" Radford's 2015 contract violations, which assessed fees and penalties of $285,000. You can hear a summary reel from the finance committee discussion here. 

Legacy WBAI broadcaster Bob Fass made the NY Times, which reported Columbia University had purchased archival tapes of Fass' Radio Unnameable, the seminal countercultural program featured in a documentary film  The university bought the tapes directly from producer Fass,and will digitize them for permanent archival storage on the campus. You can read more about it here. 

Long-time WBAI broadcaster Gary Null took to the air on January 2 and talked about Pacifica's current state. His full hour long show can be heard in the program archives at wbai.org. A selection from his lengthier comments can be heard here.

In Texas, long-time manager Duane Bradley's tenure is coming to an end after a pitched multi-year battle with the Houston Siegel/Brazon group. Bradley, whose time as a Pacifica station manager is twice as long as anyone else since the 2002 democratization, finally threw in the towel a few months after long-time program manager Ernesto Aguilar went to the National Federation of Community Broadcasters last fall. KPFT's listeners, partially due to concern about the management drain, handed an overwhelming election victory to the independent group Move KPFT Forward, but the new board and the station will have to go forward with no program director  and a brand new interim manager Obidike Kamau, whose previous job was as a university library director. Kamau was a volunteer programmer at the station. 

Sober look at the rubble

The reality of a destructive faction of Pacifica and its owned stations systematically engaging in a power grab has been known for some time. Indeed, it has become increasingly evident as PNB and committee meetings streamed much of the collusion that developed between like-minded factions at these stations. We heard a ruling majority maneuver votes and rewrite rules in order to move closer to their goal. They even engaged in illegal activity and all with the sanction, if not the covert participation of the Pacifica Foundation's own legal counsel.

Pacifica's last national election severely reduced the obstructionists' faction to a minority, setting in motion a last minute rush to obtain power through manipulation of votes. Sad to say, the damage is done, listenership has been reduced to its lowest point and there is very little money to work with as the debt continues to pile up.

Jim Dingeman is among the few veteran WBAI activists who has been working diligently to knock some sense into the station's management, but Berthold Reimers and his cronies are impossible to communicate with, whether you are a listener-supporter, an honest, earnest person volunteering expertise in fund raising, or a host-producer unwilling to play the game.

When I read the following assessment by Jim Dingeman, it did not surprise me, because he has over the years regularly attempted to wake up this dormant propaganda machine we call WBAI. That includes, in recent years, warning against regressive suggestions to engage in a signal swap with a less powerful station or a Local Marketing Agreement (LMA), which is intended as a temporary arrangement where the station is leased to another broadcaster. LMA's are often the first step in selling a station, which is what the aforementioned faction seems to have in mind.

Here is Jim's assessment of the current situation:

To me

The issue of raising the signal swap or doing an LMA is advocated by some who clearly will benefit by it.

Some of these folks have basically gotten us to this point by three years of absolute unadulterated bullshit excuses and deliberate malfeasance in losing Pacifica as a whole several million dollars in CPB money.

While the discourse in California is certainly a reason why we are having a more intense debate I should note that to my knowledge NOBODY else in Pacifica was brought into this process.

                  

I also reject the seeming reasonableness of the California gestalt of wanting everybody to calm down and take a breath..It usually is a mask for a determined political agenda cloaked in sugar and sweet kumbaya rhetoric

This of course comes at a time when we will soon be in a period of GOP dominance in the three branches of government... we have already been  exposed to deliberate manipulation of the reality of how we have gotten here by falsehoods perpetuated on air, i.e. the feds did this to us, not elements of a majority faction on the PNB.

I see NO, repeat NO, common ground with people who want to basically cannibalize a 50,000 watt signal station in the largest metro market in the United States for their own purposes.

These people include many who politely IGNORE the basic factoid of the collapse of the listener audience due to the decline of the appeal of the programming content in EVERY signal area to people who listen to radio.

At this point, I understand their basic denial of the basic facts as a form of cognitive dissonance, a very human trait. People only like to hear what reinforces their assumptions and propositions and folks here are no different.

Instead of focusing on improving content for the past 15 years we have basically been confronted by a host of individuals who in many cases do not know shit from shineola about broadcasting and do not care to learn to those who have a stake in NOT changing anything. Such attitudes have led to this situation.

Unless a honest facing of these facts is done even if they succeed in a temporary cash bonanza from the demise of WBAI they still will ultimately fail because they still assume the programming, which has evidenced for twenty years or more every possible metric of decline, is honkey dorry.

I attach a breakdown of the U.S population and how marketers perceive it.. Overwhelmingly the bulk of the stations' listenership in every area is aging baby boomers... period.

A tremendous amount of effort has gone into preserving WBAI at this time from dozens of listeners let alone dozens of producers.

That potential, which has in dollar signs easily been tens of thousands of dollars worth of free labor over the past several years, remains a potential untapped force to be unleashed.

It is thwarted by a number of factors but frankly at this point I have to castigate the overworked current management team at WBAI for basically not exploiting this.. this includes all of them.

To me it is illogical to not let talented people work for free to basically help others get paid... it does not make sense.

I also find that in the past ten years the bottom line is that the subscriber base has declined by over 50% and the listenership easily as much, at times.

If people in good faith put forth ideas to alter this and the current implemented montage of ideas have not changed the balance of the basic facts but been directed simply at self preservation has not the time arrived to try out new approaches as well?

It is one thing to change the grid which is still the same as existed in the nineties, except with some tweaking.

Sure, the producers collectively have a lot of power and can raise holy hell but if they are not on the air anymore after a swap or sale then who the hell cares over some of them thinking the way they do now?

The thrust should be to make WBAI a force among millions, not dozens... the possibility of that is always there but the slow deadly impact of fiscal attrition chips away at the possibility of resiliently turning the place around... there are things we should have doing after Sandy and we still get the run around over them.

Enough is Enough                                              —Jim Dingeman