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.
Thank you "Jara". ... and here we thought broadcasting was a vital part of communication.
ReplyDeleteWhat naïve fools we are!
Ha, so apposite! I was so deep in the labyrinth of offices I forgot I was in a radio station!
DeleteIt is truly mind-boggling how motivated & dedicated these individuals are to keep control of the pathetic 'power' they have. Sad, too.
Even now I find the prompt, courteous, friendly reply I got from Graeme Drew, the former National Elections Supervisor, arresting. In a toxic, necrotic environment, a green shoot of vitality just stands out with all its freshness. I wonder if DSM-5 has an entry for Pacifica-psychosis?
. . . whilst Rome burns . . .
The governance is broken. The system has been paralyzed by intense vicious arguments. The managers and their friends are simply running the show because they can. They claim to know better despite the abysmal ratings and revenue. WPFW is a joke. Here is a station in the nation's capital and they're barely able to survive. They can't even get people willing to serve on their board. At WBAI, Cerene's reign of terror has provoked such bitterness that they just won't bother meeting. The factions don't talk to each other at all. Not at all. Neither side will concede one iota. They would rather blow up the station than budge one inch.
ReplyDeleteYou're missing nothing by skipping these meetings Chris. They drag themselves in an hour late, argue about something, pretend to listen to public comment and argue about things they know will never get done because Reimers and his buddies won't allow it. Reimers should be accountable but winds up being the one lecturing and making demands. That is when he bothers to show up. As far as they're concerned, everything is just fine. The programming is just great and all the critics need to shut up and go raise money for this wonderful station and its dozens of listeners.
meanwhile back at the plantation, hmm hmm ... I mean the ranch .
ReplyDeletethey dug up some more crap for mimi to gladly hawk about africa .
Maybe some more "hidden" history or What "they" don't want you to know about.
Or what other radio stations wouldn't dare put on the air. LMAO!
I don't believe KPFK's LSB received Jara's material.
ReplyDelete@JH
ReplyDeleteThanks for that as well as your previous.
I have a question for which you might be able to dig up an answer if you're so inclined:
It's my superficial layman's understanding that nonprofits are required, similarly to for-profit entities, to have publicly available information as to the salaries and other compensation paid their officers and other high level decision makers.
If this is true, how is that any such information about Pacifica and its units (the five stations plus Archives) seems to be a State Secret?
You seem better at this sort of question than I am, so I hope you don't mind my raising the thought with you.
Certainly it isn't only the on-air people who treat things as if they're private property. The whole of Pacifica, proclamations to the contrary notwithstanding, seems to be a very private very secretively-inclined little club.
Or should I say 'Cabal'...
~ 'indigopirate'
Here you go! IRS 990 forms with numbers. Read it with a skeptical eye.
Deletehttps://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/941347046
"[S]keptical", yes, as shown by comparing the entries there with those at the IRS & pacifica.org . The evidence shows that the propublica website is misleading; & shouldn't be used given the two primary sites I note.
DeleteThere is, amongst others, comparable on line, this https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/question-are-nonprofits-finances-public-information-28028.html
ReplyDeleteSo I'm understandably curious as to why we seem to have no information as to these salaries, amongst other financial mysteries of the Pacifica Foundation.
~ 'indigopirate'
Back in the mid-Sixties, WBAI had as many as 25 paid staff members. Our salaries were available to anyone who inquired. As Station Manager, mine was the highest: $12,000 a year.
DeleteYou didn't specify the exact reference year, but if I compare $12,000 in 1965 to 2018, adjusting for inflation with a handy-dandy online calculator using the official US figures, that translates to ~$96,000 in present-day USD.
Delete~ indigopirate'
No wonder that I coulld live on it, even take. A cab. To work (from 104 and CPW to East 39th. 🚕
DeleteDear Indigo,
DeleteThanks for your insights. Mysteries of mysteries can be solved at guidestar. Sign up for a free account and you can see who are the highest paid employees and board of directors, and other information you might want to ponder. Can't wait to read your insights.
Excuse me for being off topic, but I am sitting here torturing myself trying to figure out WTF Kathryn Davis is talking about. Does she and her listeners really believe this "spiritual" nonsense she incessantly meanders about as well as the B.S. services/premiums she hustles? She annoys the hell out me.
ReplyDeleteKathy Davis is a hare-brained fraud. Her phony spirituality is an embarrassment, an insult to intelligence. I hope Linda hears this nonsense,, kills Kathy’s commercials. They contribute mightily to WBAI earning its obscurity. and tag: New York’s Listener-abandoned Station.
DeleteIs 18 hours of Caribbean Heritage music programming today supposed to add to the WBAI fundraising coffer or attract new listeners? I wonder who came up with the proposal which apparently got Reimer's stamp of approval. Bad move.
ReplyDelete
DeleteI don’t know who calls the fundraising shots these days, but whoever it is ought to know that recycling stale, failed commercials never works.
The WBAI bozos who think the solution to the station’s problems is to convert it to a third-grade black propaganda whimper are woefully out of touch with reality, even when it hits them in the face.
As Handala so keenly points out, what we have here is a failure to communicate—New York’s misleading listener-abandoned radio station.
Pardon me while I spend a few hours writing a best-selling book. 📚
I would like to see an 18 hour line-up with the likes of (for example) Max Schmid, Chris Whent, James Irsay, Joyce Jones, Peter Bochan, et, al and then "objectively" comparing the income from those shows with the income that will come in at 11:59 PM from today's travesty.
ReplyDeleteThat's the sort of line up I would support, once the dreck is flushed overboard
DeleteChris, when you say "Pardon me while I spend a few hours writing a best-selling book", is it after wasting $795 in a Tom Bird Weekend Writing Retreat ?
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, who is this fraud and the loser who "interviews" him in one of the most pathetic WBAI "fundraising" infomercials?
Today's WBAI is synonymous with scam. Listeners are hoodwinked into paying for the greed and ignorance of a totally incompetent, morally broken "management".
DeleteI don't know who these scammers are, but why are we not hearing from any of their victims? Why are the station's financial problems not being solved by having staff and volunteers spend a week authoring best-sellers? When this sorry group of opportunists tries to sell books on the air, they are mostly volumes of distorted history or gimmick books like the one by Joy the Gruesome.
Linda Perry should disinfect WBAI and engage in an honest discussion with victimized listeners.
Truth just might set WBAI free of all this vermin.
Chris ,Although I agree with most of what you say . But , sorry to say Linda Perry isn't going to do
ReplyDeleteshit about shit.
She's all on board with the all africa all the time format.
Remember when she used to do the news for a half hour and it would be about eric garner for the entire
half hour. More recently the playing of the poor peoples campaign , aka black lives matter crap.
And now she has to know and approved this train wreck they are airing all day today.
Need i say more ? They are DOOMED!
Admittedly, I have a problem with some changes not having been made, but I think Linda is trying to make program improvements—it is a long, arduous job, so I still have hopes of her having seen the light, as it were. :)
DeleteShe does not have the power to fire Reimers, but she does have an opportunity to protest and alter the course of a WBAI going the wrong way. This fund drive is a recycled disaster—I suspect (hope) that it reflects Reimers more so than Linda.
Quite frankly, the outlook is grim—the station my stay on the air, but it is essentially dead. New York is a fantastic source of talent, but one still hears little or no indication of that at 99.5.
Linda needs to go on the air (sans Reimers, Kathy and other albatrosses) and lay it all on the table. Tell it like it is, what she wants it to be, and what is being done. No more secrets, no more pulling the wool over people's eyes (ears).
Margaret Prescod is on air now, replacing Ron Daniels regular Monday afternoon slot, in a repeat broadcast trying her best to "shame" listeners in sending in money to help last year's hurricane victims in Puerto Rico. She blurbed out, "...the phones have slowed down ringing...". Huh? Will someone tell Margaret the phones stopped ringing months time ago.
DeleteThis sort of sloppy scheduling is commonplace it today's mismanaged WBAI. The perennial recycled scamfomercials have destroyed the genuine no-product approach which we came up with on the spot back in the mid-Sixties. Honesty and spirit prevailed and communicated with a listenership that never let us down.
DeleteThe fraud that Prescod, Daniels, Null, Kathy and others engage in is one reason why the hours of begging will soon exceed the air time spent just broadcasting what has become characteristic crap.
By happenstance I tuned into Mike Sargent's "Niteshift" which, I admit, is way above my comprehension "artistically" speaking. He has recently added another show to his arsenal called "Damned Good Music" and has done film critiques/reviews on Friday. I would be interested in knowing from Berthold Reimers how much money/donations does Sargent actually bring into the station to justify having so many hours on air?
ReplyDelete