The Fall Fundraiser... is it aptly named?

Last week, in a cameo appearance on the morning show, Berthold Reimers, the little GM who never could, mentioned that there were still 3,900 premiums from past fundraisers that have not been delivered to the listeners who paid for them.

That is, of course, outrageous and probably criminal. Now, without having caught up on this delinquency, a new month-long fundraiser is disrupting WBAI's program schedule. This morning at 7, when the latest beg fest was kicked off, Michael Haskins declared himself "very excited," and began his usual recitation of station IDs and trite false claims regarding WBAI's alleged importance. The news glimpse wasted time on a "commencement address" to 20 Goddard College  graduates, delivered by the convicted murderer Wesley Cook, who calls himself "Mumia Abu-Jamal". Cook graduated from Goddard via correspondence while serving a life sentence in Philadelphia. All this is the stuff failure is made of at WBAI.

In the hour that followed, I heard Amy Goodman offer her $2000 dinner with guilt-free coffee. Then there was Cornell West going overboard with his rhetoric and theatrics, and that horrid West Coast woman, Margaret Prescod, somehow concluding that buying a documentary on Haiti is going to help that country's people. It's all a part of the BS that dominates this once remarkable radio station.

Would you send them money? Would you pay for products that have been fraudulently hawked by people whose main or only interest in keeping WBAI on the air is entirely self-serving? Would you pay a shamelessly hiked-up price for a product that is more readily available as a gratis download or a considerably less expensive item with guaranteed swift delivery by Amazon?

Do you worry about the money not being there to pay Berthold Reimers' $100,000.00 salary? 

Do you wonder why WBAI has lost the overwhelming majority of its listener-supporters? Do you wonder why stars who once went out of their way to help the station no longer care? Do you wonder why the once-supportive mainstream media has lost interest? Do you wonder why WBAI is operated by incompetent amateurs and its microphones (when they work) hogged by the same old stagnant opportunists decade after decade?

Aren't' you the least bit curious to find out what's going on?

Well, I am. I would love to know how Kathy Davis' phony spiritualism, Geoff Brady's reptilian warnings, Mumia's drivel, Hopper and Anderson's record promotions, Bob Fass' incoherent battle with Mr. Microphone, and all that pedestrian pop music that the likes of Ifé and Tony Ryan waste air time on is going to help the people of Haiti, oppressed Palestinians, America's poor and others who don't have a "show" on WBAI.

I would also like someone to tell me about the petrified Pacifica Foundation, the one whose raison d'être becomes blurrier by the day.

Do you have questions? Answers? 

Can we get down to the nitty gritty?

Click on image to enlarge.

Keeping an eye on Berthold Reimers

You can enlarge this note by clicking on it

If Reimers maintains his cowardly silence, I hope someone apse brings up this subject. For an earlier post on this situation, go here.

Bare Fall 2014 Marathon schedule

Here is what the station has posted as the initial  schedule for the upcoming marathon. It seems oddly lacking in details and I don't know what the yellow highlights indicate.

Click on schedule to make it more readable.

Murillo's road to nowhere?

This morning at 7, as WBAI approaches yet another fundraising marathon, the station's interim PD, Mario Murillo summoned the elusive Berthold Reimers to the rented uptown studio, where a clueless Michael Haskins holds forth at that hour.

The purpose was to spend an hour talking about the forthcoming drive and taking listener calls. Reasonable people might well have expected to hear Murillo and Reimers update what little has seeped out regarding the current financial situation, and tell us what was going to be done about it.

No such luck. Again, this was an hour of mostly meaningless blather where one had to read between the lines in order to catch a glimpse of the real situation.

As so often before, I naïvely hoped we would hear what the new iPD has in store for the program schedule. This PD du jour has been with WBAI before and there were indications that he was ready to tackle an acknowledged series of mis-steps. Thus, one had every right to expect that there would be an initial weeding process to at least initiate program improvement.

Again, that turns out to have been foolish optimism. The truly awful host/producers will, apparently, not be shown the door—in fact, some of them received praise!

Murillo indicates his displeasure with so many programs being imported from outside sources, and he agrees with a caller who bemoans the lack of interaction with the "community". However, he does not seem to feel any need to expand that community, except for adding an emphasis on Central and South America. In other words, WBAI should stay on its narrowed path.

He wants to see more family business take place via social media rather than at 99.5. When the "Talk Back" program is mentioned, Murillo dates it back to the Nineties, when he was the station's Public Affairs person. The truth is that "Talk Back"—under the same name—goes back to the Sixties, when he was a kid.

Reimers mumbles his preference for the written word. This is the alleged GM who rarely is heard on the air, doesn't answer or even acknowledge e-mail, and is loath to take phone calls, because there are "crazy people" out there.

When a caller brings up the station's overwhelming emphasis on all things black and brown—a bias not readily missed by any regular listener—Haskins predictably goes on the defense. As you may have observed, Michael G. Haskins' horizon is quite narrow and dark. He has made it quite clear by his actions and words that membership in WBAI's "community" is determined by ones racial origin. Well, he does allow for the occasional black-by-choice character, like Mimi Rosenberg, who often says the right things, but in such a way that they promptly exit out the other ear.

Listen as Haskins pretends not to understand what the caller is saying, and note Murillo's reaction. And they still wonder why the audience has shrunk down to a call-in few?

Finally, there's this clip, which I have included just to show how utterly clueless the $100,000.00 a year Berthold Reimers is.

I hope you caught Reimers citing premium/product delinquency figures. Remember when he and his cronies attributed his first two years of invisibility to his having worked on the "premiums problem"? He and his inner circle claimed that he had all but put an end to the shipping arrears. That fantasy was later echoed by Mitchel Cohen and others who fought against Reimers' firing. Now we hear him mumble that a later 12,000 item backlog of unshipped "gifts" has been reduced to a mere 3,900! In other words, we were lied to, again. and this is practically on the eve of a new marathon. Not very encouraging for those who plan to send in money after the iPad lottery deadline.

You can still hear this hour in its entirety by going to the station's archive at WBAI.org and selecting the 7 AM entry for October 2. 

What do you think? Am I being too critical?