At the request of KPFA programmer Peter Phillips, I am posting this public statement by Carol Spooner, former Pacifica National Board member. It offers Spooner’s assessment of why layoffs were necessary at KPFA. I am not sure whether Spooner will approve of this posting. In a separate statement, she has accused me of “Glenbeckian” distortions […]
There’s good news in the Pacifica radio network’s latest financial audit. Listener donations to the five listener supported radio station non-profit rose in 2010 from their catastrophic drop of almost $4 million between 2008 and 2009. The donation total was $10,585,979 in 2010, up from $9,808,729 in 2009. That doesn’t compensate, of course, for the […]
You need a score card these days to keep up with programming changes over at listener sponsored Pacifica station KPFA in Berkeley. About four months after dumping the KPFA Morning Show and replacing it with a volunteer lineup called ‘The Morning Mix,’ the station’s management says it is ending that experiment, too. Pretty much everything […]
Radio doesn’t always begin and end with a broadcast over the airwaves. Sometimes radio transmissions are used by artists as another tool for creative expression. This year the arts organization 23five is curating the Activating the Medium XIV festival in San Francisco and will present several performances and radio broadcasts focused on the theme of […]
Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer is one of my favorite people in the world of arts, letters, and radio. A brilliant and entertaining critic of neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism, and neo-crackpotism, Henwood is the author of Wall Street and After the New Economy—the latter a remarkable analysis of the dot-com-bomb phenomenon. Doug is long associated […]
It’s never a dull moment over at listener supported radio station KPFA-FM in Berkeley, California. Here’s some of the latest poop: Former WBAI-FM Program Director Andrew Phillips is headed to become the station’s interim manager, following the resignation of the last guy (who lasted about a month). You can find a brief mention of Phillips […]
The new all volunteer KPFA Morning Show got a resounding endorsement from Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth this week. The group says its mission is to promote the idea that there is “sufficient evidence to conclude that the World Trade Center buildings #1 (North Tower), #2 (South Tower), and #7 (the 47 story high-rise […]
Editor’s Note: Radioactive Gavin has collected more than 300 articles on radio and digital music over the past 3 months for Common Frequency. This is the first of a series of seven posts he will be contributing in the coming weeks, looking back at the end of a rough year in radio. Conservatives crying “Defund NPR” […]
You can always tell a true community radio politics junkie, because eventually he or she will open up a post with a line like the following: “This is the last thing I’m ever going to say about Pacifica radio.” Yeah, right. So let me put it a little more tentatively. This is the last thing […]
It was a classic Pacifica radio moment over at the network’s flagship station, KPFA in Berkeley, on Tuesday. Having laid off the Morning Show staff, new Pacifica Executive Director Arlene Engelhardt thought she had it all figured out. She was going to pipe in programming from KPFK, KPFA’s sister station in Los Angeles. The dumped […]
