As we reported last week, everyone at Pacifica station WBAI in New York City has received layoff notices. The move follows a long spate of bad luck, most notably an unsuccessful marathon and Hurricane Sandy. Here’s a guest blog post from long time WBAI programmer Sidney “Uncle Sidney” Smith, with his take on the situation: […]
Pacifica National Board member Tracy Rosenberg has sent us her own assessment of the crisis situation at WBAI in New York City. I post most of her response to my Friday piece here. I’m not sure that I would describe the following as “cautiously optimistic,” but Rosenberg suggests that “if the station can cover much-reduced […]
The man in charge of overseeing the election of board delegates to Pacifica radio’s five Local Station Boards (LSBs) has asked the network to end these contests once and for all. “Almost everybody agrees that the elections at Pacifica are too costly, time consuming, factionalized and factionalizing,” concludes Pacifica National Elections Supervisor Terry Bouricius in […]
Over the weekend, brand new community radio station KHOI launched in Ames, Iowa. Five years in the making, the license application for the full power non-commercial educational (NCE) FM station was submitted to the FCC in 2007 and was granted in 2009. KHOI went on the air and began their testing phase on 89.1 FM […]
As the troubles facing Pacifica radio persist without apparent end, I sometimes wonder whether the five station listener supported radio network should voluntarily dismantle itself—that is, transfer its licenses to five local non-profit entities. I am not the first person to suggest this. Community radio pioneer Lorenzo Milam more or less laid the idea out […]
In a special meeting of the Pacifica National Board held on Thursday, April 26, Pacifica Executive Director Arlene Engelhardt dropped this long overdue bombshell. “I just am very concerned where we are going to come up with a quarter of a million dollars to run an election this year,” she told the Board. This is […]
The KPFA Worker website says that the Pacifica Foundation has retained the law firm of Jackson Lewis to manage some of its legal affairs. The foundation owns listener supported station KPFA in Berkeley, and four similar non-commercial stations in Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C. and Houston. “We see the entry of Jackson Lewis as […]
WBAI-FM’s Local Station Board has passed a sweeping resolution calling on the New York City based listener sponsored station to cut down on its fund drives and build up its audience. The resolution, passed on Wednesday, asks WBAI management to produce “concrete plans” to drop on-air fundraising days by 40 percent over the next three […]
On Saturday I headed out to Davis, California for a full day of radio immersion thanks to Common Frequency. I’ve been a fan of Common Frequency for awhile, so it was great to be able to not only learn more about their organization, but also meet some of the radio groups who they are helping. […]
Since democratizing itself, I estimate that Pacifica radio has spent $2,424,662 on its complex governance system and board elections. Where the heck did that money go?
