To the Pacifica National Board:

For weeks now, I've asked questions of our local PNB members, and they've given me no answers. Not surprisingly, I'm assuming the worst now: that the threat of bankruptcy is, at bottom, a ruse to shock and awe us into re-making Pacifica into a mainstream radio network.

First, the threat: for a $700K shortfall, the equivalent of one quarter of one larger station's annual donations, first you lay off staff, perhaps a wise fiscal move, but it creates a vacuum that your appointees can fill when times get better.

Then you skip over our usual fund raising methods--direct appeals to listeners--and put the KPFK building at risk with a 30-year mortgage for a third or less of it's value. Locally, we have less than a week's notice, or so we're told. At the same time, two of our PNB members talk openly about, instead, selling the $200M signal of our most radical, and to some, our most pesky sister station. Our LSB refuses to bite the bait, I'm proud to say.

The loan is for at least $1M, $300K more than the shortfall. Wrapped into this bail out is a plan for national programming that will inevitably bump local shows and standardize the sound across five very different regions of the country. Have you forgotten the Pacifica Mission's mandate "to encourage and provide outlets for the creative skills and energies of the community ... and to promote and aid other creative activities which will serve the cultural welfare of the community"?

For those local shows that are left, that are still based in the community, ten of you have put forward a plan that will move to prime time programs that have the most listener ship and bring in the most money during fund drives. Die hard listeners will have to hunt in the wee hours for voices like Eiser Mason and riKu Matsuda, Dedon Kamati, Rodrigo Argueta, and other wonderful, educational, and surprising voices that now grab a fresh radio listener scanning the dial.

It seems now that part of the loan will finance a consulting company to do the job that you were elected to do: generate a recovery and restructuring strategy and a fundraising plan. Apparently, the contractor will serve as interim Executive Director presumably until they have put their scheme for mainstreaming Pacifica in place. The consulting company turns out to be using Pacifica to test out their generic and formulaic "Extreme Makeover" for non-profit restructuring, before they send their manuscript of that name out to publishers. They have no radio experience, and their resumé wouldn't make the first cut for Executive Director under normal circumstances, but they have a friend on the National Board.

They are recommending what several of you are also urging: underwriting. However you package it, underwriting is selling air time for promotion. In some ways, underwriting is worse than direct advertising: with an advertiser, you know they're pushing their product, but when we hear "'Uprising' has been brought to you by the Ford Foundation," we can only wonder what influence was bought and sold, and what programs were cancelled or just never made it to the program grid because they had no sponsor. The Mission was both wise and prescient when it mandated "that the facilities involved shall be as nearly self-sustaining as possible."

The sum of what you're proposing is the Healthy Stations Project, the CPB plan that turned NPR mainstream and will do the same to Pacifica. It was this plan that brought about the Pacifica struggle of the last Democratic Presidency, the one that brought down that National Board in a torrent of listener outrage and instituted our elected Local Station Boards.

That earlier Board operated in secret too, avoiding public scrutiny and public meetings, just as you have squeezed all this in between public meetings and usually in closed sessions. They, too, neither consulted the listeners nor the local station boards, and they whispered among themselves of selling stations.

Tomorrow you might decide to set a course that puts Pacifica on a trajectory for battling Air America and NPR. That's a war that Pacifica has neither the resources nor the will to win.

Pacifica's troubles come and go. The answer has always been our contributors, our volunteers, refusing to succumb to the glamour of Arbitron ratings and mainstream popularity, and the surprising, thought-provoking, and illuminating ideas of community broadcasters. Those are Pacifica's roots and its niche. If you'll look there, you can still save Pacifica.

Leslie Radford

KPFK Local Station Board member

In the big picture, history is repeating itself, and Pacifica is returning to where it was eight years ago.

Then dissident voices on Pacifica concerned Slick Willy and the Democratic Leadership Council. They were getting criticism from the political left, not exactly the working class but close enough for concern.

I recall Amy Goodman's interview with Bill Clinton, I think on election day in 1996, where he was calling radio stations for quick two and three minute clips, and he got flustered when he couldn't Amy's questions and the interview went on for several minutes, when he could have done some more interviews.

Some prominent Democrats signed on to the take over effort , and they nearly succeeded.

The same circumstances again today. Criticism on Pacifica stations of Obama and his DLC program has not only started but has taken off. Few programmers rationalize Paul Volker, Larry Summers, or Robert Gates because they know their listeners know better. No less than Ian Masters himself is having difficultly continuing the pretense of meaningful change from Obama.

The same right wing DLC forces see the same problem they saw back then and have begun the same process of taking over Pacifica and silencing criticism of Obama from the left. The battle has begun.

The lesson from then is to start fighting early and not repeat Hitler's mistake at Normandy of waiting until the Allies had beached a critical mass before fully engaging them.

Sorry for spelling error in the title.

Thank you - Leslie - for again acting as the ONLY open LSB member - that some of us can learn from and respond to as needed. Where else is any such information being placed and posted openly ?

Your dedication and opinions are stated clearly and for the 'hidden audience of paid-up sponsors to KPFK' this Indy site is the main place where info may be disseminated. Wonder how many people do read these cries for help and unity ? Note how few of the same people write to respond here.

How difficult to know who else agrees with you, Leslie or does not and why... who are we ? ... the paying-the-price listeners that want to be more involved in the happenings [even if out-of-reach] at KPFK. Besides attending hours of LSB meetings, that is.

Could it be that Naomi Wolf's version that "Shock !" is the best way to insure compliance and a rushed vote - to take away liberties, to change mortgage-values, or to insure it will be 'too late now' to do anything after decsions are made ...by the em-powered-already-in-power ....even at humanitarian-imaged Pacifica & KPFK ?

The shock is the apparently-sudden realization that the KPFK building is the best or only way to get money out for WBAI's use [on the other side of the USA] in these financially disastrous times ...we are shocked to realize that the PNB et al. has acted so quickly in their own shock - they can do whatever they think is 'right' or 'best' -and blame the world's shocking $$$ circumstances for their mistakes ?

The shock is the 'immediate actions that MUST BE taken right now !! ' - or was it decided with not enough forethought or more research possible beforehand ? Or because we are ...again...and again.. in CRISIS... in crisis...again...of course. And we hear it every pledge drive year after year too.

By definition, in 'crises', there is not enough time, or resources, or willingness to include cooperation of all concerned, and the threat of extinction, and loss, and damage and of course, 'loss of jobs' [ which are the same repeated ploys used by mfg 'g corporations as well ] so KPFK is now also on another edge.

and to save a station - WBAI - or others too ? that has perhaps not been well managed before to arrive at that critical stage ?

and to have waited until the Edge emerges and then, of course, Shock has made instant reactions necessary ? No time to ask anyone for input or feedback now. Too shocking a time, so no time. No input. Not necessary now.

or is it the prior and continued opacity of Pacifica's problems so far - that makes it appear that the 'crisis' of other than our own KPFK's money problems seem to have arrived so suddenly to shock us here too now ?

I notice that very few, the same few KPFK-concerned people, write on this site to inform and question what is occuring at KPFK, even as the station struggles and tries to manage itself . And we have to trust that many smart people on our LSB are surely doing 'their best' - even if we dont see or know where they inform the listener-sponsors about their thoughts before even LSB decisions are immenent and made. Much less access PNB members.

These are the same complaints repeated here, but are still valid. Once the wall falls, the wall that holds up the KPFK mission and it's advertised claims, it will be a done deal, and more pledge money will be 'required' and begged for again.

Thank you for what you do.

The helplessness and hopelessness that extrudes from the ways OUR station has worked so secretly & left the rest of 'us' OUT of any meaningful conversations , leaves us wondering if it is now all gone, a done disaster, a dead herd of animals kicked to the side, a return to the non-shockable but paid-for sponsored radio station variety.

Oh, well, there is always NPR to listen to instead of KPFK, and blogs on the internet to share our concerns.

What a truly excellent job you have done of really representing KPFK listeners, and of upholding both the spirit and letter of the Pacifica mission. Thank you. This is a superb, strightforward and honest analysis of very complex machinations that reduce, exactly as you say, to an effort, conscious or unconscious in its motivations, to mainstream Pacifica

Here's my latest to the Pacifica National Board, along with a tag to someone supporting the loan.

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The Pacifica National Board is happily digging through the decimated budget and dancing over the unemployed and now silenced former staff, for $100K to pay for new services, the only tangible outcome of which that I've heard will be another, very costly "Can't We All Just Get Along" PNB retreat. They happen every couple of years and ought to be a part of the PNB budget, except I have yet to see any solutions come out of these.

The retreat leader has been pitched to the PNB as someone akin to Santa Claus: unique in the world and bearing gifts, a package of grants and underwriting (with the ominous title of an "Extreme Makeover") ready to go. This Santa has talked to only the Finance Committee who brought him in and hasn't read the Bylaws. Since Santa lives and does all his work in Washington State, I'm left to wonder if he's ever heard a Pacifica station beyond an affiliate broadcast of DN! Any of our (now mostly departed) development directors would tell you that grants for Pacifica, being what it is and especially under Pacifica's no-strings policy for accepting grants, are next to impossible to find.

And, according to his website, Jan Glick specializes in finding interim Executive Directors. He'll take over the dirty work for you, provide cover for firing station management you don't like and hiring a national programming staff, and, no doubt, happily conduct a search for his appointment's permanent replacement. Now that's what I call an extreme makeover. Is this why there's been no iED other than Sherry for three months? Is this why the approved job description for an ED hasn't been posted? Have you been waiting for Santa?

You can't tell me that Pacifica's rulers don't know what to do. I'm not on the PNB, and I can see it: Pacifica needs to hustle to make money and needs more cuts in expenses, however painful. We don't need some stranger in a beard from the great white north to tell you that. As Yosh has conveyed, what's happening to Pacifica is part of the economic downturn, it's hit NPR and PBS, and it was entirely foreseeable and foreseen.

This is a time for Pacifica to dig in, to reduce expenses and secure its assets. It's a time for contraction, going back to whatever roots we have left in our communities and drawing on local talent, volunteers, and rebuilding our base of support. Let's call it Locally Grown Radio. Scuttle your plans for nationalizing Pacifica's programming and stop talking about emulating another floundering radio network, stop the bailouts, secure Pacifica against takeovers by corporate raiders posing as benificent grantors and underwriters, and stop waiting for Santa. Santa only gives presents to good girls and boys; for the rest he fills up their socks with polluting dirty coal.

We have tens of thousands of members in our experiment in democracy, but, to hear the PNB tell it, we don't have one that can get us out of this mess. So democracy be damned, the PNB will bypass all those members, hire someone who likely isn't a member, and schedule extra meetings to get this done before they have to account to the membership. And next election, you'll hear PNB members moaning about where all the voters are (unless they turn out en masse to elect new people).

As Jonathan reminded me, when the Bylaws were being written, some of us asked for the direct election of PNB members. Instead we got this far less accountable electoral college or pre-17th amendment Senate system, so I guess it should be no surprise that the inheritors of this system should be as scared of the members as its creators were.

So, do you want to do be the leaders we thought you were when the LSBs chose you? Here you go, no budget items, consultants, loans, grant, or underwriting necessary: Make your case for this consultant, for underwriting, and for the loan at the in-person meeting in January, ask for the listeners' help to solve the budget crisis, and then listen to the listeners. The meeting is a few weeks away, there's no reason to decide before that, unless it's to avoid us.

--Leslie Radford

___________

To Terry Goodman, re: your post of 12/16:

For your record, I am shocked (as you choose to characterize it) that Pacifica's financial condition has come to risking any asset. I was the first to ask the LSB finance committee about rumors of the station's shortfall last spring and, when they finally 'fessed up, I laid out a plan for the LSB to take responsibility for making up the shortfall until payroll could be reduced by cutting operating expenses and staff attrition.

You are right that our LSB and the PNB were slow to act. There was a lot of hot-winded analysis, a lot of talk of how we got there, but no action to change anything. I don't know where the inertia was coming from.

Also for your record, our LSB (including myself) did not oppose the loan; we asked for accountability. I have been waiting for that accountability, and what I found was the possibility of a hidden balloon payment of $875K that has yet to be officially discussed or denied.

So we have a PNB that has not acted to come to grips with this since at least last spring when the balance sheet flipped (and for years prior when the alarm bells were sounded), that will not even discuss our LSB's call for accountability in the use of the money and its repayment, that doesn't know if it has approved an enormous balloon payment, that can not pay the normal expenses of doing business. Now they want a second loan against assets to pay the piper. And they tell me not to worry.

I still don't know if the terms of the loan require the bank's approval of the mandated recovery plan.

As I said above, I'm alarmed that Pacifica is risking its assets with Ponzi scheme loans. Unlike the federal government, Pacifica can't print money to pay off the interest on a loan. It has to take out a larger loan. And you floated the idea of a third loan to pay off the second.

Shocked? Hell, yes. And increasingly skeptical.

--Leslie Radford

To the Pacifica National Board:

I just responded to an email from someone who accused me wanting everything at Pacifica to stay just the way it is. Based on what I've written recently, I can see how he came to that conclusion, so please allow me a moment to share my response.

What I wrote to him:

What I want is for Pacifica to do what it does best and stay out of competition with NPR and Air America, and that's local programmers, local hosts, local issues. But I want us to do it a lot better than we have been. We need higher standards, I agree. And, for starters, I've talked to our GM about having every programmer here take Broadcasting 101. In California, you could bring in a qualified instructor (and get 3 college credits) for $60/ person. We could do that across the network for a lot less than $100K for a consultant, and our sound would be better, and our programmers would have a common vocabulary and some confidence.

I'd like to use our producers and current paid staff as trainers, too.

So I think we agree that our current sound is uneven. I'm not ready to give up on it, though. The Mission is clear about the local focus, this is not the economic time for expansion, and we already have some local resources to draw on.

__________



I'd like to add more ideas: a network of community reporters. We tried that briefly here at K, and it morphed into our stringers. We need to go back to the community network idea, with better infrastructure, training, and support.

Our collective programs, too, have the potential (and some are succeeding) at developing fresh talent and mutual criticism for improvement.

I'd like to see our long-time broadcasters adopt an apprentice, someone who would have increasing responsibilities for engineering or on-air hosting or production, as they are interested. For that matter, management and support staff could do the same.

I'd like to see more blocks in the grid, maybe a whole late-night strip, dedicated to rotating shows, maybe give Friday from 11-midnight to four fresh DJs, each with one hour per month.

Fewer "experts" and more community-based guests. How about more interviews with high school kids about military recruitment in the schools, or urban gardeners about the failing food chain, or somebody stuck on a gang list talking about police brutality? Where are the people who lost their homes talking about the bailout? I hear some of that, but not nearly enough, to my mind.

This is, as I see it, what Pacifica is designed to do--community programming. These aren't all my ideas (or all of my ideas). They're built from discussions with other people around KPFK and outside it. That's how I'd like to see Pacifica grow.

--Leslie Radford

I've been discussing this fairly widely, and I've changed my thinking a bit. First of all, this letter suggests that I oppose a national news show, and I'm not sure about that. I might also entertain a national show or two with no underwriting, no paid staff as hosts, and an agreement that they wouldn't hold an elected office in Pacifica. Even though my thinking is shifting a bit, you might still find this information. If you have any opinions, let me know.

I wrote this back on December 22. Reading it again, I must have been pretty steamed.

The next LSB meeting will be January 10 at the Echo Park Methodist Church, 1226 N. Alvarado, just north of Sunset at 1:00 p.m. The LSB will be electing officers and representatives to the Pacifica National Board, along with other business. Hope to see you there.

____________________________________

At the last PNB meeting, the GMs endorsed national programming using our local hosts during drive time for these programs. Let me put aside for the moment the issues of competition and inequality that will inevitably ensue at the station.

The GMs' idea is to compete with NPR, and the Amy Goodman model came up repeatedly. Have you listened to Amy's credits? All those people are paid! It takes close to $500K/year from Pacifica plus the revenue from her other outlets, plus speaking gigs and book sales, plus grants, to keep Amy and crew going. Listen to NPR's non-stop ads (except they're called underwriting, one from Homeland Security to NPR's own embarrassment) to keep that network with afloat.

The GMs led the PNB to think that Pacifica had the raw talent to compete at that level. Who are the GMs kidding? I've dissed the PNB more than once, but I don't think they'll take us down that road blindly. Perhaps they'll tell us that it's the only road (they've told us there's only one choice a lot recently), and then they'll tell us that the Mission's requirement for self-sufficient stations really means underwriting, and how easy it will be to find non-profit corporations willing to throw money at Pacifica. (Economic depression? not at Pacifica. But let's not have anything on the air too radical for the underwriters.) That the Mission's focus on community really means the national and international community. That the new national Director of Underwriting (we'll need one, of course) will only go to left-wing non-profits we can all agree on. (Good luck finding those.)

If this mess wasn't a plan when it started, it looks like someone has figured out how to make it one. The whole package: the loan, the consultant, the national programming, and underwriting all fit together too neatly, as I've discussed previously. The loan, with its earmark for starting up national programming, has been referred back to committee again, so Pacifica will be up against the bill collectors' wall without options by the time the committee gets done with it. They'll tell us that we have no choice except to pledge the KPFK building that the network will have an extra $875K in ten years for that pesky, recently-discovered balloon payment. (For the record, amortized monthly, that just about doubles the payment the PNB thought it was making.)

Then they'll have a $50K retreat with my money to lick their wounds, and you and I will never be told what happens there. They'll present us with an Extreme Makeover artist (the working title of consultants Glick and Gutierrez' manuscript) for our iED. Already, there are open conversations about how not hiring an Executive Director and Human Resources Director can help pay for the consultants. The iED will back the national programming scheme and offer up a sleigh full of grants and underwriters to pay for their research for those same grants and underwriters, and, no doubt, for the national programming.

If they manage to get what they want, Pacifica will end up with two or maybe four good drivetime shows, and a bunch of minor league, disgruntled, and resource-depleted local programmers.

Rumors are that the real financial panic at the PNB isn't payroll: it's that Amy is threatening not to pitch this spring if she doesn't get paid. Likewise, these new national hosts will have lifetime appointments and a bludgeon to use against everyone and every decision they don't like. You think your local host poobah has too much clout? Wait 'til you see these folks wield their underwriting, and who, unlike Amy, will be calling the shots from inside the network. So much for representative governance at Pacifica. They won't need new Bylaws: we'll have corporate lobbyists on the payroll.

So there's my New Year's prediction for the end of the road. I hope the PNB will prove me wrong.

As much as even I try and try to find out "what the f...is going on anyhow ?", I only find it on INDYMEDIA and from LESLIE's discourses. thanks to both.

Volunteers who regularly go to KPFK to work for free do NOT know anything about what is occurring behind the front doors.

Not a whistle blower around the station.

Opacity.

Secret Agendas.

Hidden alliances.

Already Decided plans trotted out to be maybe discussed.

Committees that end in everyone yelling and arguing and leaving w/o accomplishing much.

LSB members representing no one but themselves, and maybe a partner or two only.

Listener-sponsor-payees left out completely with no inquiries about their feedback or opinions either.

Begging sessions with fear mongering included to raise funds for more of this secret conspiracy.

Yep. it is a SECRET CONSPIRING to not share information with anyone - outside of the very few who are 'in the know' - and only Leslie here makes some of it known to the rest of "us"....payees and dedicated to the original version of KPFK and what it 'could be'.

Yep. going down the money hole ...then into the [commecially] polluted drain ...and out to contaminate the rest of us...still at sea.... knowing nothing except because it is a paranoid-world-out-here and only the staff and LSB / PNB can be told what is actually happening to OUR STATION.

repeat. it is OUR [as shareholders w/o certificates] non--profit radio station...and if I am mistaken and it is not 'ours', then please let the shrill beggars during fund drive stop telling us it is.

OMG....down that drain hole some of us refuse to enter and be swallowed Down...financially....commercially...censored and not very "free" at all.

guess, some of us have to bail into another sea, that at least does not LIE TO US by admitting it is "sponsored by...."

KPFK is lying and hiding and ashamed to be known for what it has become - a facade and fake.

Thanks to the not-for-payola programmers that may or not exist and present on the station.

Even that is never discussed or admitted...do all the programmers who are chosen to air not have other monetary or infuential or political benefits from doing their programs on KPFK?

what is really going on ? a sell out ? another cookie crumbled ?

[[can you tell how upset and disappointed some of us out here are ? oh welll.....I am.]]