| This plan to break-up the Pacifica network was cited in the directors’ report given by Shawn Rhodes, James Sagurton, & Alex Steinberg to the W11Sep2019 WBAI Local Station Board. Both links appearing in the text are dead; couldn’t find them with a cursory search. The open letter is copied, without alteration, from Ms Spooner’s website, https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Time-for-an-Amicable-Divorce-at-Pacifica-.html?soid=1105302426303&aid=X12MM2fkcXk. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ An Open Letter to the Pacifica National Board If the past two decades have demonstrated anything about Pacifica it is that — No, we cannot all get along. [Warning: The following proposal would take a year or two to complete. Even if approved in principle right away, it would still be necessary to cut expenses across the network now so that payrolls can be met and creditors can be paid for the next 12-24 months. Without that, the whole thing could end up in the hands of a bankruptcy trustee and this opportunity to solve our own problems responsibly would be lost]. [all original bold] These have been my private thoughts for a few years. I’ve held back publishing them, hoping against hope that there was some path to saving the Pacifica network as a network bringing progressive programming not just to the 5 Pacifica stations, but to over 100 affiliated community stations across the country. I have given my wholehearted support to those who have tried. But I no longer believe it is possible. The strife and conflict at Pacifica have been going on longer than twenty years — probably since the beginning — but the stark reality came sharply into focus with the Pat Scott years, the Mary Frances Berry years, and the past 11 years since the democratization experiment began. Each of the five Pacifica radio stations has a different history, a different audience, and a different philosophy and interpretation of the Pacifica mission. Attempting to hold it all together without basic agreements on core principles is doomed to failure, and has brought Pacifica and the five stations to the brink of bankruptcy. These five radio stations do not want to be a network. There is a solution: Break it up. My proposal is that each of the five Pacifica radio stations — with the approval of the members from each station — should form a local non-profit corporation and that the Pacifica Foundation should transfer the broadcast licenses to those five separate local non-profits. Each station would be free to structure its governance and bylaws as it saw fit — so long as the local members approved, and so long as they were in conformity with applicable state laws and FCC requirements for holders of non-commercial broadcast licenses. Each of the five stations would be completely independent from the other four stations and from the Pacifica Foundation. Each of the five Pacifica stations has its own internal divisions and problems to resolve. Breaking the network up would not solve those problems but would limit the impact of those problems to the local station, its listeners, members, staff and management. It would allow each station to work its problems out locally (or not) without injecting them into a toxic brew that impacts the ability of the other stations and the network to function and survive. The Pacifica Foundation would go forward as a granting institution — providing grants to aid in the production of programming that fulfills its core mission: • In radio broadcasting, to engage in any activity that shall contribute to a lasting understanding between nations and between the individuals of all nations, races, creeds and colors; to gather and disseminate information on the causes of conflict between any and all of such groups; and through any and all means compatible with the purposes of this Foundation to promote the study of political and economic problems and of the causes of religious, philosophical and racial antagonisms. • In radio broadcasting, to promote the full distribution of public information; to obtain access to sources of news not commonly brought together in the same medium; and to employ such varied sources in the public presentation of accurate, objective, comprehensive news on all matters vitally affecting the community. Pacifica would continue as a distribution hub for such programming on the web, through podcasting, and to radio stations across the country — as well as maintaining and preserving the priceless Pacifica Radio Archives. Pacifica would revise its bylaws so that it is completely independent from the five stations. Its board of directors would no longer be made up of representatives from the five stations. The divorce should be amicable, but complete. There should be no employees of the five stations or any members of their boards of directors serving on the Pacifica Foundation board of directors going forward. Pacifica should have a small board of 5-9 directors made up of progressive media leaders, philanthropists and fundraising experts, and other professionals to insure that it is properly run for long term financial stability and fulfillment of its mission. How? Find a signal swap for WBAI. Sometime around 2006-2007 there was an offer for a signal swap for WBAI that included $150 million in cash, and a radio frequency with similar reach but down the dial in the non-commercial band. (See Danny Schechter ‘Offer Was Received for New York’s WBAI‘.) The Pacifica board voted it down back then — in part because they feared a ‘feeding frenzy’ over the money. The value of radio frequencies has probably dropped somewhat since then. But WBAI is in the middle of the commercial band in the middle of Manhattan with a valuable antenna lease on the Empire State Building. WBAI was given to the Pacifica Foundation by philanthropist Louis Schweitzer in 1960 to further the mission of Pacifica. Thus, sufficient proceeds from a signal swap should be used to permit the Pacifica Foundation to continue to carry out its core mission, but to do so without holding the broadcast licenses to any radio stations. In addition, the distribution of proceeds from a signal swap should recognize the 52 years that WBAI’s listeners and staff have donated and worked and volunteered to support that station and its mission in the New York area. WBAI has recently fallen on hard times for many reasons not pertinent to this proposal. But its listener base cannot support the expensive tower lease at the Empire State Building any longer — and the lease has an escalator clause in it so the price will continue to go up. The solution is a signal swap to some more affordable broadcast tower. I don’t know what a WBAI signal swap would bring these days, but for the sake of round numbers I’m using $100 million to illustrate an equitable distribution of the proceeds. My proposal is to distribute half the proceeds to the Pacifica Foundation and 10% to WBAI off the top, with the remaining 40% distributed to the five stations based on the size of their relative average gross annual income as reported by the auditors over the past 4 years, with adjustments for the interdivision accounts receivable and payable per the 2011 auditor’s report. (This process would probably take a year to complete, so the numbers would change slightly as the 2012-2013 figures come in. But see the attached spreadsheet for the calculations.) This would result in the following distributions: $52,583,080 – Pacifica Foundation $12,332,557 – KPFA $10,690,694 – KPFK $ 3,302,266 – KPFT $16,886,090 – WBAI $ 4,205,314 – WPFW This would give KPFA, KPFK, KPFT & WPFW each roughly 2-1/2 to 3 years’ gross income which they could use as endowment funds, while WBAI would have an extra boost to help them deal with the disruption, difficulties and logistics of moving their signal. If the stations fail to handle the money wisely, the damage they can do would be limited, as it would not impact the other stations or Pacifica Foundation. Pacifica Foundation would have a sufficient endowment fund so that, with careful stewardship, it could preserve the historic Pacifica Archives as well as help to provide much needed grants to independent producers for the production of alternative progressive media in this country. Many of us have devoted many years to Pacifica and its radio stations, and we care deeply about them even though we may disagree about how they should be programmed, operated, managed and governed. It is time to for all of us to stop this destructive conflict and to find a way to move on in the best interests of fulfilling the mission of Pacifica and our respective stations. Respectfully submitted, Carol Spooner Former Pacifica Foundation Board Member (January 2002- January 2005) |
Nicole Sawaya, ‘Letter to Lew Hill’, 23Sep2008
This is copied, without alteration, from the website of WBAI Treasurer R Paul Martin: http://www.glib.com/sawaya_farewell.html. It starts with the preface Ms Sawaya wanted any re-publication to start with. (Peter Franck chose not to do this when he published her letter on his legal practice’s website; maybe that’s why it only carries a few lines, with no ‘read more’ hypertext, unlike his other pieces. https://culturelaw.com/special-information/.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
September 24, 2008
To: Pacifica National Board, Local Station Boards, All management and
staff, Affiliate stations, collaborators, and stakeholders in Pacifica
Fr: Nicole Sawaya, executive director/CEO
On August 3rd I gave notice to the Pacifica Board that I would be leaving. September 30th (end of our fiscal year) will be my last day. Concurrently, I had written myself out of the FY09 budget, as the Foundation is hard-pressed to support two well-paid executives. You lead from the top.
Lew Hill is the founder of Pacifica, now almost a 60 year old non-profit media organization. If I could have a conversation with anyone to explain my departure, it would be with Lew Hill. So, I decided to write him a letter.
Feel free to read it, and to share with others who care about Pacifica. All I ask is that this preface always accompany the letter as it sets the context.
I thank you for the opportunity to serve!
Peace.
********************
September 23, 2008
Dear Lew Hill,
Greetings. My name is Nicole Sawaya, and currently, I’m the executive director and chief executive of the radio endeavor you started called Pacifica. It’s changed a lot.
You wouldn’t believe what your ‘killer app’, as some might portray it in 21st century lexicon, has spawned. Now there are 5 stations licensed to Pacifica in densely populated and roiling urban areas – millions of human beings within ear shot, all with easy access to the cheapest and most accessible broadcast mediums on the planet, radio. Yes, the planet. There is an Archive of programming and folios spanning decades – a repository and collection of voices that truly belongs to the people as part of the history of our country and the world. And, there are over a hundred smaller stations scattered through rural and urban settings — cities and towns and ridge tops — affiliated with Pacifica and broadcasting our programming – a network that has been in place for quite awhile.
Beyond that, your notion that the listeners would voluntarily financially support radio, journalism and cultural exchange, created a model for many, many non-commercial educational radio stations to apply. Your vision of public ownership of the airwaves put into practice with the radio license you applied for and grew as the first non-profit community licensee station, gained great traction and has been replicated exponentially.
We don’t exchange The Subscriber radios anymore for pledges, and you wouldn’t recognize how the fundraising marathons have changed – it’s a bit like an on-air shopping experience. But listeners continue to support us voluntarily with their hard earned money, and they’re not necessarily just bound to radios to listen to us.
An aside: When I was (briefly) general manager of your first station, KPFA, there was a Subscriber radio in the office, but it was tucked away and dusty. When I discovered it, soon after taking the job, I was so excited to learn of its history. It completely inspired me as Pacifica was heading to its 50th anniversary. So elegant, so innovative for its time, so smart.
Mr. Hill, what you conceived has had one of the highest impacts in media history. Not just the staunch belief in listener support, but your notions that journalistic enterprises should remain unfettered from any sort of business support in order to maintain credibility; that to help in striving for a more peaceful and just world, radio (or what we now refer to as media) programming should give access to myriad viewpoints and in-depth news, coupled with an exposure to the arts and to cultures and happenings from all over the world; that innovation is vital, have all lived on. You were a pioneer.
Fast forward to today.
Our country is at war. Our government is a death machine abroad and a fear machine at home. Our broadcast media is, in general, mind-numbingly useless, filled with shameless propagandists and completely profit driven. The earth’s climate is changing radically and the gap between rich and poor is larger than the Grand Canyon, with by far the larger group on the poor end. I could go on, but it would take a while.
Your Pacifica is showing signs of stress as well.
Sadly, it is no longer focused on service to the listeners but absorbed with itself and the inhabitants therein. I call it Planet Pacifica, a term I coined during my hiring process. There is an underlying culture of grievance coupled with entitlement, and its governance structure is dysfunctional. The by-laws of the organization have opened it up to tremendous abuse, creating the opportunity for cronyism, factionalism, and faux democracy, with the result of challenging all yet helping nothing. Pacifica has been made so flat, that it is concave – no leadership is possible without an enormous struggle through the inertia that committees and collectives and STV’s (no, not sexually transmitted viruses, but single transferable votes) can engender.
Pacifica calls itself a movement, yet currently it is behaves like a jobs program, a cult, or a social service agency. And oftentimes, the loudest and most obstreperous have the privilege of the microphone. There are endless meetings of committees and ‘task forces’– mostly on the phone – where people just like to hear themselves talk. Sometimes they get lucrative contracts from their grandstanding. It’s been grueling for someone in my position, someone like me who is not a process person, much less a political gamer. I keep asking: what’s the endgame? Paralysis has set in, coupled with organizational drift.
The programming isn’t attracting many listeners anymore, either. It skews towards the narrow in its editorial stance, leans towards the niche, and change to the programming can’t occur without a fight. The listening audience is small, in other words, the stations have yet to grow into their large signals.
Business practices are oftentimes shoddy and opaque and mirror the culture of our times – lots of self-interest with a focus on individual needs as opposed to performance, affordability, or the common good. And we’ve hit some tough economic times without having the general will to do the hard work necessary in order to ensure sustainability– contracting rather than continually expanding the size of our financial obligations. Basically, resources and airtime have been allocated for internal political purposes at the expense of service to audience, innovation, or the care and feeding of our broadcast physical infrastructure. Some of this has to do with the fact that very few people either on air or off air actually have radio experience, other than being part of Pacifica.
That was not the case with you, nor is it with me.
Conversely, there are many dedicated and smart people working within Pacifica. They may not work at full speed – it is rather ‘comfortable’ especially for those who work unsupervised – but they make a consistent effort to give voice to the voiceless and hold government and power accountable. And those who work without self-interest or giving constant grief to management (a four-letter word in Pacifica) are to be applauded.
The overall media landscape has changed fundamentally. I find it exciting and wanted very much to bring Pacifica into the 21st century. The demographic of our country has changed as well, not to mention all the new generations now active and alert to the world around them. It is, to quote Victor Hugo, the best of times and the worst of times. Apparently, it’s always been like that.
Pacifica could take advantage of technology, both at the front end (content and programming) and the back end (infrastructure and business applications), but that would require the general will of the internal stakeholders, and that general will is not cohesive enough or even amenable to altering the status quo.
I have given notice and will be leaving Pacifica shortly. Despite my best intentions and determined and focused efforts, I was continually thwarted to do the job I was hired to do. I did my best to apply my knowledge, expertise, and creativity to Pacifica, and we made some forward progress.
I gave to those responsible for the governance and oversight, plans, clarity, and transparency. They cannot deny knowledge of the state of the network. Whether they act on it, or just call in consultants to tell them what time it is, is another issue. I tried to dispel magical thinking in all arenas and was relentless in my attempts to get some best practices and collaborations in place.
I had some success.
It’s not necessary for me to alliterate those successes. Despite being handed an enfeebled situation and having no resources to work with, I gave it my best shot and worked hard. And despite having to fight for every inch of standing, not to mention authority, I have enjoyed working with those who actually work and accomplish bona fide deliverables of consequence and service.
We stand now on the shoulders of hundreds, if not thousands of those who have contributed internally. And Pacifica is much loved and valued by its listener supporters. Pacifica will carry on, and it has been a challenging opportunity to, albeit briefly, help out.
I hope that all stakeholders remember that Pacifica is a public trust, a veritable weapon of mass information, and keep a big vision in play rather than petty politics.
Thanks for being a bold and brave broadcaster.
With much respect,
Nicole
“the goal of these behind the scene machinations is not the revival of WBAI but its dismantling” – Pacifica directors sound the alarm
Wednesday’s Pacifica directors’ report to the WBAI Local Station Board was extraordinary. I’m sober, not one for hyperbole. And this is the only way to describe it.
The highlights of the lowlights:
- “the goal of these behind the scene machinations is not the revival of WBAI but its dismantling”
- “We believe WBAI is in grave danger”
- “a series of events has transpired in the past two weeks that should raise the alarm bells about the continued existence of WBAI as an independent radio station”
- “a group of Directors on the PNB is intent on usurping the role of the WBAI LSB in evaluating management. They are intent on removing WBAI’s management team by executive fiat”
- “we are once more hearing about why a team from California should be sent immediately to take over and manage WBAI”
- “This report is meant to alert the WBAI LSB and WBAI staff, listeners and supporters to the dangers we are facing”
Once again, the real business of Pacifica is being done in secret, beyond the reach of scrutiny. And according to this account by Pacifica directors Alex Steinberg & James Sagurton, existential matters are being discussed, & decided, without the involvement of the Local Station Boards, the members, staff, & listeners. Central in this is the new Interim Executive Director John Vernile, a corporate music careerist, who was ghosted in by PNB Chair Grace Aaron, a KPFK listener-delegate, replacing ED Maxie Jackson, who had been served up on the slab by Pacifica hack & PNB Personnel Cttee Chair, Jan Goodman, a KPFK listener-delegate. IED Vernile has said absolutely nothing of substance in the few public appearances he has graced us with, gigs no doubt reluctantly made. He has already earnt, with laurels, his initials, John BS Vernile.
RealWorld is warming, & so is PacificaWorld. This blog, tipped off by federal health officials, has noted an increase in the incidence of CSC, Californian Station Chauvinism. And it wasn’t hard to predict this would increase political tensions. The latest public example is Wednesday’s counter-attack from Pacifica directors who are also WBAI listener-delegates.
Warnings of all this are already on the public record, for example at Tuesday’s PNB Finance Cttee meeting, 10Sep. PNB Secretary Bill Crosier, KPFT listener-delegate, the ring-leader according to Steinberg/Sagurton, was talking up the prospect of job losses in the context of an unargued need to not just pay the FJC interest but also to soon reduce the $3.265m principal (59:12). These jobs would mostly be in California (please see the blog link), a fact that can be used to fuel both Cali separatism & a push to raise cash from trading the FCC licence of a non-Cali station or three. Not to be outdone, KPFA Treasurer Sharon Adams (31:39), alleged to be a Crosier accomplice, floated the idea of financial penalties for stations unable to make their contribution to the c. $270k annual interest payment to the Foundation for the Jewish Community, FJC ($3.265m x 8.25%). Eat yer 💗 out, Yip Harburg. https://kpftx.org/archives/pnb/finance/190910/finance190910a.mp3 & https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/2019/09/11/station-listener-membership-to-split-the-67k-fjc-quarterly-interest-charge-question-mark/
The political dividing line is clear: it isn’t station versus station, it’s solidarity versus separatism: it’s defence of the Pacifica network or against the Pacifica network. SOLIDARITY versus SEPARATISM.
A word about the posting of this report at the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center (Indybay), part of the worldwide Indymedia project, https://www.indybay.org/. It’s not disclosed who put it up, all it says is “by Stop the Power Grab”; so rather than one of the Pacifica directors from WBAI they’re more likely to be a Californian supporter of the Pacifica network, an opponent of CSC, the corrosive Californian station chauvinism. The Indybay article is titled ‘Shock Doctrine: Power Grab At Pacifica To Destroy WBAI By KPFA Cabal’; only the words ‘shock doctrine’ appear in the directors’ report itself. The prefatory paragraph isn’t Mr Steinberg’s style – he’s never been keen on a certain usage of the word cabal. After a repeat of the article’s title we have ‘September 11, 2019 – Director’s Report to the WBAI LSB – Presentation by Directors Rhodes, Sagurton and Steinberg – The future of Pacifica and “Plan B”‘. Please note, staff-delegate Shawn Rhodes didn’t sign the report, said by this headline to be also issued in his name; & the fourth director from WBAI, Ralph Poynter, a listener-delegate, isn’t mentioned. https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/09/12/18826188.php
The directors’ report refers to a creation of an Oakland media lawyer, Peter Franck’s ‘Plan B’ proposal, of 23Sep2018, to break-up the Pacifica network: it appears as a separate post here, https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/2019/09/13/peter-franck-plan-b-a-friendly-divorce-to-save-the-stations-23sep2018/. ‘Breaker’ Franck uses as his starting-point the 5Aug2012 break-up proposal of former Pacifica director & KPFA stalwart, Carol Spooner; yes, that’s posted here too, https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/2019/09/13/carol-spooner-time-for-an-amicable-divorce-at-pacifica-question-mark-open-letter-to-pnb-5aug2012/.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
September 11, 2019
Director’s [sic] Report to the WBAI LSB
Presentation by Directors Rhodes, Sagurton and Steinberg
The future of Pacifica and ‘Plan B’
We, the undersigned Directors from WBAI, wish to bring to the attention of the WBAI LSB and the public that a series of events has transpired in the past two weeks that should raise the alarm bells about the continued existence of WBAI as an independent radio station beaming a powerful signal in the largest media market in the country. We believe WBAI is in grave danger. Some of these events we cannot discuss explicitly because they took place in a closed session of the Pacifica National Board while other events involve confidential personnel issues. What we can tell you, based on discussions with a number of individuals that are not covered by confidentiality rules, the proceedings of open sessions of the PNB and its committees, as well as a paper trail of documents and emails and past actions by certain individuals with a history within Pacifica, is that a group of Directors on the PNB is intent on usurping the role of the WBAI LSB in evaluating management. They are intent on removing WBAI’s management team by executive fiat. Furthermore the goal of these behind the scene machinations is not the revival of WBAI but its dismantling. The group of Directors behind these actions are led by Bill Crosier from KPFT, who is currently the Secretary of the PNB. Crosier has the strong backing of Director Adrienne LaViollette [LaViolette] from KPFT, Mansour [Mansoor] Sabbagh from KPFK, Donald Goldmacher from KPFA, Chris Cory from KPFA and Sabrina Jacobs, the Vice-Chair of the PNB, also from KPFA a network of individuals from the Bay Area long associated with KPFA. The general outlines of their plan for WBAI and Pacifica are no mystery. A recent document by long-time KPFA insider Peter Franck, called ‘Plan B’ makes clear exactly what they want to do.
Franck’s ‘Plan B’ (see the appendix to this document) calls for the dismantling of Pacifica as a network and the devolution of each of the radio stations into its own legal entity. This will be accomplished by essentially scrapping the current bylaws either through a lawsuit or through the intervention of the California Attorney General. Democratically elected Local Station Boards will be gone. They will be replaced by purely advisory bodies appointed by management. The Pacifica National Board will be left to preside over a ghost of what the Pacifica Foundation has been, being left with a modest programming service. The new PNB will be smaller and weaker, ceding much more authority to the Executive Director. It will also have at least some members who are appointed rather than elected. Franck’s document makes the case that starting the new legal entities and energizing the stations will take a lot of start-up cash. How is this cash going to be raised? He says the solution is simple, we can easily raise between $10 to $15 million by “swapping or selling one of our signals.” Guess which signal he has in mind to finance his reorganization plan? Hint, it’s not KPFA.
A little bit of recent history
It is public knowledge that Director Crosier, when he was interim Executive Director in 2017, was a strong advocate of the sale or swap, first of the WPFW license, and then of the WBAI license. Crosier was also a strong advocate, along with then CFO Sam Agarwal, of Pacifica going into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Crosier and Agarwal opposed all efforts to find an alternative to bankruptcy in dealing with the ESRT lawsuit.
Crosier and Agarwal strongly opposed the loan that made possible the settlement of the ESRT lawsuit and the move to 4 Times Square. The people most involved in negotiating that loan, Directors Nancy Sorden, Jan Goodman and Grace Aaron, did their work in spite of the hostile reception from Pacifica’s iED at the time, Bill Crosier, and CFO Sam Agarwal. Let us remind this audience that the settlement with ESRT saved us $1.9 million that would have been due if we had not gotten out of the remainder of our lease. It also reduced our monthly tower rent costs from something between $60-$70K per month to approximately $18K per month. Not only did we see a 400% saving on our Tower Rent in moving to 4 Times Square but we kept 100% of our listener coverage area and actually have a better signal than we had at Empire State thanks to a brand-new transmitter that was part of the deal with 4 Times Square.
So Crosier, who was proved dead wrong in 2017 when he said there was no good alternative to bankruptcy, is back at it again in 2019. He has once more bought into the idea, originating from some quarters in KPFA, indeed it appears he never really abandoned it, that all the problems of Pacifica could be solved by sacrificing WBAI.
The game plan
How do the group of Directors on board with Peter Franck’s ‘Plan B’, intend to force the liquidation, one way or another, of WBAI? We already know their game plan by once more looking at some recent history. Back in the summer of 2017, Pacifica was without question in a genuine crisis. We were facing a lawsuit from Empire State for Tower rent that had not been paid in over a year and considerable penalties. WBAI, along with some other stations, also had a very poor fund drive. iED Crosier decided that the way to deal with this crisis was to send a “rescue team” [ambiguous whether these are scare-quotes or quotation marks] to WBAI. The ostensible purpose of this “rescue team” was to help management fix WBAI. But the real purpose, it soon became clear, was to replace the WBAI General Manager and interim Program Director with a hand-picked team from KPFA. Director Sabrina Jacobs, who had absolutely no management experience, was supposed to lead this “rescue team”. When we found out about this plan it struck some of the Directors at the time, notably Directors Steinberg and Aaron, as a completely irrational and panic-driven approach to a real problem. How in the world would a team from California, who knew nothing about WBAI and its culture and who had no management experience, be able to fix a problem that had been festering for years. And while it is certainly legitimate to critique the management of WBAI, it should be kept in mind that the bulk of the problems at WBAI were due to outside events about which WBAI management had no control, namely the impossible Empire State lease approved by a past PNB 15 years previously and the stripping down of three quarters of WBAI’s staff by a previous PNB shortly after hurricane Sandy, leaving WBAI with less than a skeleton crew. It seemed to some of us that this plan, if it were carried out, could only destabilize WBAI and deepen its crisis further. It made absolutely no sense and we managed to shut down this idea literally at the last minute before it was launched.
Is WBAI a ‘failed station’?
Now move forward two years to the late summer of 2019. The Pacifica Foundation in 2019 and WBAI are in much better shape now than they were in 2017 prior to the settlement with ESRT, when things looked so bleak. We completed our 2017 audit and are close to completing our 2018 audit. Once that is done, we will be current with our audits and work can begin on the 2019 audit as soon as we close out the 2019 fiscal year at the end of September. We have pretty much paid all obligations that we owed on our pension plans, debts that had triggered off a Department of Labor investigation in 2017. Democracy Now, to whom we owed several million, forgave us that debt, thereby immediately improving Pacifica’s financial profile. We have an accounting and financial infrastructure in place now that was sadly lacking in 2017 as a result of hiring NETA to do our books and provide us with other services that were once handled by the National Office. When the 2018 audit is completed and we are current with our audits, will be in a position to try to regain our CPB funding, the lack of which for the past 5 years has cost us $4-$5 million. We will also be in a position to approach foundations and major donor who all require up to date audits before considering grants. That’s the situation at the national level.
At the local level we have seen some significant improvements at WBAI. The number of members rose by 1,400 over last year. That’s a gain of roughly 20%. Not only is our membership up, but listenership is also up as confirmed by Nielsen ratings. This is largely due to a series of programming changes aimed at improving their quality, especially of drive time programs. And for the first time in a long time, an influx of producers has joined the WBAI staff who are under 60. In fact many of them are in their 20’s and 30’s. Overall this is good news for WBAI.
As for the purely financial picture at WBAI, it is considerably better than it was in 2017. Yet, WBAI is still not where we would like it to be. The improvements in members and listeners have not yet translated into significantly increased contributions from our listeners. WBAI is today still running a deficit, though one that is dramatically reduced compared to the nightmare scenario of 2017. Our general manager estimates that the total deficit for 2019 will be approximately $160K [this contradicts the WBAI Treasurer’s report, at the same meeting: “the projected approximately $318,000 deficit on the draft FY19 budget that the General Manager had sent”, page 5, https://glib.com/treasurers_report_2019-09-11.pdf]. A significant figure to be sure, but not an intractable one. To put that number into perspective, if we had our CPB funding restored to the levels we used to receive, that deficit would turn into a surplus of approximately $160K. Our monthly deficit is less than our Tower Rental expenses which are approximately $18K monthly. That is an expense that none of the California stations have. Their Tower rent is close to zero. In addition we have an expense of approximately $6,500 in studio rent. That is also an expense that the California and Houston stations do not have since they own their buildings. In addition, WBAI has recently been the recipient of significant bequests. The bulk of those bequests were given to Pacifica to use as they wish while the remainder went to paying off some past debts at WBAI. Yet despite these signs of improvement at WBAI when you consider its health in the context of other Pacifica stations, we still hear a narrative emanating from Berkeley that WBAI is “underperforming” [again, ambiguous, but probably scare-quotes], that it is a “failed station” and that only a drastic solution can turn WBAI around. They simply ignore the incremental changes that have taken place.
WBAI is actually improving
To be sure WBAI is underperforming in the sense that it is performing well below its potential. But if you consider WBAI in relation to the other Pacifica stations, then you can hardly say it is “underperforming”. All measurable criteria that we have indicates that WBAI is actually improving. It is performing better than KPFT, a station whose membership and listeners have shrunk dramatically. It is performing better than KPFK, a station that was once the power-house of Pacifica when it came to fund drives but is now facing huge shortfalls. In any case, the purpose of an assessment of the health of WBAI is not to compare it to other Pacifica stations, but to see how it can be improved further to realize its great potential.
Back to the Future
In spite of all these signs of significant improvement in the overall health of Pacifica and of WBAI, we are faced with a very real cash flow crisis that reached a critical point in September of 2019. In addition, an incident involving one WBAI producer who, according to the opinion of Pacifica’s counsel, stepped over the line in terms of certain regulations, has been used to drum up an atmosphere of panic. We are hearing things like “WBAI is out of control”. While these problems – the cash flow crisis, and possible violations of regulations are real enough – they are being used as a wedge in order to convince a number of Directors that the aborted Crosier plan from 2017 should be replayed in 2019. Thus we are once more hearing about why a team from California should be sent immediately to take over and manage WBAI. The goal, we believe, based on our observations not only of the words, but also of the actions of the principal players in this drama, is to turn WBAI into either a repeater station, without any local programming or staff, or to sell or swap the signal, thereby fulfilling an important part of Peter Franck’s ‘Plan B’. They are using the atmosphere of crisis in order to convince a number of other Directors to go along with their scheme, Directors who otherwise would be more prudent.
The shock doctrine
The mechanism of achieving consensus based on exploiting a crisis has been well documented in Naomi Klein’s best-selling book from 2007, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Klein’s brilliant insight was to examine how crises and disasters can be used by businesses and governments to their advantage. Under conditions of crisis, whether real or manufactured, many people are prone to let their natural defenses down and convince themselves that they must listen to ‘experts’ who can help lead them out of the crisis by agreeing to accept harsh measures that under normal conditions they would never agree to. That is how unions are convinced to scrap decades old pension plans and benefits in order to ‘save jobs’. That is how international financial institutions convince governments to sign onto decades of austerity. The same methods can be used on a much smaller scale, to convince a Board of Directors to take actions that are destructive of the organization in order to overcome a crisis. Indeed Klein showed that often it is advantageous to those exploiting the atmosphere of crisis to deliberately stoke the crisis and make it worse. Can this be happening at WBAI?
What about that loan?
A final footnote to this report. There has been a lot of discussion about the loan and what plans the PNB and Pacifica management have for repaying the loan. At the National level much of these discussions have been occurring on the Strategic Planning Committee, of which Director Steinberg is the Chair. Most of these discussions have been in open session and the recordings are available to anyone who wishes to listen. A plan introduced by Steinberg had been discussed for several weeks. The plan consisted essentially in holding a series of national fund drives, similar to the national fund drive in 2017 that raised significant funds to allow us to hire auditors. It was also recognized that these fund drives and other initiatives were not likely to come up with the entire balance of the loan by the time it is due. The remainder of the balance were to be handled by refinancing that portion of the loan. It is always possible to refinance a loan and is considered a standard business practice. The terms and conditions for refinancing the loan vary widely, depending on the financial condition and credit-worthiness of the borrower. We felt that since Pacifica is on the precipice of being up to date with our audits and showing other signs that our financial situation has improved, that we may be able to get some relatively good terms for a refinanced loan. We were surprised however at the reaction of our new iED, John Vernile, to this plan. He stated at the last Strategic Planning Committee meeting [Tu3Sep; audiofile still hasn’t been posted to the Pacifica meetings archive] that the goal of fund drives should be for the entire balance of the loan, not just the $1 million projected by us. It’s certainly a nice goal, but how realistic is it? Not only that but somehow this goal would be achieved on a greatly reduced schedule of national fund drives, perhaps only two Christmas special fund drives. When the question was asked how this goal can be achieved Mr. Vernile answered that the fund drives can be supplemented by approaching major donors and having a more systematic approach to soliciting bequests. It seemed to some of us that was this not a realistic plan. We also wondered why Mr. Vernile appeared to take the option of refinancing a portion of the loan off the table. It leads us to wonder where iED Vernile stands on the core issues facing Pacifica and WBAI [we all wonder].
What next?
This report is meant to alert the WBAI LSB and WBAI staff, listeners and supporters to the dangers we are facing. The ideological divide is between those who think the future of Pacifica is to circle the wagons in order to protect their own turf, even at the expense of a key player in the most important media market in the country, and those who think the future of Pacifica lies in revitalizing all the stations we now have and work much more closely toward becoming a genuine nation-wide network while at the same time maintaining close ties to their local communities. We believe that Pacifica and WBAI can have a real influence on the politics and culture of this country which is now plagued by a rise of neo-fascism, a newly invigorated racism and anti-Semitism, attacks on the working class, the poor and immigrants, denial of climate change and science and the rise of authoritarian, anti-democratic values. The mainstream media is not part of the solution. Indeed they are part of the problem. As is NPR. This is where Pacifica can make a difference – if it has the courage and the vision and rejects all the tribalistic pressures to only tend to one’s ‘own’ garden.
Alex Steinberg
James Sagurton
Station listener-membership to split the $67k FJC quarterly interest charge?
[I misunderstood the PNB Finance Cttee motion, mistaking “station membership” for listener-members only. I was misled by the discussion focusing on listeners, not members consisting in listeners plus staff. Apologies. However, my points are unaffected, as are the computations; the text has not been revised. The motion is given correctly by WBAI Treasurer R Paul Martin in his report: “The NFC recommends that the quarterly interest payments starting with December 2019, be apportioned by station membership as of December 1, 2019, and revised annually according to changes in membership” (page 4, link given below).]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Last night’s PNB Finance Cttee decided that station listener-membership alone should decide the split of the $67k going each quarter to the Foundation for the Jewish Community, FJC. So, KPFA 31%, KPFK 29%, KPFT 8%, WPFW 14%, WBAI 18%. This was the Cttee’s recommendation to the Pacifica National Board about the $3.265m loan (46:52; the vote was 7-2-1, that is, 7 for (including KPFA listeners-delegate/Pacifica director/Finance Cttee Chair Chris Cory, & KPFK listeners-delegate/Treasurer Fred Blair), 2 against (KPFK staff-delegate/Pacifica director Mansoor Sabbagh, & WPFW listeners-delegate/Treasurer Nick Arena), 1 abstained (KPFA listeners-delegate/Treasurer Sharon Adams)). The PNB next meets Th19Sep. https://kpftx.org/archives/pnb/finance/190910/finance190910a.mp3
These are the station charges, quarterly & monthly: KPFA $20 876, $6 959; KPFK $19 529, $6 510; KPFT $5 387, $1 796; WPFW $9 428, $3 143; WBAI $12 121, $4 040. FJC’s quarterly charge to Pacifica is $67 340, at the new interest rate since 1Aug2019 ($3.265m x 8.25% ÷ 4). (WBAI Treasurer R Paul Martin’s own calculation for WBAI gave $12 600 (page 5, https://glib.com/treasurers_report_2019-09-11.pdf): he took the quarterly as a round $70k.) Station listener-membership was given in National Elections Supervisor Renee Penaloza’s 28Aug report (unpaginated p. 1): http://elections.pacifica.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Election-Report-08.28.19.pdf.
How feasible is it that WPFW & WBAI, in particular, will make these contributions? Contributions due to FJC, contractually within five days, on 2Jan2020, 2Apr2020, 2July2020, 2Oct2020, 2Jan2021, & 2Apr2021? Contributions, at the current 8.25% annual interest rate, totalling $56 568 by WPFW & $72 726 by WBAI?
(section 8.1, p. 13, of the signed loan agreement, https://mega.nz/#F!PloCiSqJ!9rLejSkttE7gCVCCq3q86g?b0IBlaiR)
There are three obvious sets of facts indicating that they won’t make their contributions:
1) In June-July, neither WPFW nor WBAI could pay either payroll or health insurance (Interim Chief Financial Officer Tamra Swiderski, 32:19, Tu9July PNB Finance Cttee, https://kpftx.org/archives/pnb/finance/190709/finance190709a.mp3). She was ‘economical with the truth’: they both had to borrow from the Foundation’s national account.
2) WBAI forecast that FY2019 (so to 30Sep) will be a loss of $318k, & they’ve budgeted FY2020 as a $316k loss. Honest, one may say, but no less worrying for that. This info comes from today’s WBAI Treasurer’s report (p. 5).
3) The much trumpeted coming recession.
Intention & action are unavoidable in both PacificaWorld & RealWorld. But in PacificaWorld they tend to be more independent of the means at hand. But even in PacificaWorld there comes a time when RealWorld intrudes so much that the train hits the buffers: the state & the market discipline all, not least by the inevitable onset of capitalist slump.
In these urgent times, there’s more talk now in Pacifica public meetings of cost cutting, rather than just raising revenue. Reality is biting. The acute cashflow can only be alleviated temporarily by The Golden Corpses, the bequests. Because relentless are the costs of the living: workers, 53% of expenses (FY2016 auditor’s report, p. 5a, https://mega.nz/#F!6uwhAQIY!-QW2NXuAc6rRdWE5KbNb6w?mqw32KrI – FY2017’s financial statements are effectively worthless because their material accuracy wasn’t vouched for by the auditors due to insufficient auditable evidence; please see https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/2019/07/19/fy2017-auditor-refuses-to-declare-that-the-statements-are-materially-accurate/). And the paid workers are mainly in California: KPFA, 30% of wage costs; KPFK 26%; KPFT 8%; WPFW 9%; WBAI 9%; with 5% at Radio Archives & 11% at National Office (FY2016 auditor’s report, p. 26; two percentage points lost by rounding).
So firings will be largely in California – fuelling both Californian station chauvinism & its correlate, Californian resentment. This affective dynamic splinters clear thinking, unleashing centrifugal forces, ripping at those ties that still hold the network together.
The core of the PNB majority has been counting on not having to make any fundamental decisions. It was hoping to muddle through, & then re-finance the FJC loan during summer 2020, relying on the three Pacifica buildings as collateral, & using as positive evidence the auditor’s reports of FY2017, FY2018, & FY2019. But RealWorld reality intruded, & I’m not talking about FY2006 being the last annual net income: the 2017 statements were rendered effectively worthless, & the auditor told the M19Aug PNB Audit Cttee (20:15) that the same fate beckons for the 2018 ones. Maybe the 2019 statements, the first with NETA either doing or supervising the bookkeeping, will earn an auditor’s unmodified opinion. https://kpftx.org/archives/pnb/audit/190819/audit190819a.mp3; https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/auditor-s-reports-from-fy2005/ (notes 3(b) & 4)
External pressures will ensure that the bullet is bitten during the coming 12 months – even if it’s The Comedy of Terrors solution. https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/2019/08/25/pacifica-s-strategic-plan-peter-lorre-vincent-price-the-comedy-of-terrors-allegory/
Postscript …
1) WBAI listeners-delegate/Pacifica director James Sagurton had asked at Tuesday’s PNB Finance Cttee if figures were available for ‘station revenue per member’ (42:53). None was at hand. Now they are.
The matter isn’t as transparent as it seems; for example, the FY2016 stations statement includes “[g]rants and contributed income” & “[o]ther revenue”. It’s not apparent how members are involved in these categories of fundraising. Given this, an obvious approximation is the ratio, for each station, between “[l]istener support and donations” & number of members (total of listeners & staff). Data are publicly available for FY2016, & one can use the 2016 LSB elections record date at 30June.
So to answer Mr Sagurton’s query, the figures vary from $128 to $176 per member (37.5% more), & harbour quite a surprise, the station in DC: KPFA $176.30 (2836208÷16087); KPFK $168.38 (2504410÷14874); KPFT $127.52 (753499÷5909); WPFW $169.32 (883693÷5219); WBAI $153.52 (1200676÷7821) – FY2016 auditor’s report, p. 25, https://mega.nz/#F!6uwhAQIY!-QW2NXuAc6rRdWE5KbNb6w?mqw32KrI; & NES Penaloza’s final report on the nominal 2018 pseudo-election, p. 19, p. 20 of the PDF, https://mega.nz/#!fyAwGICZ!-4uWYMHZW3CHxt6yCOITu006SVZ4AyNPjT9bWw6csb0.
2) Ability to perform, a kind of capacity, is a socialist, humanist, rational criterion of expected just contribution to collective human endeavour. That a station raises money shows it has the ability to somewhat pay the network’s bills, & it’s a crude measure of this capacity. So, in 2016, the latest FY we have audited figures for, what proportion did each station contribute? KPFA 34.7% (2836208/8178486, the five-station total of ‘listener support & donations’ – see the above p. 25), KPFK 30.6%, KPFT 9.2%, WPFW 10.8%, WBAI 14.7%. These certainly share a PacificaWorld ballpark with the Finance Cttee’s 31-29-8-14-18 that use data three years later, those of the late Aug2019 membership. (That even now there is no evidence available to members & listeners that the membership records, & elector rolls, are materially accurate, we’ll leave to one side. And, given this, any assertion by NES Penaloza will be treated for what it is.)
Pacifica membership, 30June2016 – c. 30June2019
Last week some striking membership data were made public by Pacifica. The National Elections Supervisor Renee Penaloza published her latest report, &, reading it in conjunction with her final report of the nominal 2018 pseudo-election, one has a time series of station membership at 30June2016, 19Nov2018, & the-PacificaWorld-present, which corresponds roughly to RealWorld’s 30June2019 (more on that anon).
http://elections.pacifica.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Election-Report-08.28.19.pdf (unpaginated page 1) & https://mega.nz/#!fyAwGICZ!-4uWYMHZW3CHxt6yCOITu006SVZ4AyNPjT9bWw6csb0 (page 19; originally at http://elections.pacifica.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Pacifica-Election-Final-Report-2018-by-RAP-1-1.pdf)
And being PacificaWorld, some of what she calls her progress reports are undated & some are unnumbered. This one is undated, but the URL includes “08.28.19”. It’s also unnumbered, but it’s the 7th. It’s thin, two pages. It came after a very long gap: six had been published in seven weeks, the last on c. 13June, then we had to wait ~76 days for this one. Very odd, not least because two fundamental sets of facts should have been established, & made public: the list of the over 100 verified candidates, & the size of the 10 elector rolls (listeners & staff for the five stations). Only the former has been published.
What is most distinctive, & worrying, about this report is that it doesn’t give the record date membership figures, the jargon for the day when a snapshot is taken of the enfranchised. Yes, NES Penaloza spoke of “# electors” (unpaginated page 1), but added, “note that this number will fluctuate over the course of the election due to membership additions or deletions”. Yes, there will always be challenges to the elector rolls, but why has the NES not made public the record date elector roll totals? Are the rolls so chaotic – again – that the NES was unable to take the snapshot at 30June? One has no rational alternative but to assume this is the case, given (1) the unexpected words chosen by the NES, (2) her inability to give a progress report for 11 very long weeks, & (3) the absence, even now, of the 10 totals of the elector rolls at the record date, 30June.
Conclusions:
- the membership lists & volunteer records were so chaotic, unreliable, that the NES was unable to extract elector rolls at the record date, Su30June;
- this is prima facie evidence that the NES has been unable to make the elector rolls materially accurate;
- the NES is doing what’s done in PacificaWorld, she’s muddling through – and trying to cover herself by being careful with her language;
- given this, it behoves any diligent director, or candidate, to see the unadjusted record date elector rolls, & publish those 10 aggregate figures – data that members & listeners have a right to know;
- if indeed the NES was unable to extract elector rolls at 30June, then she needs to explain publicly, in writing, why this was so;
- given the lack of any public evidence in the last 10 months (!) showing an improvement upon the Oct2018 judgment of the then NES, Graeme Drew, that materially accurate elector rolls don’t exist, the only rational conclusion is that the 2019 election, just like the nominal 2018 one, is a pseudo-election; &
- if evidence to the contrary exists, then there is every good reason for NES Penaloza to publish it – otherwise Pacifica elections, regrettably, continue to lack credibility. But concerning this, do any Pacifica ‘leaders’ care?
Putting these current travails to one side, what was Pacifica’s membership, say, at the beginning of the century? Remember when the Iraqis were invaded? (It’s almost misanthropic to use the impersonal abstraction, Iraq.) A few months after this, in Sep2003, Pacifica was getting ready for its own major event:
About 90,000 of Pacifica’s listeners and 700 of its volunteers and staffers are eligible to vote in the first election under the bylaws, estimates Carol Spooner, secretary of the network’s interim national board. Elections are scheduled to end by Jan. 30.
Mike Janssen, ‘Radio that’s representative: Listeners control vote for Pacifica boards’, https://current.org/2003/9/radio-thats-representative/
Since then, membership has fallen 48.8%, so effectively halving, to 46 463 (45 520 listener-members & 943 staff-members – note that the latter has increased).
A few years prior to those Local Station Board elections, WBAI had “nearly 20,000 members before a bitter year-long fight over control in 2001” (https://www.thevillager.com/2016/02/null-sues-wbai-endgame-near-for-iconic-radio-station/). And today? It’s fallen by 58%, to 8 379.
Here are the more recent figures for Pacifica’s five stations, as provided for the last three LSB elections.
The numbers: listener-members; staff-members; all members
1. Quantitative data: listener-members
This is the headline put in yesterday’s Facebook post:
over the last three years to 30June2019, West Coast stations’ membership fell 9.5% (2 881) whilst the East Coast rose 13.8% (1 752); & over the last 7½ months to 30June2019, KPFA fell by 8.2%, so by 1-in-12 (1 285), KPFK fell by 8.1% (1 163), whilst WBAI grew by 20.2%, so by 1-in-5 (1 375)
(the 2019 figures are assumed as at 30June, the intended record date; please note the correction of the West Coast fall: I had mistakenly used the Texas demise)
Should have added:
for Pacifica, a three-year fall of 6.8%, roughly 1-in-15 (48 836 − 45 520 = 3 316)
The figures at the record dates of the last three elections, 30June2016, 19Nov2018, 30June2019 (assumed), with some computation:
The stations:
KPFA: 15 815, 15 585, 14 300; KPFK: 14 569, 14 366, 13 203; KPFT: 5 736, 4 294, 3 549; WPFW: 5 089, not disclosed, 6 287; WBAI: 7 627, 6 806, 8 181
[there was no nominal 2018 WPFW-listener election because there were only five verified candidates for the nine seats – better than a Drumpf deal]
The changes, election-on-election, & for the three years:
KPFA: declines of 1.5%, then 8.2% (so 1-in-12 lost in 7½ months, 1 285), a three-year decline of 9.6%; KPFK: declines of 1.4%, then 8.1% (another 1-in-12 in 7½ months, 1 163), a three-year decline of 9.4%; KPFT: declines of 25.1%, then 17.3% (1-in-6 lost in 7½ months, 745), a three-year decline of 38.1%; WPFW: no election-on-election computation because the middle figure is missing, but a three-year rise of 23.5% (1 198); WBAI: a decline of 10.8%, then a rise of 20.2% (1-in-5 gained in 7½ months, 1 375), a three-year rise of 7.3%.
The three 7½-month falls, West Coast plus Texas, totalled 3 193 – an annualised loss of 5 108 members.
Regional comparison, the three-year change:
West Coast fell 9.5% (2 881), Texas fell 38.1% (2 187), East Coast rose 13.8% (1 752). [15815+14569=30384, 14300+13203=27503; 5089+7627=12716, 6287+8181=14468]
Pacifica total:
2016: 48 836 (15 815 + 14 569 + 5 736 + 5 089 + 7 627); 2018: at least 41 051 (15 585 + 14 366 + 4 294 + ? + 6 806); 2019: 45 520 (14 300 + 13 203 + 3 549 + 6 287 + 8 181)
Three-year fall of 6.8%, roughly 1-in-15; 48 836 − 45 520 = 3 316.
2. Quantitative data: staff-members
The figures at the record dates of the last three elections, 30June2016, 19Nov2018, 30June2019 (assumed), with some computation:
The stations:
KPFA: 272, 244, 233; KPFK: 305, 283, 264; KPFT: 173, 141, 140; WPFW: 130, 133, 108; WBAI: 194, 177, 198
Pacifica total:
2016: 1 074 (272+305+173+130+194); 2018: 978 (244+283+141+133+177); 2019: 943 (233+264+140+108+198)
Three-year fall of 12.2%.
3. Quantitative data: all members
The figures at the record dates of the last three elections, 30June2016, 19Nov2018, 30June2019 (assumed), with some computation:
The stations:
KPFA: 16 087, 15 829, 14 533; KPFK: 14 874, 14 649, 13 467; KPFT: 5 909, 4 435, 3 689; WPFW: 5 219, not computable, 6 395; WBAI: 7 821, 6 983, 8 379
[15815+272, 15585+244, 14300+233; 14569+305, 14366+283, 13203+264; 5736+173, 4294+141, 3549+140; 5089+130, not computable, 6287+108; 7627+194, 6806+177, 8181+198]
The changes, election-on-election, & for the three years: not computed because they’re less meaningful than those for listener-members only. The main reason is that our focus is on examining Pacifica’s contraction, & of much more interest isn’t committed listener-members floating in & out of the stations, acquiring staff status, but the mass, those more inclined to stop funding the whole shebang. In any case, with staff being ~2% of all members, the all-members’ decline values would be very much the same, just a tad higher because the staff rate of decline is roughly twice as fast.
Pacifica total:
2016: 49 910 (16 087 + 14 874 + 5 909 + 5 219 + 7 821); 2019: 46 463 (14 533 + 13 467 + 3 689 + 6 395 + 8 379)
Three-year fall of 6.9%, roughly 1-in-15; 49 910 − 46 463 = 3 447.
The station-split:
2016: KPFA 32.4%, KPFK 29.8%, KPFT 11.7%, WPFW10.4%, WBAI 15.6%
2019: KPFA 31.4%, KPFK 29.0%, KPFT 7.8%, WPFW 13.8%, WBAI 18.0% (agrees with the 31-29-8-14-18 apportioning of the FJC interest charge, recommended by the PNB Finance Cttee to the PNB, Tu10Sep – formula calculated by the PNB Finance Cttee Chair, Chris Cory)
Californian station chauvinism raises its destructive head – again
Below is an eight-point post made today to the Pacifica Radiowaves group on Facebook. It views the appalling display of Californian station chauvinism at the Tu27Aug PNB Finance Cttee in the light of facts about Pacifica’s five stations provided the next day by National Elections Supervisor Renee Penaloza. California isn’t as healthy as the chauvinists like to think.
The Pacifica Chair, Grace Aaron, was in attendance at the Finance Cttee meeting. She heard the absurd station chauvinism, & the derision it evoked in others. She chose to maintain a deafening silence throughout.
This is of the greatest significance. In so doing,
- she refused to rebuke the station chauvinists;
- she refused to remind the station chauvinists that their job (1) as a delegate of a Local Station Board (it’s a standing cttee of the Pacifica National Board) & (2) as a member of a PNB cttee, is not to supposedly represent ‘their’ station but to represent Pacifica, which means promoting the interest of Pacifica, a supra-station interest;
- she refused to exercise leadership, to insist on the promotion of the Pacifica interest;
- in choosing silence she behaved cowardly, not least as she’s a delegate of a Californian LSB, that of KPFK; &
- in failing in all these ways, she refused to discharge the duties of not just a delegate & a director of the Foundation but, moreover, the chair of its Board.
Any self-respecting Pacifica chair, with a sense of honour & responsibility towards the offices they hold, having committed all these failures so effortlessly, would resign as a delegate, as a director, & as chair of the Board.
But this applies to a person of honour – so we know what’ll happen.
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[Other membership data, with some computations, are presented in the next post: https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/2019/09/04/pacifica-membership-30june2016-c-30june2019/]
1) With all the Californian station chauvinism on display last week, at Tuesday’s PNB Finance Cttee, one could easily be misled, in two senses. But National Elections Supervisor Renee Penaloza, in particular, came to the rescue with her progress report the next day: over the last three years to 30June2019, West Coast stations’ membership fell 9.5% (2 881) whilst the East Coast rose 13.8% (1 752); & over the last 7½ months to 30June2019, KPFA fell by 8.2%, so by 1-in-12 (1 285), KPFK fell by 8.1% (1 163), whilst WBAI grew by 20.2%, so by 1-in-5 (1 375). So, how to explain this anomalous growth of 20.2%? Has WBAI been flooded by the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, as their Red Wave slate of nine competes for the 12 Local Station Board seats currently up for grabs? Are they upsetting the coconut cart?
https://mega.nz/#!fyAwGICZ!-4uWYMHZW3CHxt6yCOITu006SVZ4AyNPjT9bWw6csb0 (page 19; this, the NES’ nominal 2018 pseudo-election final report, has come, gone, & is now back on the NES’ website) & http://elections.pacifica.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Election-Report-08.28.19.pdf (page 1) [UPDATE: I’ve corrected the West Coast three-year fall: apologies for mistakenly using Texas’ 38.1%. Major d’oh, yes? Also added the West/East absolute changes.]
2) The Tu27Aug PNB Finance Cttee was, frankly, embarrassing. But what’s new. This time it was Sharon Adams, KPFA Treasurer, & Mansoor Sabbagh, KPFK staff-delegate & Pacifica director, coming out with the tired chauvinist assertions we’ve heard for years (a taster is 14:51 & 19:28, with 30:03 carrying a spoiler alert, ‘b’ audiofile). It took Nick Arena, WPFW Treasurer, to remind them that all station chiefs are appointed nationally (28:00, ‘b’ file). He could have added that the most significant negotiations aren’t done by the station – such as the small matter of the Empire State contract to house the WBAI transmitter. Yes, even something as important as having to pay rent or not has never been in the gift of a station. And, importantly, a station isn’t responsible for the size of the disposable income of its listeners, be it either per person or in total, nor for their wealth.
So, station financial performance is largely determined from without. And given the minimal powers of a LSB – they can’t even require the general manager to attend a LSB meeting – there’s even less justification for turning one’s ire upon fellow delegates from ‘enemy’ stations. (The theatrical Sabbagh couldn’t help embarrassing himself further by seeking an apology from Comrade Nick (30:03, ‘b’ file). No wonder he’s earnt the moniker ‘Spade’ Sabbagh.)
Only the naive or disingenuous will infer much from station-specific financial data.
3) Station chauvinism & the way the chauvinists talk about ‘station responsibility’ is not just facile but dangerous. Besides being unwarranted by the facts, & excessive pride being rather unseemly, comical, in a word, self-debasing, it’s also politically highly divisive. It’s the most destructive force produced within Pacifica, gnawing away at the ties binding the stations together.
Not to be ageist, but station chauvinism is juvenile, politically immature, trying to reduce a pan-Pacifica political matter to a combination of inter-station & interpersonal invective. Representatives of Pacifica have a responsibility to practise the best politics they can, & not degenerate, capitulate, collapsing into an easy station chauvinism.
4) Layered on top of all this is the proprietary reality: a station owns nothing, not even one paper-clip. There is no such thing as a KPFA building: it is a Pacifica building, which Pacifica has decided to let KPFA use. This is not proverbial ‘semantics’, but the substantive reality, which demonstrates how misleading everyday expressions can be. All assets, & liabilities, are Pacifica’s, that of the Foundation as a whole. It’s simply a historical accident that some stations use Pacifica buildings; moreover, it’s a historical accident that, at the beginning, Pacifica & KPFA were one & the same.
5) Just take a step back. How does a Pacifican view the recipient of a trust fund or a set of genes? To whom & to what does a Pacifican assign (causal) responsibility? Does a Pacifican practise the pervasive blame culture? So-called progressives shouldn’t forget that the principle they should uphold is that a later generation is to be neither condemned nor rewarded for the endowment conferred upon them by the ancestors. We can do without a second PEP, Progressive Except on Pacifica.
Conclusion: station chauvinism is a politics that has no place in Pacifica.
If a station is being maladministered then ultimate responsibility lies with a majority of directors, for the PNB to act if it deems the executive director has lost control. A LSB, let alone an individual delegate, is irrelevant.
6) One needs to be humble about what a Pacifica station is. A station is a production & dissemination unit for Pacifica. A station is an organising node for recruiting & retaining listener-members of Pacifica. A station is an accounting unit of Pacifica. (Pacifica’s management accounting policy could be different, stripping rent & other contingencies out of station accounts.) A station should also do all the other things in the Mission that are hardly ever done. This wouldn’t have to be said if, to the fore, was coordinated Pacifica action, with a correlate of a Pacifica ideology & sentiment, all co-existing with justified local pride.
7) Instead, the political problem of station chauvinism festered whilst the PNB proved unable to steer Pacifica through the financial & audience crisis starting in 2007, so long ago that this was even before the last slump. The PNB failed to devise adequate policies & to exercise persuasive leadership. As a result it lacked moral authority & political trust. So localism grew at the expense of a network response, even out of despair with a lack of direction from the centre.
8) When the Foundation is most stressed, this localism is expressed as station chauvinism, & most dangerously as separatism, an anti-solidaristic politics. More anti-progressivism within Pacifica. Ayn Rand with a Pacifica face as it were, with the perceived strong going it alone, leaving the weak to wither & die. This found organised expression c. 2013, when moves were made to prepare & engineer a break-up of Pacifica.
As the financial pressures intensify at Pacifica, with cashflow now so acute that “KPFK [is] facing layoffs” (James Sagurton, WBAI listener-delegate, Tu27Aug PNB Finance Cttee, 2:44; he was challenged by no-one, including KPFK delegates such as Pacifica Chair Grace Aaron), some Californian station chauvinists will clamour for separatism, although they possess neither the building nor the FCC broadcasting licence. This politics was on display at KPFA’s recent town hall, Sa17Aug (for example the first speaker, Tess, 1:26). It’s not going away any time soon.
Can Pacifica cope with young peeps? The Red Wave slate for the WBAI Local Station Board
Red Wave gets the Gezi penguin of approval from PacificaWatch
Can Pacifica cope with the youfff, here we’re talking about people under 35?
We’ll soon find out, because something’s happening in New York. The organisation that benefited most from #feeltheBern was the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, a middle-of-the-road social democratic group. They grew perhaps tenfold, & much more in terms of active members. It’s become the principal home in the US of anti-capitalists who aren’t anarchists.
The DSA’s largest chapter is NYC. And they’re in WBAI. A weekly one-hour, drive-time programme, 5pm Tuesdays, Revolutions Per Minute (RPM), is usually hosted by two members, Jack Devine & Lee Ziesche. In fact, it seems to be de facto proprietary – and I’m not talking Pacifica:
NYC-DSA now has a weekly radio program, Revolutions Per Minute on 99.5 WBAI. If you are interested in getting involved come join! There’s room for everyone, no experience necessary!
https://www.socialists.nyc/events/2019/3/21/revolutions-per-minute-monthly-meeting
Seems becomes definitive, the statement heading RPM’s Twitter page:
*The official* radio show and podcast of NYC Democratic Socialists of America
https://twitter.com/nycRPM@nycDSA. [my emphases]
There is no mention of this on their WBAI webpage: https://www.wbai.org/program.php?program=306
That page was augmented today, three links, & a pretty logo.
One link is to the RPM website, which archives the weekly programmes. The inaugural broadcast was M7Jan this year, & it carried an interview with State Senator Julia Salazar, a DSA member, impressively 27-years-old, & more impressively said to be the first socialist in the Senate for well on 100 years (35:31): https://revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com/episodes/january-7th-noamazonnyc. RPM do outreach, having had their first monthly public meeting in March; they also publish a weekly newsletter. The three links: RPM website, http://revolutionsperminute.simplecast.com; their nest, https://twitter.com/nycRPM; & http://bit.ly/rpm-newsletter. [UPDATE: as of Tu27Aug, the logo & three links have been deleted, without explanation, from the programme’s WBAI page. Quite odd.]
Not surprisingly they’ve got a slate of candidates, the Red Wave, in the current WBAI Local Station Board elections.
They have seven listener-candidates & two staff-candidates, here in ranked order: Safia Albaiti, Michael Mordowanec, Charlotte Albrecht, Rosa Palmieri, Simone Norman, Jez Zerbe, & David Torcivia; Jack Devine, & Amy Wilson. (As for the competition, there are 26 verified candidates for the nine listener-seats, & four for the three staff-seats, so Red Wave will win at least one of the latter.) “We’ll have a website up soon with a detailed platform and vision”, in the meantime, https://www.facebook.com/RedWaveWBAI/ & https://twitter.com/RedWaveWBAI (luv the Pisa transmitter, non-Stalinesque socialist realism, in the honest sense). https://airtable.com/shrnu59exwc0rRKad (gives the rankings, & also has a form for email updates from the Red Wave Collective)
A to-&-fro between WBAI listener-candidates featured four of their number, Cdes. Albaiti, Albrecht, Palmieri, & Zerbe. They acquitted themselves well, especially Cde. Albaiti (she is indeed, astutely, ranked #1 on their listener-slate). The video was published this Thursday, 22Aug, on the YouTube channel of National Elections Supervisor Renee Penaloza, & on her website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpYa0DhFGB4 & https://elections.pacifica.org/wordpress/wbai-forum-stephen-finkelstein-david-andersson-dee-dee-halleck-jack-de-palma-jez-zerbe-william-heerwagon-safia-albaiti-rosa-palmieri-charlotte-albrecht/ (snappy URL – it’s ‘Heerwagen’ too). All nine candidates, bar Cde. Palmieri (perversely so, as she’s an actress), have a vid of their one-minute statement at the two sites.
Oddly, not one of their statements mentions that they constitute a slate, nor do they mention each other. Demonstrates they’re new to electioneering. https://elections.pacifica.org/wordpress/wbai-candidate-statements/wbai-listener-statements/ & https://elections.pacifica.org/wordpress/wbai-candidate-statements/wbai-staff-statements/
It’s also surprising that no statement stresses that the candidate isn’t a grandparent or great-grandparent, making the slate a fresh broom for WBAI. This isn’t to be ageist, simply drawing attention to perhaps the biggest persuasive plus they have: voters, one suspects, don’t plumb so much for candidate politics as they do for personal characteristics, & with everyone knowing that Pacifica is getting even older, lots of voters will be pleased that under-40s, even those in their 20s, are running. Letting voters know this will certainly not harm their chances.
If word of their slate spreads, with the positive message that they are part of Pacifica’s & WBAI’s future, they have every chance of getting at least five elected. They really need to hammer home their comparative advantage. The recent past shows that a listener can get elected at WBAI with what seems to be little campaigning. Eve Moser did so with nine votes in the first round of the 4Jan2016 election, out of 920 voting (election report, pages 2 & 56), winning out only in the penultimate round of redistributing the votes (p. 56). https://mega.nz/#!3rxxjAAa!WX4Jz65LkNJC3NYFQyArJwptK1dGX8USofVIq4qRCxM (this substitutes for the public link, broken without notice, presumably by NES Penaloza, c. Mar-June this year, http://elections.pacifica.org/wordpress/wpcontent/uploads/2016/01/UPDATED-13Jan-16-WBAI-Listener-Results-Certification-LetterSimply-Voting.pdf)
Then on 5Mar this year (results certified 18Mar), Hazel Pinder did the same with three such votes, out of 830 voting (other low achievers, likewise getting elected, were Dacio Quintana with five; Michael White, nine; Jim Dingeman, 12; Carolyn McIntyre, 13; & King Downing, 14). You see how even being a parent comes in useful? Remarkably, our Hazel was then elected in the second round, the only candidate to do so, having picked up 88% of Errol Maitland’s 198 redistributed votes! So, sadly, all down to the slate, not Hazel’s magnetism. The first & last rounds of the nominal 2018 pseudo-election: https://mega.nz/#!yz4lEChK!AzaYP0_nv9b30hYQGb3xr3O71DnY7msBracGaajIkhg & https://mega.nz/#!6zxxHajY!J2dOgxN6paySjOENYqugm8A2hMBAdwkXKjY0lnxaCaM
Redistributed votes. The Pacifica voting system meant that March this year, for the WBAI listener pseudo-election, once one got 60 votes one got elected, be it the first round, the 25th round. (For the staff, it was 17 votes.) And how many in the NYC chapter of DSA? . . . “5 500+”. (At the 19Nov2018 ‘record date’, there were 6 806 WBAI listener-members & 177 staff.) https://www.socialists.nyc/ & https://mega.nz/#!fyAwGICZ!-4uWYMHZW3CHxt6yCOITu006SVZ4AyNPjT9bWw6csb0 (Election Final Report 2018, pp. 7-9, 9, 1, 19; in Stalinist style, no longer publicly available on a Pacifica site – with Pacifica, its pervasive & entrenched anti-transparency culture, integral to its unthinking common sense, download written records whilst you can!)
On Monday, 19Aug, Red Wave had an intro to Pacifican morality, having to issue a denial statement because the dastardly Steve Brown had put their candidates as endorsers on one of his mailers. A leopard never changes its spots; a slug never loses its slime. Did he ever know Jeff, one may wonder? https://www.facebook.com/notes/red-wave-wbai/red-wave-statement-on-the-stephen-brown-endosement-mailer/113899156636566/
Red Wave have set things up nicely, giving the WBAI members a test. How will they respond to the shock of the new, the shock of the youfff?
Will the Red Wave sweep all before it? Or will it be dammed, reduced to a ripple?
Can WBAI cope with this injection of youfff?
Or will WBAI carry on, undisturbed, confirmed & contented in its alienation, as if #feeltheBern never happened?
WBAI is fortunate to be presented with this opportunity, for Red Wave to bring a two-generation shift to the LSB. But will it be a step too far for the WBAI members?
This is a test of Pacifica’s capacity to change with the times, to embrace a harbinger of the future.
What transpires will be a portent, evidence of Pacifica’s capacity to re-new.
Whither Pacifica?
And the Gezi Park penguin graffito? There are very few green spaces, let alone parks, in much of Istanbul, population c. 20m, especially in the built-up retail areas. Gezi was to be destroyed, turned into shops & a barracks (where’s the surprise). People protested. When the rioting police moved in at 1am, Su2June2013, CNN International covered the attacks live; CNN Türk carried on showing their documentary, Penguins: Spy in the Huddle, starring 50 spycams. (Would have brought a smile to the face of Gil Scott-Heron.) Penguin graffiti ensued, along with a popular chant, responding to a police supply problem: ‘the people demand the old tear gas’.
Pacifica’s strategic plan: Peter Lorre, Vincent Price, ‘The Comedy of Terrors’ allegory
. . . Pacifica has its peculiar way of surviving: the necro-economics of the golden corpses . . .
✞ ☦ ✞ ☦ ✞ ☦ ✞ ☦ ✞ ☦ ✞ ☦ ✞ ☦ ✞ ☦ ✞
The Comedy of Terrors. Vincent Price plays an undertaker; Peter Lorre, his assistant. Business is slow; creditors at his door. The Vladimir question: what is to be done? Bingo! Increase demand: raise the death rate. So Vince & Pete take to the night, murdering. Then, being in the neighbourhood, they offer their services to the bereaved. Problem solved.
Pacifica is a radio network. Income evaporating, having halved over the decade; creditors at its door. What’s saving Pacifica is corpses. Golden corpses, the bequests. But there can never be enough, can there? Especially with cashflow being so acute.
So have a heart. Think of others.
Do your lil bit for the network.
Auto; assist. Same-same. It’s all good.
Do it for The Mission.
Do it for Lew.
Trailer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ARUKfGB6wc; full film, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7MOFfqxBvk (the ESRT moment, 7:56; the PNB Strategic Planning Cttee moment, 12:25; the plan is implemented again, applied to the ESRT problem, 30:20; the Pacifica premiums scam moment, 53:52). Putting an end to interminable fund-drives: pacific termination with extreme prejudice.
The main Facebook group, ‘Pacifica Radiowaves – past, present and future of Pacifica Radio’
[UPDATE: I was mistaken in calling this the main FB group on Pacifica: as of 11Sep, it has c. 390 members, whereas Pacifica Radio Supporters has c. 840.] Below is my inaugural post, made today, at [one of] the main Pacifica group on Facebook, Pacifica Radiowaves – past, present and future of Pacifica Radio. For readers here the post is banal, merely a repetition, but the FB group seems to be a noticeboard, a lil sleepy, undisturbed by discussion: even so, last month, Don Davis, warmed by a pleasant, minor disagreement, was moved to say, “I for one am glad to see threads of substance on this page at long last”.
Somewhat surprisingly, the FB group, on W26June, had leaked Pacifica documents, notably the loan agreement borrowing $3.7m from the Foundation for the Jewish Community, FJC, signed by iED Tom Livingston & President Lorin Silverman on M2Apr2018. At the time of the leak, the group was co-administered by Nalini Lasiewicz & Chair of the Pacifica board, Grace Aaron. The latter left her FB post a week or so after becoming iED during the evening of F5July, after successfully engineering, over many, many weeks, the ousting of ED Maxie Jackson – please see https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/2019/08/01/administrative-measures-not-open-discussion-the-pacifica-way/.
I obviously wanted to thank the poster of the documents, & make substantive comments on what, unbelievably, has even been kept from the many non-directors on the PNB Finance Cttee, these including all five station treasurers! Yes, the PNB majority has chosen for 16 months now to prevent the Finance Cttee making fully informed rational decisions concerning Pacifica’s future, to prevent all the Cttee members discharging their fiduciary duty, as required by California corporation law. One can’t be a dutiful trustee, a diligent servant, when kept in wilful ignorance by the information gatekeepers, one’s ostensible colleagues.
However, in order to comment in this FB group one needs to be a member, & so I applied the same day, W26June. After a long silence, then more silence after two FB messages, finally last Monday, on 12Aug, after almost seven weeks, Comrade Nalini finally welcomed me – speaking as if I’d asked the same day. Gracias, caudillo. Who couldn’t love ‘the Pacifica family’?
P.S. My open letter referred iED Vernile to the deficiencies of the public Pacifica financial reports archive, noting to him that this blog had all the missing material, bar a single page. Even 15 days later, Pacifica’s archive lacks three auditor’s reports – FY2006, 2009, 2010 – & FY2011 is sneakily hiding behind the FY2009 ‘button’. C’est la vie.
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Hi, all. By way of intro, here’s an open letter to Pacifica’s new executive director, John Carlo Vernile. Haven’t had a reply yet, nor even an acknowledgement – so much for the Pacifica ‘fam’. https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/2019/08/04/open-letter-to-pacifica-executive-director-john-vernile-what-s-your-plan-why-s-maxie-gone/
We’re lucky to finally have a music corporate careerist with us, who can devise a comprehensive strategic plan to bring stability to our failing network. It’s what we need after the ousting of that experienced radio professional, Maxie Jackson. After all, he’d only been making progress in laying a sound foundation.
With Vernile, will our decision-makers systematically allow technique to flourish at Pacifica? They certainly crushed Maxie as soon as they could.
Rationally, intent & action should spring from evidence- & argument-based communications science, not from tradition, prejudice, & hearsay. Pacifica needs to transform from a broadcaster focused on radios to an audio content provider focused on digital devices [emphases added].
Nevertheless, Pacifica is likely to muddle thru, sustained by the necro-economics of the golden corpses, the bequests. Yes, appropriately distasteful – & true in both senses.
Pacifica Financial Recovery Plan – 28Feb2012, not today
This is the first of a series of documents, drawing attention to the sort of work that Pacifica’s national decision-makers not only used to produce but were also happy to share with all members, staff, & the listening public more generally. As these documents show, the current decision-makers fail both tests.
Some Pacifica officials have ideas, as shown by the public sessions of PNB sub-cttees, but there are hardly any arguments, certainly not evidence-based, & certainly nothing that shows that either individual or collective research has taken place – not even the first necessary step, a perfunctory literature review, showing some awareness of the sciences of both programme production & delivery, & how to relate to, ‘to serve’, one’s audience, the famed ‘community’. Saying that the PNB keeps trying to re-invent the wheel is overstating even their intent: they’re idling, not even re-creating. The desperate question persists, one never asked by any Pacifica decision-maker: why?
This first document is the Pacifica Financial Recovery Plan of 28Feb2012. It was written by the Financial Recovery & Audit Taskforce. Headings used: the problem; increasing revenue; maintaining subscribers; increasing audience; digital distribution/mobile device access; e-commerce; controlling expenses; conclusion. The range of relevant areas, this alone, displays an adequacy of conceptualisation missing from any PNB public discussion occurring since the 2Apr2018 signing for the $3.7m loan, now reduced to $3.265m, from the Foundation for the Jewish Community, FJC. The document is 10 pages long.
https://mega.nz/#!emgXjaYA!JrZeD6CTN26XyDWSc-ZoNoTWAiD__dGef6buW5uYTpM (click the magnifying glass to read online, without having to download)
Two excerpts: the causes, the expectation.
The causes, second line of the summary:
The deficits were a product of many factors, among them declining listener support, failure to make programming changes to retain and grow listenership, and poor management of our budgets and financial reserves, both on the national and local station levels.
Yea, the sun riseth each morn.
The expectation, first line of the conclusion:
With the above strategies in place to increase revenue and control expenses Pacifica expects to pay off debts and become financially stable within 5 years, 2012 – 2016.
Pious wish.
This plan is dated Feb2012. Seven-and-a-half years ago. At the time, a run of five years of successive losses. Instead of ‘the expectation’ there was this realisation: five more years of successive audited losses, thru FY2016; then the 2017 audit that demonstrated that those year’s financial statements, in not being supported by adequate documentation, are in effect worthless (& so can’t be relied upon by potential donors); & there’s every chance that the FY2018 auditors will come to the same conclusion whenever it is this year, now that NETA, in the person of the iCFO, announced to the latest PNB, Th1Aug, that they’ve ditched the pretence of a timeline. The FY2019 audit, the first of financial statements for which NETA have also done the bookkeeping, will presumably be a ‘clean’ audit, that is, the auditors issue an unmodified opinion. Which is progress.
(The latest, vaguest of vague, public iCFO report on the FY2018 accounts, by Tamra Swiderski, in effect recognises the hopelessness of the state of the financial records & supporting evidence, as NETA try to develop the trial balance into the two principal financial statements for evaluation by the auditors – please see the quote, & the Audit Cttee Chair’s unjustified silence, at https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/2019/07/18/pacifica-annual-auditor-s-reports/.)
With all five Spring Fund-drives failing this year, & with no PNB-approved budgets guiding station financial decision-making, despite any sizeable bequests it’s only prudent, & so rational, to expect another loss this year. So, given the evidence, no-one doubts that thru FY2019, on top of the situation detailed in the Feb2012 report, this will be eight more years of successive losses, making the run 13 years, from 1Oct2006 to 30Sep2019.
And the response at the top, the directors supposedly directing? The PNB has proved unwilling to ‘bite the bullet’, to be rational about Pacifica’s financial crisis – so much so that it proved unable to accept that technique, as personified by ED Maxie Jackson, has any place in the work that has to be done. The PNB majority demands a supplicant, not a radio professional.
When a decision-making body has consistently proven both unwilling & unable to respond adequately to an obdurate chronic financial crisis, acute except when meliorated by a golden corpse, its members don’t deserve to be there.
Pacifica = the necro-economics of the golden corpses
But will the current LSB pseudo-elections, voting starting next Thursday, results due F1Nov (sic), usher in the necessary change? Hold your breath, then expire – but only after writing in that bequest. Forget those joke write-in votes, this is a serious matter, deadly serious: Pacifica’s life depends on you, Pacifica’s life depends on your death.
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(Nagasaki Remembrance Day . . . 11.02am local time, mass murder from 5½ miles up)
PacificaWatch 