The Indypendent e-news
September 20, 2008
By John Tarleton
R. Paul Martin paced anxiously back-and-forth with a finger on one ear and a cellphone in the other. An hour after WBAI's Listener Station Board (LSB) passed a budget that would force the station to lay off about 25 percent of its workforce, he was waiting to find out if WBAI's overseers at the Pacifica Foundation would allow several amendments that the board had passed to soften the blows of the budget cuts.
“2 for, 4 against and 1 abstained”, Martin called out in his folksy twang to the handful of people who had not gone home. “We're going back to Version 8.1 of the budget. Cuts will start immediately.”
Wednesday night's LSB meeting featured the usual bickering between the station's warring factions, a rare moment of unity as well as the spectral presence of WBAI's embattled program director. All of this was overshadowed by the fiscal crisis that has brought the station and the Pacifica network to the brink of financial ruin.
Pacifica, a left-leaning, listener-sponsored radio network with high-powered stations in New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Washington, D.C. and the San Francisco Bay area has been in turmoil for more than a decade. Declining revenues in the past couple of years (caused in part by WBAI's poor performance) and a series of costly lawsuits have forced the network to take out a line of credit from a bank to meet its operating expenses. WBAI's budget process, in turn, has come under intense scrutiny.
Held at the Broadway Housing Communities building at 135thh and Riverside Drive in West Harlem, Wednesday's meeting saw the LSB faced with a 9:30 p.m. deadline to submit a budget for Fiscal Year 2009 to Pacifica's national finance committee. After starting the meeting 45 minutes late and sparring for 20 minutes about amendments to the agenda, the Board settled into a discussion about reducing the annual budget by more than 20 percent from $3.99 million to $3.17 million with several hundred thousand dollars being cut from staff salaries and benefits.
“It's reality time,” said Martin who serves as the Board's treasurer.
“We all know there has to be cuts in staff,” said Board member Bob Lederer. “It's a terrible reality.”
Hoping to save at least some staff jobs of the 6.5 full-time equivalents that were facing the ax, the Board unanimously agreed to add three amendments to the budget which would have lowered the station's required year-end reserves by $40,000 and allowed the station to project $74,500 in additional net revenues from a direct mail appeal to supporters and a fund appeal in The Nation.
The budget as a whole passed by a vote of 10-6 and Martin disappeared into conference call with the national finance committee officials only to learn by night's end that the LSB's effort had been rejected as insufficiently austere.
The Pacifica National Board is meeting in Washington, DC this weekend and is expected to impose a final budget on WBAI before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
During Wednesday's meeting, LSB members debated the causes of WBAI's fiscal crisis. Carolyn Birden blamed poor program content at WBAI for driving away listeners while Alex Steinberg cited poor leadership throughout the network.
“WBAI is bearing the brunt of poor decisions made by both local and national management,” Steinberg said.
However, Lisa Davis emphasized that a poor economy was taking its toll on WBAI as well.
“There's a financial crisis all over the country right now,” she said. “I talk to people on fixed incomes who say they want to support the station but times are tough and they can't do it.”
Vajra Kilgour said Board members need to become more active in raising money for the cash-strapped station starting with helping answer phones during fund drive.
“There's no reason members of this Board can't be in there taking calls,” she said.
Bernard White
Before the meeting, reports had circulated that opponents of WBAI program director Bernard White would use the budget crisis to abolish his position. White's supporters on the Board and in the overflow crowd of more than 60 people kept waiting for a last-minute maneuver from his opponents but nothing happened.
Afterwards, Board Chair Mitchel Cohen said there had never been a specific plan to eliminate White's position but that he had hoped to see White and the station's general manager Anthony Riddle share equally in the financial sacrifices of the staff.
“They are firing workers and nothing happens to them. It's like Lehman Brothers,” Cohen said. “We are saying the management line should have the same amount taken out of it as with the staff.”
White's supporters were having nothing of it.
“It would have been outrageous to cut the position of program director,” said board member Ray LaForest. “There clearly would have been a backlash.”
“I think they looked out at the crowd and were scared shitless,” added board member Sara Flounders. “... This is a group of white liberals who don't want Black management at WBAI.”
White himself sat through the meeting quietly listening from the back of the room and was surrounded afterwards by well-wishers. Asked about the attacks on his leadership, he attributed WBAI's woes to the overall media environment.
“Listener-supported media is in trouble because people have other alternatives now,” he said. “They can go on the Internet and get what they need.”
As for facing the same pay cuts as staff, White said he had already made sacrifices. “I haven't had a pay raise in six years,” he said. “So I have been taking cuts all along.”
Comments
"...As for facing the same pay cuts as staff, White said he had already made sacrifices. “I haven’t had a pay raise in six years,” he said. 'So I have been taking cuts all along.'..."
I assume he is referring to his base salary, not to any bonus payments, proceeds of benefits held for him (with the aid of station resources and personnel), or spill-over from fund-raising events (such as the 9-11 fundraiser at Riverside Church).
The story captures the flavor of the factional fight. I am a longtime listener. I think some of the local board members are mean-spirited and nasty. (They post some of the Local Station Board messages publicly, but public can't comment on them. That's a new "democracy" feature of the new majority on the LSB, Local Station Board.)
Although I am now able to use the internet, (an older activist), I am still a listener of WBAI because the radio has a "now" quality, a kind of "intimacy" that is not provided even when you can listen via the internet. Radio is still powerful for many and can be for more. How, is the question.
Some of the quotes in the story, and comments reflect individuals' positions. Fighting for power is an old story, yes?
Good report. I'm glad to see The Indy looking into other progressive news outlets.
I have to correct one of sanda's assertions. "They post some of the Local Station Board messages publicly..."
In contrast to the previous LSB listserver, the one the non-JUC majority set up posts ALL of the LSB messages publicly (the old one let the public see NONE of its messages).
Continuing, sanda says: "...but public can’t comment on them..."
I and others of the "reform" movement share sanda's frustration, but there are avenues for public comment (e.g. listenerforums.net or several Yahoo groups set up by individuals), and of course individual LSB members can (and have) posted public comments they have received.
[Members of the public who are not LSB members nor members of that list-serve can read the messages, and those who choose to join the list can contact individual LSB members directly that way --- more than one JUC delegate was reluctant to reveal an email address, but this allows them to be emailed anyway.]
A further comment is intended sarcastically, but I'd say it in a different sense: "...That’s a new 'democracy' feature of the new majority on the LSB, Local Station Board..."
I'd say, yes that is a move towards greater transparency and greater public involvement than we had seen in the past several years, and non-JUC members of the LSB are working for even greater transparency in other areas of governance and WBAI operations.
If you knew the non-JUC members of the LSB as I do, you'd know that they are not so monolithic as the JUC (indeed, too independent to collaborate effectively at times) and are not fighting for individual or group "power". If it is possible for you to attend committee meetings, please do; I think you'll soon see who is doing what.
No one was scared shitless by these narrow hostile people. Even though they, JUC, have used intimidation, and actual violence at station board meeting in the past. Mr. White, and his extremeist supporters the JUC have overseen the demise of Wbai.
We were not scared because sadly we have become used to their race baiting, and threats. Wbai is committing suicide via endless internal chaos. I appeal to our listeners to help us. Demand that this nearly decade long race war between race nationalist, and basically everyone else at the station stop!
Too much protest about "democracy" of the new public messages. There should be a way for readers to reply. A suggestion was made to email each individual LSB member to reply to their email that is on the public board, that we can't reply to directly. Ques.:How are we to know each person's email url? (It's not always in the detail.) Note: I have noticed one person using the LSB public posting as a way to publicize his off-station activities. To go to each individual to reply to their email means that only one person sees the reply. Too much extra work for too little "democracy".
UPDATE: Mitchel Cohen (LSB Chair) has brought this to the attention of the LSB and is proposing a way to deal with this, providing a way for one email reply to go to all LSB members.
Mitchel Cohen (LSB Chair) is only addressing a part of the problem. Review: the pubic receives emails that the LSB posts publicly. They come to our email box, if we sign up for it. We get to read opinions, and what I think is an occassional "smear" of a listener. The listener, under the partial proposal, would get to email, unseen by the public, various or all LSB members. That does not redress the problem:public reply that all can view.
What exactly ARE the saleries of the staff.
Is it classified info?
At some point it boils down to one simple thing: do the administrators have the necessary business skills and expertise to run Pacifica and WBAI? No matter how "left-leaning" an organization might be, it still needs to be managed by folks who has some sense of effective business practices -- now more than ever. It takes money resources and marketing expertise to run Pacifica and WBAI not just political ideology....
If I may be so bold: what are the salaries of the staff?
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