[lbo-talk] Lew Hill on Pacifica

Joseph Wanzala jwanzala at hotmail.com
Tue Aug 24 17:07:00 PDT 2004


Doug, all you ever do is rag on Pacifica, even though you have a program on Pacifica's New York station WBAI (which I assume you think is as equally distant from Lew Hill's vision as the rest of Pacifica programming) and are happy to appear on other Pacifica stations as you did on KPFA's Mouning Show today. On the one hand, welcome to the club, almost everybody involved with Pacifica governance issues are aware that Pacifica is not fullfilling its mission and has strayed from the vision of Lew Hill and they are the sharpest critics of the quality of the network's programming, on the other hand, at least these people are actively involved in promoting what is good about Pacifica and trying to cultivate better programming. As you have noted in the past, Pacifica is vtial and important and this is acknowledged at least at KPFA and KPFK to my knowledge with consistently succesfful fund-drives - so the programmers must be doing something right by the listeners, even though it may not be music to Lew Hill's interred ears.

It is also deeply ironic and indictive of how little you understand the Pacifica crisis that you belittle the efforts to save Pacifica from a corporate takeover, suggesting that it was not a 'Manichaen' battle (to be sure, it was and continues to be complex but there was no question that there was an attempted takeover) while failing to acknowledge of realize that the station remained quite close to the vision articulated by Lewis Hill until the attempted takeover in the 1990s and the network has yet to recover. Indeed, one of the signal events of the crisis was the mass firing of hundreds of volunteer programmers, many of them artists and scholars in their own right and not primarily "radio professionals". Indeed, your recent statement that Pacifica needs more professionalization not less, flies in the face of the type of artistic, creative, non-conventional, non-commercial culture that Lewis Hill was trying to cultivate.

Joe W.

_____________


>From : Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
Reply-To : lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent : Tuesday, August 24, 2004 4:24 PM To : lbo-talk <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Subject : [lbo-talk] Lew Hill on Pacifica

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After the restoration of the old management at WBAI, program director Bernard White urged everyone to read Pacifica founder Lew Hill's 1951 essay on the theory of listener-sponsored radio <http://pacifica.org/about/lhtheory_1951.html>. His vision was quite rigorous and high culture, and a long way from the Pacifica of today. An excerpt:

We all know, for example, that the purpose of commercial radio is to induce mass sales. For mass sales there must be a mass norm, and the activity must be conducted as nearly as possible without risk of departure from the norm. But art and the communication of ideas--as most of us also appreciate--are risky affairs, for it can never be predicted in those activities just when the purely individual and abnormal may assert itself. Indeed to get any real art or any significant communication, one must rely entirely on individuals, and must resign himself to accept not only their uniqueness but the possibility that the individual may at any time fail. By suppressing the individual, the unique, the industry reduces the risk of failure (abnormality) and assures itself a standard product for mass consumption.

We know these commonplaces, but it is truly staggering to contemplate what they imply and cause in American radio. Should you inquire why there is no affinity between the serious arts and radio, you will find that this is the reason.

America is well supplied with remarkably talented writers, musicians, philosophers, and scientists whose work will survive for some centuries. Such people have no relation whatever to our greatest communication medium. I have been describing a fact at the level of the industry's staff; it is actually so notorious in the whole tradition and atmosphere of our radio that it precludes anyone of serious talent and reasonable sanity from offering material for broadcast, much less joining a staff. The country's best minds, like one mind, shun the medium unless the possessor of one happens to be running for office. Yet if we want an improvement in radio worth the trouble, it is these people whose talent the medium must attract. The basic situation of broadcasting must be such that artists and thinkers have a place to work--with freedom. Short of this, the suffering listener has no out.

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