[lbo-talk] WBAI details

Lance Murdoch lancemurdoch at gmail.com
Sun Jun 5 20:57:15 PDT 2005


On 6/5/05, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> The PNB (Pacifica National Board) bears some responsibility for this
> situation. Last year the PNB overrode the WBAI LSB's (Local Station
> Board's) request for a smaller FY 2005 budget, one that would be
> easier for the station to make. WBAI's FY 2005 budget was not approved
> by the LSB as called for under Pacifica's bylaws.
>
> The other four stations' budgets were approved by their LSBs.

This would be immediately obvious for anyone who has stepped into the pre-1998 office and the post-1998 office. The pre-1998 office was just what one would expect a listener-supported progressive community radio station to look like: it looked like a dump. Someone commented once, after we waited half an hour for Max Schmid to take us down in the non-automatic elevators to the labyrinth side exit, that leaving through the side exit was like walking through the opening of the old "Get Smart" show. The exit opened up on Eighth Avenue, and across the street was a pornographic store where I was told that homosexual men solicited each other for anonymous sex in "buddy booths". This sort of element was hanging around outside in the middle of the night outside WBAI, and it seems par for the course for what a people's radio station can afford in this day and age.

In 1998, some faction decided to move to Wall Street, and the rent went up tens of thousands of dollars. Obvious from the fundraiser, WBAI could barely afford the old place, never mind these added expenses. The new office is on Wall Street, and looks more like an NPR station then a Pacifica station. The old office had a couch where you could hang out in the entrance - the new office has a corporate-style desk and a waiting area in the back like a corporate office would have. In the old office it wouldn't be unusual for a group of people to dive into an empty office after a show and BS for a while, perhaps with some other WBAI'ers popping in. In the new office, the doors to private offices are more likely to be locked.

You don't need to have seen both offices to know what's going on though. Mumia Abu-Jamal is on death row, yet he wrote "WBAI - the coup on Wall Street" in 2001 which explained exactly what was going on. You don't even see people like Amy Goodman wandering around anymore because she decided to get an office elsewhere.



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