* this is my note.
>From: "Joseph Wanzala" <jwanzala at hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Report from KPFA CAB meeting
>Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 17:02:05 -0700
>
>Doug - Did you actually read the title of Lewis Hill's essay? It is called
>the Theory of Listener-Sponsored Radio. What do you think
>'Listener-Sponsored Radio' means? Listeners *are* the community!
>
>elsewhere in his essay Hill writes:
>
>"...Anyone can understand the rationale of listener sponsorship--that
>unless the station is supported by those who value it (*i.e. the
>'community'), no one can listen to it including those who value it. This is
>common sense. But beyond this, actually sending in the subscription, which
>one does not have to send in unless one particularly wants to, implies the
>kind of cultural engagement, as some French philosophers call it, that is
>surely indispensable for the sake of the whole culture. When we have a
>radio station fully supported by subscribers who have not responded to a
>special gift offer, who are not participating in a lottery, who have not
>ventured an investment at 3 per cent, but who use this means of supporting
>values that seem to them of basic and lasting importance--then we will have
>more than a subscription roster. It will amount, I think, to a new focus of
>action or a new shaping influence that can hardly fail to strengthen all of
>us."
>http://www.pacifica.org/about/lhtheory_1951.html
>
>and as John Whiting has written:
>
>"It was this sense of "engagement", as Lewis Hill called it, quoting the
>French Existentialists, that not only made KPFA's audience intensely loyal,
>but gave them a significance in the community which a mere head count, had
>it been possible, would have grossly undervalued. (A moment's reflection
>makes it obvious that head counts reveal nothing of a group's importance,
>except as a standard for setting advertising revenue.)"
>http://www.radio4all.org/fp/vincula.htm
>
>Doug, try not to think of community as a bad word just because Bernard
>White utters it. Reclaim it from him. Community is good.
>
>Joe W.
>
>p.s.
>You might also want to read 'A Short History of Community Radio"
>http://www.weft.org/station/history.html
>
>
>
>>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>>Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Report from KPFA CAB meeting
>>Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 19:15:12 -0400
>>
>>Joseph Wanzala wrote:
>>
>>>Doug, it is really a question of whether you fundamentally support the
>>>'idea' of community radio or whether you are always looking for reasons
>>>to rain on its parade. Perhaps you should not be at WBAI if you don't
>>>support the essential idea behind it.
>>
>>What is that? Pacifica founder Lew Hill's? I don't see the word
>>"community" in that document - which Bernard White urged us all to read
>>and take to heart when he took over as Program Director at WBAI. An
>>excerpt:
>>
>><http://pacifica.org/about/lhtheory_1951.html>
>>
>>>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.
>>>
>>>It may be clearer why I indicated at the outset that listener sponsorship
>>>involves some basic concerns. This is the first problem it sets out to
>>>solve--to give the genuine artist and thinker a possible, even a
>>>desirable, place to work in radio.
>>>
>>>[...]
>>>
>>>The problem was, you remember, not whether you as a listener should
>>>choose what you like or agree with--as obviously you should and do--but
>>>how to get some genuinely significant choices before you. Radio which
>>>aims to do that must express what its practitioners believe to be real,
>>>good, beautiful, and so forth, and what they believe is truly at stake in
>>>the assertion of such values. For better or worse these are matters like
>>>the nature of the deity which cannot be determined by majority vote or a
>>>sales curve. Either some particular person makes up his mind about these
>>>things and learns to express them for himself, or we have no values or no
>>>significant expression of them. Since values and expressions as
>>>fundamental as this are what we must have to improve radio noticeably,
>>>there is no choice but to begin by extending to someone the privilege of
>>>thinking and acting in ways important to him. Whatever else may happen,
>>>we thus assign to the participating individual the responsibility,
>>>artistic integrity, freedom of expression, and the like, which in
>>>conventional radio are normally denied him. KPFA is operated literally on
>>>this principle.
>>___________________________________
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