[lbo-talk] please pledge to WBAI during my show on Thursday

Ben Jackson nonplus.plus at gmail.com
Thu Sep 18 11:11:49 PDT 2008


On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 12:31 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 18, 2008, at 10:45 AM, Ben Jackson wrote:
>
>> By the way, what is it with community radio stations and their
>> management?
>
> gang of race essentialist ultraleftists who ran WBAI until recently, mostly
> featured their political work in their campaign bios, as if 20 years in
> organizing around prison issues had anything to do with being on the board
> of a troubled radio station. Surely there must be a better way. I know this
> is heresy in some circles, but you need real managers and lines of
> authority, not second-rate amateurs.

The problem with real managers and lines of authority is that noone but the managers is getting paid. Why should anyone volunteer their time if they can't even control the conditions of their donated labour?

In our case, professionalization destroyed the station. Things worked okay as a volunteer-based organisation. The station manager was full-time and the other positions were elected by the membership. It was chaotic at times but there were some good shows and people listened.

About twelve years ago a clique of people affiliated with the station manager decided to entrench themselves in the name of professionalization, getting themselves cushy jobs in the process. Now there are three full-time positions, instead of one and a bunch of elected ones. No more elections. No more membership meetings. No more hanging around if you're not doing a show. No more posters on the walls. No more politicos. "We prefer to focus on the entertainment value." No more community events. "Think of the legal risks!" No more unauthorized guests. "They might steal something!" No more curse words. "We could lose our license!" They even have a policy which says "all editorial content must be cleared in advance with station management" with no further specification whatsoever.

(This is the environment in which we are accused of staging our communist satanic takeover.)

And in fact the station sounds more amateurish than ever because volunteers don't stick around long enough to learn anything. Ten years ago, when the volunteers had control it sounded far less amateurish. And people listened. Now it's mostly crappy syndicated programming, repeat broadcasts, and dead air.


> To start with, what's the "community"? And how is it connected to station
> management? The Pacifica model, in which listeners elect part of the
> governing board, is deeply stupid; the listeners know next to nothing about
> the candidates, the station, or radio. The Justice & Unity Coalition, the

In Canada, the way it's supposed to work is that the station is a non-profit governed by a Board of Directors which consists of people representing various "stakeholders". So for a campus/community station like ours you're supposed to have people from the student union, the university, the surrounding community (often people from NGOs or who've worked in broadcasting), and the station volunteers.

But honestly its only the latter who have a clue. The best stations I've seen are the ones where the volunteers elect the Board and hire the managers ("Station Coordinators"). Volunteers have a sense of ownership and so they stick around, accumulate skill, take increasing responsibility over time. CKDU is a great example.

Ben



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list