On Mon, 1 Nov 2010, Doug Henwood wrote:
>> This is terrible news...... You've said before that it would be hard to
>> do the show without the support of a station. What would you need to
>> keep doing it? Or would it just not be worth doing without the
>> listenership a station can provide?
>
> The listenership of WBAI is a shrinking thing. It's mainly having a
> studio and an engineer - and the credibility that broadcast provides
> when trying to get guests. "I do a podcast" won't get me into the
> Council on Foreign Relations.
It makes perfect sense. It was always an absurdly large amount of work and responsibility to do for for no money. You enjoyed it and felt a duty but you basically kept going out of momentum; it was always poised on a knife edge to get knocked off. In retrospect it's kind of astonishing that it stayed balanced on that blade for so long. And it's really an accomplishment to be proud of that you did such a great show every week for a decade and a half.
I'm really going to miss it though. It was honestly one of the best sources of analysis in broadcast. One of the only shows in any medium that I never missed. I know of no show that was so enlightening so consistently.
Michael