Nov 10 2010
Crisis at KPFA
The Pacifica Network is the oldest public radio network in the country, and of the five major stations in the network including this one KPFK, KPFA in Berkeley is the oldest, flagship station. This week crisis broke out at KPFA when the entire staff of their daily two-hour Morning Show was laid off by Pacifica management. Citing financial problems, workers were asked to voluntarily take lay-off packages, which 7 people took including Morning Show Producer Esther Manilla. Then, three additional people were named to be involuntarily laid off: the remaining producer of the Morning Show, Laura Prives, and co-hosts Brian Edwards-Tiekert and Aimee Allison. Pacifica Programmer and nationally acclaimed author Aaron Glantz wrote in the Huffington Post, “Here’s a tip. If your non-profit radio network is facing a financial crisis, it’s best not to kill your most successful program.” The Morning Show says they are “KPFA’s largest fundraiser, accounting for about 25% of total dollars pledged,” and that they “have the largest audience of any program produced at KPFA.” The Communications Workers of America Local 9415, which represents KPFA’s staff, had filed an Unfair Labor Practices Charge with the National Labor Relations Board. As of this morning, The Morning Show at KPFA is no longer being aired. Instead, our sister station in Berkeley aired KPFK’s Sojourner Truth at 7 am and is now airing this program to fill the 7-9 am time slot.
GUEST: Brian Edwards Tiekert. co-host of The Morning Show
Tomorrow we’ll hear a response from Arlene Englehardt, the Executive Director of Pacifica Radio.
More information at www.kpfaworker.org.
2 Responses to “Crisis at KPFA”
Having studied the Pacifica Foundation for the past decade, I would say that the loss of financial health can be traced to two primary factors. Number one is the “experiment in democracy” of the voting membership concept which has turned listeners into “voting members.” This indulgent and misguided effort has diverted funds from programming and transferred them to an incompetent and wasteful creation of huge local boards and complex elections at all the stations, complete with “factions” and “lobbies” and a constant state of internal wars that have turned off and confused listeners due to the rancor. There is a lot of negative fallout in terms of staff morale and anything resembling continuity in listener support. The epic changes to Pacifica’s corporate structure over the past decade has created an expensive and overly-politicized governance system which, with over 125 members participating on dozens of “committees of the national Board” and endless changes in management at all the stations. In spite of the investment in this membership structure, management at the stations has been mostly held by interim staff and the effect on programming has been terrible. After ten years of chaos, nearly all involved have agreed the new “democratic structure” is a charade and is completely dysfunctional but no one can figure out a way to change it. The other major factor is the extraordinary backroom programming deal that was cut made with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez back in 2002. Gonzalez had launched a national listener boycott, hiring professional who specialized in union campaigns that use legal pressure and paid organizers. He quit on the air, directing listeners to the web site he had prepared and proceeded to target members of the Pacifica Foundation national board, nearly all of whom were persons of color, and a campaign of intimidation and harassment was launched to force the resignation of these individuals who were opposed to Amy Goodman’s demands to own the program that she worked at as an employee of Pacifica. Once Juan Gonzalez’s comprehensive campaign was successful and Pacifica national Board members had resigned, Amy and Juan’s collaborators were victorious in seizing control of the network. After that seismic shift in internal leadership, the first order of business was payback to Juan and Amy. The ownership of the program was given away, in a contract transferred ownership of DN! to Amy Goodman’s new non-profit. The interim Board of Pacifica voted to rubber stamp acceptance of a five year contract without even reading it. Literally. That contract, written by Amy Goodman’s attorneys was renewed under virtually identical terms for a second fiver year period and has cost millions since 2002. Democracy Now! continues to charge Pacifica an estimated $2,115 every single week day for a one-hour program which is given away free to other radio stations across the country and on the Internet. Democracy Now! was launched, funded and owned by the Pacifica Foundation but Juan Gonzalez led an vicious attack on six African American national Board members for a cause that he claimed was going to take Pacifica that was wrongly in the hands of “white liberals.” Ten years later, Brian Edwards Tiekers and Aimee Allison are simply the latest victims of what continues to be the biggest scandal in the network’s history. DN! reported nearly 16 million dollars of total assets in their 2008 IRS papers. Amy Goodman could help out the entire network if she agreed to suspend the daily payments and offer to broadcast the show gratis on the network that gave her a start and the basis for her entire organization. One way out of this mess is for Amy Goodman to pitch in and feed that hand that she bit so hard.
[…] locally produced Morning Show, declared her solidarity with KPFA staff on Wednesday, interviewing Brian Edwards-Tiekert about layoffs on Wednesday and then Engelhardt on Thursday. Engelhardt told Kolhatkar that she had […]