WBAI in New York City is circling the drain and will take down the five station Pacifica network with it. The lunatics took over the asylum years ago at Pacifica and have finally destroyed it with deranged in-fighting, nutcase lefties, and a resolute determination to ignore reality. Pacifica was once a proud, thriving, highly respected radio network. They invented listener-supported radio and its stations in Berkeley, Los Angeles, and New York City once had high ratings and provided independent, non-corporate views of news and events. But psychotic internal politics, endless fundraisers, and increasingly stupid programming aimed at Truthers and touting quack medicine has reduced listenership to crickets. Marxist cultists invaded WBAI (and other Pacifica stations) and succeeded in making things even more dysfunctional.
Approximately 75 percent of staff will be laid off. “We are only retaining those staff critically necessary to operational functions at this station,” she said.
Inquiring minds want to know what they will air considering all news staff and most on-air talent have been fired. Their transmitter atop the Empire State Building costs $50,000 a month and there’s no way they can pay it. WBAI’s six remaining listeners will have to go elsewhere.
Marc Cooper comments on Facebook (He once had a show on Pacifica station KPFK in LA until he was purged in one of the early nasty wars)
This is of maybe marginal interest to a very small and diminishing circle of friends. But the chickies have come home to roost and Pacifica Radio’s flagship station WBAI is laying off its entire staff. It demise will likely sink the rest of the listener supported network. I’m only surprised it took this long. More than a decade ago Amy Goodman and her pals set off a phony “revolution” inside Pacifica, took it over, cut a sweet heart deal for Democracy Now (which privatized itself). Most of the institutional American Left bought the phony narrative and now we have the results… a network on the brink of extinction. BTW, don’t confuse with me someone who cares. I’m merely reporting.
From comments to Cooper’s Facebook post.
When the Red Guards took over the LA station and got rid of the shows I liked — yours, “Heartfelt Music” with John and Deanne Davis, the bluegrass show that came on before the Davises on Saturday morning, etc. — and started hosting their phony “community involvement” pep rally meetings, I switched to satellite radio and never again tuned in to the garbage programmed by those pseudo-revolutionary sociopaths. I hope the whole network dies and gets buried so deep no one will remember its hideous final days.
The death of WBAI,and perhaps the entire network is truly sad. I’m one of the purged as well. However I do want to say that there were, and may still be a few sane people within Pacifica that fought, and still fight a perhaps losing battle to return the place to sanity. The far left fanatics, and race nationalists hate nuts are formidable enemies. At wbai the were not above using physical violence, and threats of same to remain in power. Angels weep.
About ten years ago, after a utterly dysfunctional four hour Green Party of Los Angeles County Council meeting (I was Co-cordinator), I asked a fellow council member who also on the KPFK board if their meetings were this bad. He smiled and said, KPFK’s meetings were much, much worse.
Andrea Sears is continuing to produce news independently. Her podcasts are available at http://leftvoices.libsyn.com, her Twitter feed is AndreaSearsNews, and her Facebook page is at http://www.facebook.com/leftvoices.