Re: The Crisis at KPFA and Pacifica

[Daniel Davies <dsquared@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have no horse in this race, other than a fond interest in left-wing
radio's longest-running soap opera, but it does strike me that 4.4% of total
costs going toward "governance" is on the high side.  It's like having the
CEO and board's salaries making up 4.4% of the total cost base of an
industrial company.  Which is not unknown, particularly in the dot com era,
but I'd regard it as a danger sign.

dd

-----Original Message-----
From: PEN-L list [mailto:PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Sasha
Lilley
Sent: 20 August 2004 00:08
To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: The Crisis at KPFA and Pacifica


--- Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> I looked into the report, and I've found that its
> summary says that
> "Governance costs, projected at 580 thousand dollars
> are . . . 4.4%
> of our total expenses". 4.4% doesn't sound to me to
be an
> outrageous
> proportion.

This is a pretty glib response.  Revenues based on
listener-sponsors tend to be highly unstable   see
what happened two years ago with WBAI where they
nearly had to lay off a third of their staff, due to a
low fundraising, and were bailed out by KPFA and
others.  And such revenues are not bottomless   they
come from listeners who themselves don t have an
endless amount of money to give.  You should have
quoted the rest of the summary paragraph that you
refer to:  Governance costs, projected at 580 thousand
dollars are 48% of our required working capital, and
4.4% of our total expenses.  This does not include
other normal administrative expenses, insurance and
other requirements.  We, as a Network, cannot survive
this kind of expense.

For workers surviving on paltry wages at the station,
and dealing with shoddy equipment in desperate need of
upgrading, such inflated expenses are distressing.
Especially as the switch to digital technology
threatens to make KPFA s reach shrink to just the
immediate Bay Area in ten years time.

> That small fraction of listeners are also probably
> the same fraction
> who will fight for you if and when raiders arrive at
> the national
> board and try to get rich quick by selling off
> Pacifica's five most
> valuable assets -- "worth tens of millions of
> dollars each," as you say.

Also, you may not know much about KPFA s listeners and
the listeners at the other stations, but they are tens
of thousands of unusually political, active people
and, no, they re not just the few thousand people who
voted in the last election.  But radical listener
after radical listener has told me that they do not
want to be involved in running the station.

Hence, the  democracy  you get is what you ve gotten
at KPFA: the vast majority of people who run for the
LSB and get elected are old and white and come from a
very small segment of the Bay Area.  They are
harboring age-old grudges, have their own esoteric
agendas (including getting on the air themselves), and
are not interested in reaching out to new audiences,
including the large immigrant communities of the Bay
Area.  Democracy is not the rule of retirees and
Trustifarians who have the time to go to endless
meetings that working and younger people don t have.
It s a sort of pseudo-democracy by attrition that does
nothing to further the cause of the radical Left or
protect the station from corporate takeover.

=====
Sasha Lilley
Producer, Against the Grain
Pacifica Radio's KPFA
510 848-6767 ext 209
www.againstthegrain.org

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