Posted on 08/09/2013 4:23:49 PM PDT by Drango
Summer Reese, interim executive director of the Pacifica Radio Network, choked up as she announced this afternoon that legendary New York radio station WBAI was laying off its entire news department, and the majority of on-air talent, effective Monday.
WBAI, the station where Pacifica's flagship program, Democracy NOW!, was founded, has broadcast on 99.5 since 1960.
Andrew Phillips, former general manager of KPFA, Pacifica's Berkeley, California, station, has been appointed interim program director. The station's general manager, Berthold Reimers, and interim development director, Andrea Katz, will also stay on board.
"Today I have concluded union negotiations with SAG-AFTRA, regarding proposed layoffs here at WBAI, and with a very heavy heart, and very great difficulty, we will laying off virtually everyone whose voice you recognize on the air," Reese said.
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.
"We have barely made our transmitter payments," Reese explained. WBAI's transmitter, located at the top of the Empire State building, is leased to the station at a cost of about $50,000 a month. In March, WBAI raised $500,000 to protect the transmitter, after the station was threatened with eviction for non-payment of rent.
"Most of the producers whose shows you value will not even have the chance to say goodbye to you, for which I am deeply sorry," Reese told the listeners.
SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents WBAI's paid producers, declined to comment on the layoffs.
Wonder if they are canning that bimbo who hosted “Communism NOW”?
This is just so, so sad.
Pass the popcorn.
They have well-earned the epithet of “Radio Habana.” there is simply no collectivist fascist scheme they do not encourage.
As someone who used to work in Berkeley, and listened to KPFA at my test bench (just to get my blood circulating in the morning), I was amazed at the vile anti-Americanism demonstrated daily by Pacifica radio stations. They were pushing the first amendment to its absolute limits, while trashing the very country that allowed them such freedom.
So it’s with great personal glee I read of one station’s demise.
Payback is a bitch, ain’t it?
“Schadenfreude, darling schadenfreude...” (apologies to Wayne Newton)
it's required...
100%
LOLOLOL... laughing so hard i can barely catch my breath!!! and the RATS are eating each other
As they spend hundreds of thousands they did not have they cry foul over CPB’s $50-75k.
That just screams stupid leftists
I don’t have that much of an issue with WBAI. At least they are honest about where they stand, unlike the mainstream media. They are proud communists, not closet socialists. Even though they don’t pretend to be neutral, they are often more objective than the network news, NYT, WaPost, etc. A couple of years ago I heard a story on WBAI about the Tea Party movement. While the station obviously did not share the Tea Party’s philosophy, the story completely debunked any notion that Tea Party members were violent, racist, etc. — the same stereotype that the mainstream media perpetuates to this day. I will take Amy Goodman over Soledad O’Brien, Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, et al. any day. I would much rather see CNN go.
looks like they finally ran out of other peoples money...
Yep, all the excessive fundraising drives and the selling of books, DVDs and tote bags turned off their own supporters and also caused the CPB to end the funding.
Victories are great, but we can’t let ourselves relish in hate the way the left does. Look what it does to them.
I would tune in for 2 things, Max Schmid’s show where he would play old Jean Shepard shows... and then sometimes the Grateful Dead hour.
The station was especially poignant when they shouted out to various imprisoned cop killers around the nation plus there are still a douchebag full of retired party members and former commissars who will now have only MSNBC to masturbate to while reading the New York Times.
Al “Grandpa Munster” Lewis was entertaining. At least the station wasn’t programmed by a computer and, as I have said, you knew where the station stood.
“Saying Goodbye” is highly overrated.
Treasonous scum. I hope they close before the foreigner Soros props them up. Then again, the NYC NPR affiliate is almost as bad. And WE help pay for it.
“But but but Uncle Democrat how can THIS be true? Everybody loves the progressive message right Uncle Democrat?”
This is the station that started playing Arabic music the afternoon after the twin towers were hit on 9/11.
To show their solidarity against profiling what was obviously even that early a terror hit.
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