On-Air Drama at KPFA After Executive Director Acts on 2-Year Financial Collapse

The core paid staff (representing perhaps 30-50 staff people at KPFA)
essentially seized control of KPFA this morning to rally their listener base
to resist efforts that could restore KPFA to financial solvency for the
first time in 2 years, and bring it back from the brink of collapse (KPFA
does not now have cash income to pay the staff regularly). In an on air
broadcast for 2 hours from 7-9 am today, the paid “unionized” staff brought
out every big gun among their present and past programmers to lambaste the
efforts by the Pacifica Foundation directors to use layoffs by lowest
seniority to prevent a financial collapse, claiming the effort is nothing
but a politically motivated vendetta and an attack on local programming.
What goes unstated is that the majority of staff at KPFA—over 150
programmers and producers--the people who keep the station on air 24/7 are
volunteers are not represented in these antics. The exclusivist core group
claim to be unionized workers derives from the truth that they do have a CWA
contract; but they also successfully operate as a quasi management team.
For example, to de-certify the organization representing the unpaid staff
just a few short years ago. Functioning as power brokers who claim the
station as their own—and this includes some excellent on-air programmers—
this collective of paid staff was recently responsible for the lay off of
Nora Barrows-Friedman (the best programmer on Palestinian rights and
reportage from the West Bank). They don’t want to talk about that Nora had
seniority rights which the exclusivists and their Union refused to defend
because they themselves had agreed that the Flashpoints Program (of which
Nora was an integral part) be targeted; indeed Nora was raked over the coals
at a closed Union meeting for protesting her 50% salary cut. And the same
group has consistently made it no secret that they want to get several
locally based political advocacy programs off the air (in particular
Flashpoints and Hard Knock); and they have worked to undermine those shows.
Now, over the past few weeks they have repeatedly use the air waves and
their new web site to represent their “worker” side of the story and to
create a mass movement. They claim that major lay-offs that they themselves
made inevitable by refusing to allow a balanced budget for the past 2-3
years, are a political vendetta. While the outcome of their gambit remains
uncertain, this much is clear. The financial crisis that we as KPFA
listeners, staff and supporters find ourselves in went out of control while
the Exclusivist staff and their supporters were in control of both the KPFA
Station Board and the National Board; when they refused to balance the
station budget. The result of this present hyper-energized resistance to
layoffs could cause an even further erosion in KPFA support as they continue
their many years of machinations against unpaid staff organizing and
listener input in governance and programming decision. The line that the
Pacifica Foundation (and the listener opponents of the exclusivist group) do
not want a paid staff at the Station, is nothing but hyperbolic nonsense.
An all volunteer staff is surely not advocated by many opposed to the
exclusivists, so far as I know. But the budget for a paid staff over 30 is
just not sustainable. The financial statistics speak a clear language and
no accusations that the National managers or Board are squandering money can
be allowed to cloud the fact that KPFA’s budget is unsustainable with such a
large paid staff and shrinking income.

Most callers in to the on-air broadcast today agreed with the Exclusivists,
people on whom they have relied for excellent radio for years, seemingly
unaware that the Pacifica leadership in the studio as well as the calls into
the program which represent a sizeable counterview were being censored and
suppressed. Using techniques like those of Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh,
the paid staff put up their best people to ping pong back and forth between
different studios in their challenges to the Executive Director and the
Finance Director, often turning off the “guests” microphones or talking over
them (and one caller as well), a level of disrespect that was ignored by
many callers who wanted to believe that “their” staff are the truth-tellers
and the national managers the outsiders. That’s understandable, and the
confrontation was well structure to enforce that view. But what can their
picket lines and protests achieve toward re-expanding the listener base and
making KPFA financially solvent now? The fiscal crisis—the inability to pay
bills and salaries and benefits—is real and immediate while the chest
beating appears just so much political theatre.


Marc Sapir, MD, MPH
Berkeley, CA
November 9, 2010

From: Media Alliance
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2010 9:36 AM
Subject: On-Air Drama at KPFA After Executive Director Acts on 2-Year
Financial Collapse

November 8, 2010
For Immediate Release
Contact: Tracy Rosenberg (510) 684-6853
On-Air Drama at KPFA After Executive Director Acts on 2-Year Financial
Collapse

Berkeley-After a slow motion buildup for several months, The Pacifica
Foundation, the Berkeley-based nonprofit organization that holds the
licenses for five educational radio stations across the country and provides
content for 150 affiliated stations, has finally moved to stanch financial
bleeding at the network's Berkeley unit KPFA by laying off 7-8 employees
after posting a million dollar loss over the past two years.

Once the envy of community radio stations everywhere with a fat million
dollar reserve in the bank, KPFA fell into hard times the past few years,
emptying its bank account down to zero, getting $250,000 into debt to it's
parent foundation, missing goals in 9 of the past 11 on-air fund raising
marathons and unable to meet its September 15th, 2010 payroll without
borrowing money from Houston Pacifica station KPFT.

The lead up to the layoffs that were announced yesterday featured a campaign
of on-air complaints by workers who stood in lower positions on the
station's CWA seniority list, and have been advocating for an alternative
budget they hoped would save $250,000 and their jobs.

But the “kpfa-worker” budget addressed only a portion of the station's
growing tide of red ink, and was rejected by the 501c-3's management and
board as unrealistic.(*Media Alliance's ED Tracy Rosenberg is one of the 22
members of the 501(c)-3 foundation's board of directors).

Ms Rosenberg comments: “No one likes layoffs. If there was another way, the
board would have grabbed it. But we were looking at a close to half a
million dollars in shortfalls. Again. After 2 years of trying everything
else. “

Former board treasurer Brian Edwards-Tiekert, who found out yesterday he was
to be one of the individuals laid off, stated in an e-mail on 11-8 “I
repeatedly reported out to KPFA's LSB (local station board) that KPFA was
bleeding money because it hadn't made it's cuts”.

The 2009-2010 KPFA operating budget that Edwards-Tiekert helped to prepare
and submitted to the board projected revenues of 4.1 million for the period
October 1, 2009 to September 30, 2010. The station actually made 3.5
million, a shortfall of $600,000.

The Berkeley radio station increased its CWA-affiliated workforce by more
than 40% in the last seven years, a rate of growth that did not prove to be
sustainable for listener-sponsored KPFA after the economic collapse that
began in October of 2008.

Due to recent hires, the most heavily impacted units at KPFA include the AM
show and the evening news program.

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