KPFA Board Member Speaks Out

KPFA is a little station with a big signal. Little because it is trying to do alot with few resources for what it is attempting.News and information -- public affairs programming -- are labor intensive enterprises particularly when trying to provide the ever-growing body of information not available elsewhere.

Working in radio takes a particular skill-set. Not everyone can jump right in and produce or host good radio.

Running a radio station takes a particular skill-set. Having a bunch of non-media people duke it out incessantly behind the scenes makes that impossible to do.

In other threads there is a lot of analysis by people who don't know what they are talking about when it comes to either KPFA or radio in general. The posts are filled with rewritten history, vilification of people trying to save KPFA and Pacifica from going under, and election maniuplators. You have to wonder where they came from and their mission.

Here's what it comes down to: The Pacifica Foundation is deeply in debt. The auditor's report makes it clear that the auditor doubts it will be around much longer. Something needs to change. Pacifica has five stations. One regularly runs a million dollar (or more) deficit eavery year with no end in sight.
That is because that station has annual costs of just under a million for maintaining a facility and transmitter. This has been true and known for years. Yet nothing has been done about that.

Another station needs to move because the building it is in has been sold. That is another huge expense.

The other three stations are just getting by and are not generating enough excess income.

KPFA doesn't even have a budget that will allow for a program director or a development director. A program director would not just oversee the current shows, but be a knowledgeable determiner of scheduling that makes sense and run the fund raising drives. That last point, in terms of the fiscal state of the KPFA, is important. A development director would also raise money from a variety of sources.

The Executive Director and national board think that cutting back on staff is the solution to the fiscal problems. They don't understand that taking away more people who have experience in programming or running a radio station will lead to even less income. I doubt much of a case can be made that rank amateurs can do better at any sort of job than those with a proven track record of success.

That is the problem.

Diverting the talk into whether someone said or did this or that , ruminating about who they have ever known or worked with, speculating endlessly about sinister motives as a result of *conclusions* drawn from such idiocy is not addressing the problem.

This it is being down by a bunch of rank amateurs when it comes to radio, or for that matter,designing the democracy they put in place..

Since an honest vote hasn't worked out well for them, they have ever since worked behind the scenes to manipulate the voting system.

We need to address the real and serious financial problems. Something needs to be done. It needs to be a logical solution with all the factors and possible outcomes weighed to the best of the ability of people who have the best interests of KPFA in mind, know what they are doing, and aren't lost in a cesspool of hate and their own egos. That is putting the best spin possible on what they are up to; it could be something much worse.