Shutting WBAI Down Is Insane (And It Won’t Fix Anything)

NEW YORK CITY, October 20, 2020—Local programs at WBAI 98.7FM were shut down a couple of weeks ago by the Interim Executive Director of the Pacifica Foundation, ostensibly to save the financially failing Foundation. That’s nonsense.

The Interim Chief Financial Officer’s cash flow projections show that by September 30,2020, the Pacifica Foundation will be short $2,213,356, and $381,243 is due to WBAI. The rest of the debt comes from the National Office and the four other Pacifica stations, most of it because of a $3.3M loan taken out to cover the cost of WBAI’s transmitter.

So this all starts to look like punishing WBAI for past debts, which won’t improve future revenues or erase past losses, but that isn’t what’s happening either. The contract for the transmitter with its ballooning payments that soared beyond comparable rates, was signed by the Pacifica National Board, not the station. Over fifteen years ago, the PNB straddled the station with a transmitter payment that ballooned to a monthly bill far out of line with comparable transmitter rates, then shut down WBAI for not keeping up with the payments it scheduled for them.

There’s no plan for the Foundation’s overall financial recovery, so there’s been lots of conspiratorial speculation about the endgame. Is WPFW, the D.C. station that’s in more dire financial straits than WBAI, in Pacifica’s crosshairs? What about KPFK in Los Angeles and KPFA in Berkeley, both of which will be more cash-strapped than WBAI at the end of FY2020? Is shutting WBAI a piece of a larger move to disenfranchise Pacifca members, or the first step to “liberate” all the stations from the Foundation? Almost two years ago, Pacifica considered bankruptcy but opted for the loan. Is there still a push for bankruptcy, although it’s not permitted according to the loan terms? Shutting down local programming makes no financial sense, and that has led to wild and incoherent guesses about how it’s is tied to any sort of financial planning. The only plan for WBAI’s future is

For now, nothing’s for sure except that WBAI is now transmitting programs from Youtube podcasts and other Pacifica stations, compiled by a new entity called Pacifica Across America. PAA’s connection to the Pacifica Foundation is not clear, other than one of its employees, Quincy McCoy, has been hired as a consultant to the Pacifica Foundation to select the programs now repeating at WBAI. McCoy is also a Pacifica employee, the General Manager at Berkeley station KPFA. Legal expenses are mounting. Keeping the transmitter and bringing on an engineer to maintain the signal will cost upwards of $250K/year. Apparently, support for WBAI will be negligible for the foreseeable future - right now, Pacifica has so little faith in Pacifica Across America that donations are being redirected from WBAI’s website to the National Office. A very rough estimate is that the net annually for the Pacifica Across America reprogrammed WBAI could be just about, oh, $381K on September 30, 2020.

The PNB scheduled a telephonic meeting for tonight where concerned listeners were hoping for some answers, but the stream is dead.