...Do with no radio???
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.
Why does the headline use the word “Talent”?
The schadenfreude is tasty today.
Scumbags was too long of a word.
did their government subsidies not pay for all that crap??
boo-hoo-haha
How much do they get in public broadcasting subsidies? I guess its not enough....
tomorrow there will be protests by 300 listeners demanding they spend money they don’t have to keep it on the air
Amy Goodman can do a swan dive from the 86th floor of the ESB in protest for all I care.
who needs a news dept when all they do is broadcast what ever the mutt in the white hut sends them???
The hosts can’t say goodbye??
They don’t have a cell phone? They don’t have a laptop with a mic?
How hard would it be?
So why do they need people to air nothing? Or are they just going to buy CNN,ABC,or other MSM radio programs and cobble them together as some type of lib pool schedule?
I was wondering with the Dems running most things now when the choir was going to decide that it no longer needs it’s preachers.
The local proggies will be sobbing in their beer over the demise of Radio Pacifica. I’ll be LMAO. I’ll let them know there’s always Rush.
You would think they would be doing great in this 0bama era with socialism on the ascendant.
I didn’t know they HAD any talent.
Another voice of socialism bites the dust,
just couldn’t make it in a capitalistic world.
Shut up and die, Beotch.
I'm gonna be at 34th & 8th on Tuesday.I'm willing to walk a few blocks in order to give her a push.
Finally a story with a happy ending! :-)
maybe they can all post their opus over at the DUmp... i just checked, and no mention of this has yet been made
June 11- CPB lambastes QUESTIONABLE fundraising by WBAI
http://www.cpb.org/ombudsman/display.php?id=141
June 18- WBAI urges listeners to call CPB to demand the funding
June 20- CPB holds back funding as WBAI misses transmitter payment
July 10- CPB Ombudsman responds
http://www.cpb.org/ombudsman/display.php?id=147
..........
That is the back story
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