Hi Doug,
I’ve just looked over the balance sheet of the Pacifica Foundation. It looks likely that the PF will go bankrupt within a few years. The deficits they are running are unsustainable. The subscriber base is tapped out and the fundraising slash begging periods are unbearably frequent.
Drastic measures must be taken, such as cutting large swathes of programs or shutting down WBAI and selling the frequency. The best solution, it seems to me, is to set up a single set of programming and feeding it to the individual stations, who could substitute alternative programming, if the cost is a wash (eg volunteer hosts).
You’re a very sensible person, and one of the KPFA-types with a foot in the real world. The KPFA community seems to be caught up in arguing over minor details (such as partial layoffs or no “Morning Show” or not) and not looking at the tsunami that is shortly to come crashing down on the whole PF. Is there any chance that you can talk some sense into the PF management and tell them how serious the situation is? Insolvency is not a possibility, it is a probability, and within 2-3 years. If things continue as they are, all the stations will be sold off and turned into “modern rock” stations out of Chapter 7.
I would rather have a rump of a station than no station at all.