{"id":38004,"date":"2013-08-28T08:34:10","date_gmt":"2013-08-28T13:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=38004"},"modified":"2013-08-28T08:34:10","modified_gmt":"2013-08-28T13:34:10","slug":"overgoverned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=38004","title":{"rendered":"Overgoverned"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0On the one hand, I’ve always said that if we have <\/em>to have public broadcasting (and make no mistake about it, we do not have to have it, but work with me here), I’d vastly prefer to have more little community-supported stations like KFAI and KBEM in Minneapolis, or KAXE in Grand Rapids – small stations that report local news and talk about local stuff – than monolithic, huge-money\u00a0institutions like MPR (whose behavior is exactly like that of the monopolistic robber barons that would give their prime audience the victorian vapours).\u00a0\u00a0 Give me twenty little stations that work within and respond to their communities over a monolithic Borg that becomes a culture unto itself (at our expense).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Part of it is because I do, as a matter of principle, believe that government money should be spent as close to its source as possible.<\/p>\n

And partly because public broadcasting, especially at the micro level,\u00a0is a little like an episode of Portlandia <\/em>come to life<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Case in point:\u00a0 New York’s community station WBAI – which was in many ways the model for stations like Minneapolis’ KFAI – is circling the drain.\u00a0 And it’s happening precicsely because <\/em>it is governed by a form of “democracy” so sclerotic that even Portlandia <\/em>hasn’t spoofed it yet.<\/p>\n

WBAI is an affiliate of the Pacifica Radio Network, of which more later.\u00a0 The station’s been in business for over five decades, and would seem <\/em>to be an institution…:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

But huge debt and a dwindling membership have left both WBAI and Pacifica starved for cash. The station, one of five owned by the foundation, has operated in the red each year since 2004, accumulating more than $3 million in net losses, according to Pacifica financial statements. In addition to WBAI, Pacifica has stations in Los Angeles, Washington, Houston and Berkeley, Calif., and feeds content to more than 150 affiliates.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Site note:\u00a0 At the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, King Banaian, Ed Morrissey and I were on the air during Sarah Palin’s electrifying first speech to the crowd.\u00a0 On the other side of the curtain from us was the Pacifica booth – which is some pretty drastically bad event planning, putting the most conservative station in town across a curtain <\/em>from the most liberal network in the country, but whatever.<\/p>\n

During the run-up to the speech, the Pacifica anchors – who looked like barristas at that coffee shop that broke away from that other coffee shop for not pushing the vegan scones hard enough – were doing the sort of level of commentary you’d expect from, well, Minneapolis leftybloggers; “she looks like the third runner-up for head cheerleader”, or “maybe the caribou can shoot back”, that sort of thing.<\/p>\n

Anyway – Palin started her speech.\u00a0 And for those who weren’t there, and don’t remember the doom-y feeling that the whole inevitability of John McCain gave us all, it was electrifying.\u00a0 The three of us jumped up at our seats, cheering; I think King may have yelled “We Are Not Worthy<\/em>!”, although maybe that was me.\u00a0\u00a0I dunno.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Anyway –\u00a0one of the Pacifica crones leaned through the curtain.\u00a0 “Shhhh!\u00a0 We’re doing radio!”<\/p>\n

Anyway…:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Among Pacifica\u2019s debts are more than $2 million in broadcast fees owed to Amy Goodman\u2019s \u201cDemocracy Now!,\u201d the network\u2019s most popular show.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Radio “for the 99%” being put out of business by a show that charges like a bunch of 1%ers.\u00a0 Ironic.<\/p>\n

The funny part is, Pacifica – and its company-owned subsidiary, WBAI – have the power in their hands to fix things.\u00a0 It’s a board-run station.\u00a0 That should fix things – right?<\/p>\n

\u00a0But critics have long said that its top-heavy governance, with large local boards and frequent, expensive elections, have put the organization in a constant state of gridlock, and that unless Pacifica reforms it will simply govern itself to death.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is what the board does,\u201d Ms. Reese said in an interview: \u201cIt fiddles while Rome burns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those same problems were on display at a public WBAI board meeting last week in an arts space in Lower Manhattan. Despite the layoffs just days before, the first 25 minutes were devoted to a procedural debate about the night\u2019s agenda, with frequent mentions of Robert\u2019s Rules of Order. Occasional shouts of \u201cfascist!\u201d and \u201cgo back to the N.S.A.!\u201d rang out from listeners in attendance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s like a Saint Paul City Committee meeting, only with a budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And I loved this part:<\/p>\n

Berthold Reimers, WBAI\u2019s general manager, reported that the station had $23,000 on hand and was scouring Craigslist and other sites to furnish new, cheaper studios in Brooklyn. An Ikea chair was bought for $40, he said. \u201cThat\u2019s the cheapest we could possibly get.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story was silent as to whether anyone objected because Ikea is non-union.<\/p>\n

But that’s another part of the problem with public broadcasting; their concept of money is so very different than the real world’s.\u00a0 If you get a chance to take a tour of MPR’s facilities in downtown Saint Paul, do.\u00a0 If you’re a radio geek, you’ll think you’ve died on gone to radio heaven.\u00a0 The broadcast studios are not one degree behind the technological fashion curve.\u00a0 They look almost like TV studios, without the cameras.\u00a0 And then you pan back, and realize that there are two <\/em>of them – so Cathy Wurzer needn’t hurry to get out of Keri Miller’s way.\u00a0 If you’ve ever worked in commercial radio, and spent part of your Saturday afternoon figuring out why your 30-year-old control panel is fritzing out, you can relate in not being able to relate.<\/p>\n

Anyway – read the whole article.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And apply it to your favorite lefty non-profit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0On the one hand, I’ve always said that if we have to have public broadcasting (and make no mistake about it, we do not have to have it, but work with me here), I’d vastly prefer to have more little community-supported stations like KFAI and KBEM in Minneapolis, or KAXE in Grand Rapids – small […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lefty-alt-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38004"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38020,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38004\/revisions\/38020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}