As Pacifica Radio board meets
Listeners, staff rally to end corporate takeover
By Joanne
Gavin
Houston
Calling Pacifica Radio the progressive movement's only
mass medium, hundreds of listeners and staffers of its
stations rallied in Houston March 1-4 at teach-ins, picket
lines and in the audience at public meetings of the network's
board of directors.
Telling their stories of mass lockouts, firings and
cancellations of programs, staffers from several cities
called for a mass movement to restore Pacifica to
listener/broadcaster control and end a corporate
takeover.
Speakers cited motivations ranging from capitalist greed
for a mass audience for corporate sponsors, to deliberate
conspiracy to deprive voices of dissent of their major means
of communication. All agreed the present Pacifica board of
directors must be removed.
A cross-section of Houston's progressive community
attended the events. Some told of how this city's KPFT radio
station, once the most community-based of the network's five
stations, had been stripped of most of its substantial,
multinational programming, and was well along the road to
becoming a "Musak" outlet for what the station's current
management terms "Texas music."
This leaves out most of the area's richly diverse musical
heritage, once available there along with community and
worldwide news and views. All people of color who were KPFT
programmers have been purged.
Among network programs still available here is "Democracy
Now," a morning magazine produced and hosted by Amy Goodman
out of New York's WBAI. Goodman's completely open policy on
subjects and guests is under attack by the forces that want
to remove democracy from the airwaves, according to Juan
Gonzalez, the show's former co-host.
Gonzalez' recent on-air resignation sent shock waves
through management circles. He wants Goodman and "Democracy
Now" to remain on the air, but feels he can be more effective
by working to mobilize listeners.
The noncommercial Pacifica stations rely heavily on
listener subscriptions for operating funds. Gonzalez proposed
that listeners stop contributing to the stations and inform
management of their reasons. He dismissed as unfounded fears
that this would speed up the sale of the stations and mean
the end of the network.
Listener base, he pointed out, is a major selling point in
any sale negotiation. He urged that such funds be diverted to
the legal struggle to restore listener control and to a
"strike fund" for staffers whose incomes would be
affected.
Gonzalez called also for public pressure on individual
non-salaried board members to force their resignations.
People attending the meetings and pickets supported his
proposals.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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