The national nonprofit radio company trying to shutdown Brooklyn’s beloved 99.5 FM WBAI lied to the public about debts owed by its listener-funded broadcast, according to executives at the radio station, who claim their tax-exempt overseers really just want to strip the station for parts.
“The four-million-dollar figure is a complete and total fiction,” said Alex Steinberg, a member of the local and national station boards that oversee WBAI and Pacifica. “They just created it to make WBAI look like a deadbeat.”
Big shots at the California-based Pacifica Foundation claimed WBAI was drowning under $4 million in debt after workers stormed the radio station’s Boerum Hill offices, firing most of the staff and taking over the station’s programing.
But the $4 million debt claimed by Pacifica is totally bogus, according to WBAI’s general manager, Berthold Reimers, who said the station only owes Pacifica and outside lenders about $700,000.
The exaggerated debt was circulated as a ruse to distract from Pacifica’s true motives, according to Steinberg, who said the closure was a rogue decision by Pacifica’s new director, John Vernile, who he speculates wants to sell the 99.5 FM signal — worth between $20 and $40 million — in order to cover mounting deficits plaguing Paficia’s other radio stations.
“Their game plan I believe is to sell the signal,” said Steinberg.
