Pacifica Radio sniff's out News names for Management

[recto101]

http://www.radio-info.com/news/pacifica-sniffing-out-new-names-for-top-tier-management

OK lets hope everything is straighten out for Pacifica radio. I do know in 1999 KPFA and other Pacifica O&O's went on strike.

 

[jprg]

Lewis Hill is probably rolling in his grave

 

[uncamark]

Lewis Hill is probably rolling in his grave

Considering all of the changes the stations have made since his death, he's probably like a chicken on a rotisserie.

One of the things that people may not realize is that KPFA started out as an ultrahighbrow station that played a lot of classical music. Musically, they were the polar opposite of the commercial version of KDFC (and was even more adventurous than the current non-com version). Most of their news and discussion programs (this was long before talk radio existed) were relatively tame discussions, although all opinions were allowed, despite the left-of-center hard lean of the station's staff (William F. Buckley's "Firing Line" actually started life on the Pacifica stations and the John Birch Society had a weekly program for a while). It took the Vietnam war and the hippie era to make the station more outwardly radical and then, when Vietnam ended, the anti-war coalition of liberals, radicals and libertarians crumbled away and identity politics took over the left, was the time when the Pacifica stations became the quarrelsome places they are today (and the classical music and Greek tragedies got taken off or banished to Sunday mornings and were replaced by lefty talk shows, world music and "positive" hip-hop). And that's why they're the way they are now, barely hanging on to existence.

 

[SML]

"was the time when the Pacifica stations became the quarrelsome places they are today"

It is not as simple as you describe, although there is much that is true about your description. Lewis Hill was in such despair over the controversies at KPFA in 1956 that he ended his own life. KPFA and Pacifica has been in turmoil since the early 1950's. The characters change, but the infighting continues.