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WBAI Struggles

wavo said:
They spent over $300K on consultants. For 5 failing stations...$300K!!! You have to wonder if they simply threw the consultant's report(s) in the trash.
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Not all consultants are for programming. There are engineering consultants, legal consultants, facilities consultants, fundraising consultants, and lots of other areas. You hire a consultant so you don't have to pay a salary. They have lots of legal and facilities troubles, so I imagine that's where that money went.

My view is they should have an all-volunteer staff. They have no money. Most of their staff is in the union. That means they get top dollar. Not worth it. Fire them all and replace them with volunteers. Can't do any worse than they're doing now. But if you fire an anarchist, he could blow up your house. So it's not a good idea.

How has it lasted this long? They had a good endowment at one point. There are a few people who are committed to the concept. They run a lot of info-mercials at night. Those infomercials pay the bills.
 
Could it be with Pacifica that they cannot improve because nobody can agree how and therefore, cannot go under because nobody agrees with another that they are. Collectors must be frustrated by some say yes and some say no so nothing happens and any action they take is met by both an agreeable and not agreeable option from Pacifica. In the end something has to give but people really dig in their heels over the ability to control. It's as if two godzillas are having a cat fight...fun to watch but you sure don't want to get anywhere close to that one. And it seems 'control' is something nobody has at Pacifica as I watch things play out.
 
TheBigA said:
Not all consultants are for programming. There are engineering consultants, legal consultants, facilities consultants, fundraising consultants, and lots of other areas. You hire a consultant so you don't have to pay a salary. They have lots of legal and facilities troubles, so I imagine that's where that money went.

My view is they should have an all-volunteer staff. They have no money. Most of their staff is in the union. That means they get top dollar. Not worth it. Fire them all and replace them with volunteers. Can't do any worse than they're doing now. But if you fire an anarchist, he could blow up your house. So it's not a good idea.

How has it lasted this long? They had a good endowment at one point. There are a few people who are committed to the concept. They run a lot of info-mercials at night. Those infomercials pay the bills.
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You're correct, sir! I can't see any area of their operation that is competent with maybe the exception of engineering...there doesn't seem to be any looming technical disasters. At least none caused by engineering. If they have paid "consultants" to analyze their systems and have followed the advice given then they wasted good money on "consultants." There is a separate catagory for legal.
Your point regarding labeling a worker as a consultant could explain their approach but that could possibly lead to IRS trouble if these "consultants" don't strictly adhere to the guidelines. I worked for a station in another lifetime that was busted for calling the sales force "consultants" and sending them 1099s. The IRS got it's panties in a wad over that because the sales people had desks, offices, etc. They quickly became "employees" again...
The infomercials obviously are not paying the bills. They owe the Empire State Bldg $1.3M!
 
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b-turner said:
Could it be with Pacifica that they cannot improve because nobody can agree how and therefore, cannot go under because nobody agrees with another that they are. Collectors must be frustrated by some say yes and some say no so nothing happens and any action they take is met by both an agreeable and not agreeable option from Pacifica. In the end something has to give but people really dig in their heels over the ability to control. It's as if two godzillas are having a cat fight...fun to watch but you sure don't want to get anywhere close to that one. And it seems 'control' is something nobody has at Pacifica as I watch things play out.
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Exactly. It is near impossible to run a business by committee...especially when the committee is made up of anarchists and folks needing psychological treatment. The rational voices are quickly drowned out by screeching lunatics.
Someone, ultimately, must make a call on their future direction. Maybe they can summon the spirit of Lew Hill...
 
wavo said:
Exactly. It is near impossible to run a business by committee...especially when the committee is made up of anarchists and folks needing psychological treatment. The rational voices are quickly drowned out by screeching lunatics.
Someone, ultimately, must make a call on their future direction. Maybe they can summon the spirit of Lew Hill...
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Hahaha...but the funny thing is, they wont.

Kind of like a person who refuses to pay rent in their apartment because of (insert reason here), they will continue to act as if nothing is wrong, will delay the inevitable through court hearings, then once the sheriffs' office comes in to force them out and enforce the order, they'll be left on the streets with absolutely nowhere to go. If they had been smart, they'd have looked to book an extended-stay motel before the cops kicked them out...but they wanted to fight to the bitter end!

I do love the continuing saga of WBAI. It is like watching a train wreck. The carnage is going to be awful, but you can't help but look!

Radio-X
 
What they need is someone to organize the lunatics. Maybe they can donate the station to President Trump. It might keep him busy for awhile. :)
 
This same situation keeps coming up year after year. It then drives speculation that the station will be sold, change formats ,etc. But then just in the nick of time they somehow come up with the money and stay on the air. My guess is that is how things will play out again this year.
 
i know they don't want to lose the station, or sell it, but what about a swap where they can make some money? They'd end up with a lesser signal, but keep their NYC FM. There are several I can think of off hand.

WNSH 94.7
WKTU 103.5
WQXR 105.9

Thoughts?
 
AMRocks said:
i know they don't want to lose the station, or sell it, but what about a swap where they can make some money? They'd end up with a lesser signal, but keep their NYC FM. There are several I can think of off hand.

Thoughts?
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They've all been proposed and all rejected. They want to stay where they are.
 
I was horribly bored Saturday afternoon and listened to the WBAI stream for a while. It was MUSIC! Some tasty jazz which kept me listening until other business came up.
Is the stream the same as what's on air? I listened for 20-25 minutes and never heard a voice, ID, artist/title....I heard nothing but music. But at least it was music instead of a discussion of inane political tripe.

As many have said in previous posts, if they would makes arts and music more of a focus....maybe they would build an audience. Keep the political stuff down to the average American's attention span (60-90 seconds.) They could run that between music focused programming. Real talent is the ability to concisely use language. As Einstein once said, "simplicity is the highest form of science."
 
wavo said:
I was horribly bored Saturday afternoon and listened to the WBAI stream for a while. It was MUSIC! Some tasty jazz which kept me listening until other business came up.
Is the stream the same as what's on air? I listened for 20-25 minutes and never heard a voice, ID, artist/title....I heard nothing but music. But at least it was music instead of a discussion of inane political tripe.

As many have said in previous posts, if they would makes arts and music more of a focus....maybe they would build an audience. Keep the political stuff down to the average American's attention span (60-90 seconds.) They could run that between music focused programming. Real talent is the ability to concisely use language. As Einstein once said, "simplicity is the highest form of science."
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But the whole point of this station is to have an outlet for their politics. They are not in the entertainment business of playing music or other similar entertainment programming.
 
ansky212 said:
But the whole point of this station is to have an outlet for their politics. They are not in the entertainment business of playing music or other similar entertainment programming.
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I understand. But would it not be helpful if you actually have people listening to your ideas?

It gets back to the psychology of human behavior and why these sometimes well educated people refuse to acknowledge the fact that we people are somewhat predictable. For example...radio programmers learned years ago that people want to hear their favorite music over and over...the first person learned that from a diner jukebox. Radio listening has been researched ad nauseam and certain human behaviors have been proven. Obviously, there are exceptions but generally people tend to use radio in predictable ways. To ignore that is suicidal if you want others to listen.

You MUST package your product in a way to make it desirable, if you want buyers. The programmer can NOT dictate the terms to listeners...they (listeners) are the customers. Remember, the first law of sales is "the customer is always right."
So make it easy to listen to your ideas. Place your political rants in small bites, between music, and give listeners time to digest your thoughts. Almost everyone can/will stomach 60 seconds of political discourse...30 minutes or an hour...not so much.
The music need not be commercial Top 40...it can be alternative i.e. folk,hippie,alt country, alt rock etc. You would do better to play Top 40 if you really want to expose others to your ideas. Give the people what they want and stop telling them what they SHOULD want!

BTW...you're in Jersey..correct? Is the stream the same as what's on air?
 
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Excellent observation. I have noticed a couple of things over the years. One is that preaching to the choir eventually means just the choir and usually that choir never grows.

If marketed right, the choir is your supporter and will be keen on the idea of reaching others that can hear your message the choir supports. It takes reaching out beyond the choir to get it done and that's where you really have got to do a good sales job on the choir. Think of eating as an analogy. If something looks tasty, you find out by taking a bite. A bite leads to you wanting the whole meal. I think the station would do better doling out bites to build their core listener base.
 
TheBigA said:
You need to spend some time with anarchists. They don't care what other people want.
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Anarchy is egotism raised to the level of a movement.
 
TheBigA said:
You need to spend some time with anarchists. They don't care what other people want.
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Not true...

They know what everybody SECRETLY wants...

...we'd know too if we weren't brainwashed by "the man's" chem-trails/fluoride in the water/preservatives in McDonald's value meals/forcing mass media down our throat.

Since we don't, it is their job to re-educate all of us to stop loving "Big Brother" and accept the fact that there should be no brother. Until they succeed in this, the masses' point is always moot.

Radio-X
 
Radio-X said:
Not true...

They know what everybody SECRETLY wants...

...we'd know too if we weren't brainwashed by "the man's" chem-trails/fluoride in the water/preservatives in McDonald's value meals/forcing mass media down our throat.

Since we don't, it is their job to re-educate all of us to stop loving "Big Brother" and accept the fact that there should be no brother. Until they succeed in this, the masses' point is always moot.

Radio-X
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Having lived or worked in countries where social conditions were close to anarchy, I guarantee you that most people don't want to tear anything down. The problem occurs when those people don't take action against the destructive forces of anarchy.
 
The most ideal form of anarchy exists successfully in Antarctica,
except for the research bases.
The problems will begin when people get tired of the hot weather up North
and start moving down there and bring their homeowners associations with them.
 
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