Save KPFA

Uprising spared, LA Theatreworks on the block

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Despite promises that they would not make any program changes without constituting a Program Council and consulting KPFA’s staff, Pacifica-appointed managers Andrew Phillips and Carrie Core are pressing ahead with plans to replace popular KPFA arts programs with shows hosted by their political allies.

The plans include a program about KPFA’s internal issues, to be hosted by a pro-management partisan who has produced online videos attacking SaveKPFA as well as KPFA’s union, CWA. (Ironically, management has disciplined union members Mitch Jeserich, Mark Mericle and John Hamilton, and unpaid staffer/board member David Gans, for simply mentioning such “internal” issues on the air.) And LA Theatreworks appears to be on the chopping block, to be replaced by a program hosted by allies of management called “Twit-wit,” in which actors read a Twitter stream.

SaveKPFA-affiliated local board members wrote this letter to Phillips, calling management’s actions “incomprehensible,” and noting that they are “certain to drive away even more of KPFA’s listeners.”

YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE: TAKE ACTION FOR KPFA!
An avalance of objections from KPFA listeners and staff appears to have saved Sonali Kolhatkar‘s Uprising (details here). Let’s turn up the heat again: CLICK HERE TO SEND AN EMAIL to KPFA’s managers telling them that you DO NOT support their destructive moves, and that you demand their resignations immediately. Use our sample letter or create your own, as you prefer.

Outraged listener letters pour in
Hundreds of you have also called for the resignations of the managers responsible for the destruction of KPFA’s programming. Here are just a few: “As decades-long listeners and financial contributors to KPFA,” wrote Blair and Charlie Moser, “we honestly believe that ‘managers’ Engelhardt, Phillips and Core are deliberately attempting to destroy KPFA, in order that its license and broadcast frequency can be sold to commercial interests. These three so-called ‘managers’ are paid a total of $210,000 in salaries….Those funds should support the programming KPFA listeners pay to hear, not an incompetent bureaucracy that is canceling the best programs.”

“Without the anchor program of the Morning Show, to wake me up in the morning, I only sporadically listen to KPFA throughout the day, avoiding ever more programming” installed by the interim managers, wrote listener Norie Clarke. “We must remove the bloated salaries, and dictatorial powers of Phillips, Core, and Engelhardt which are being used to bleed dry the resources, community spirit and open voice of KPFA.”

We’ll be posting more letters from listeners who have given permission at SaveKPFA‘s listener mail page.

Your KPFA board reps at work
After a disastrous fund drive with year-over-year declines in every morning time slot reprogrammed by Pacifica, SaveKPFA reps passed a motion at the August 20 Local Station Board meeting recommending that managers reinstate the Morning Show during the major fund drive scheduled for October.

Pacifica-appointed manager Andrew Phillips gave no indication he’d actually implement the motion. The debate, however, was instructive: members of Independents for Community Radio (ICR), the pro-management slate on KPFA’s board, had to explain how they justified keeping KPFA’s biggest fundraiser off the air. Pacifica has maintained it was forced to axe the Morning Show due to financial necessity and union rules regarding layoffs — even though Brian Edwards-Tiekert won reinstatement through a union grievance and SaveKPFA raised enough money to pay for Aimee Allison to return.

But at the board meeting, ICR rep Henry Norr (audio clip) argued against even temporarily putting the old Morning Show staff on the air because, he said, it would increase pressure for a permanent reinstatement. ICR rep Cynthia Johnson said, “There is nothing sacred about a couple of jobs.” Former ICR member Sasha Futran (audio clip) who declared herself fully independent earlier this year, said, “The Morning Mix [the program Pacifica imposed to replace the Morning Show] is, frankly, dreadful. . . there were two times I turned to the station at 8 AM and didn’t know I was listening to KPFA.” She turned to her former ICR colleagues and said they know the program is awful, and say as much to each other privately. | ENTIRE BOARD MEETING: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5

solidarity fist kpfaSolidarity from San Francisco Labor Council
Delegates to the San Francisco Labor Council unanimously passed a second resolution last week supporting KPFA’s workers. In addition, unpaid programmer David Bacon, who has been out in solidarity since the Morning Show‘s cancellation, made a surprise appearance on KPFA after Philip Maldari asked him to guest host the pre-Labor Day Sunday Show. Listeners, such as Barrie Ann Mason, were delighted, calling the show “informed, intelligent, thoughtful, grounded in experience [and] very compassionate,” and adding a thank-you for Bacon’s “principled” stand to help KPFA’s community regain control of the station.

LAST CHANCE: send in your recall petition now
We will shortly be turning in petition signatures to recall Pacifica National Board treasurer Tracy Rosenberg. As with any petition campaign, some signatures will not be valid, and we expect Rosenberg to try to slow the process by bringing multiple challenges. That’s why it’s extremely important to exceed the required number by an overwhelming margin — so the petition’s validity is beyond question.

If you haven’t already, please:
1) make sure you’re a paid-up KPFA member by giving at least $25 at kpfa.org/support
2) PRINT, SIGN, & MAIL the petition here: http://www.SaveKPFA.org/recall/petition.pdf

A CORRECTION: Tracy Rosenberg wrote to us recently objecting to our description of her as “a key person who put Engelhardt, Phillips and Core in power,” saying she wasn’t a member of Pacifica’s board when executive director Arlene Engelhardt was hired. Rosenberg has been a strong ally of Engelhardt’s her entire tenure, presented Engelhardt a list of KPFA staff members to purge that included the Morning Show‘s staff, personally recruited volunteers to replace those staff when other union members refused to, misappropriated KPFA’s list of member emails to publicize the replacement program, lobbied heavily for Engelhardt to hire Andrew Phillips to work as KPFA’s interim general manager, engineered an illegal move by the Pacifica National Board to unseat two duly-elected SaveKPFA representatives, and launched vicious and misleading attacks on KPFA programmer David Gans for criticizing Pacifica’s hand-picked management. But Rosenberg did not, as far as we can tell, play a role in the decision to hire Engelhardt in the first place. We regret the error.

Yet another legal victory for SaveKPFA
Pacifica management ally Carol Spooner, fresh from her failed attempt to get the Court of Appeals to knock two SaveKPFA representatives off the Pacifica National Board, has racked up two more losses.

First, she tried to intervene at the trial court level, with the judge who issued an injunction in favor of SaveKPFA reps Dan Siegel and Laura Prives. After judge Frank Roesch expressed extreme skepticism, she withdrew her request, and tried to do an end-run around him by filing a new lawsuit with another judge. On August 15, Alameda County Superior Court judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers threw out that suit as well. Strike three!

Pacifica-appointed managers oversee second disastrous fund drive, loss of listenership

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KPFA interim general manager Andrew Philips and interim program director Carrie Core — both brought to KPFA without community input by Pacifica executive director Arlene Engelhardt — have presided over another calamitous fund drive. KPFA’s Summer Fund Drive came up about $44,000 short of its $300,000 goal, another indication of listener dissatisfaction with the removal of the Morning Show. | SEE BELOW FOR HOW YOU CAN HELP

CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION

During the just-completed Summer Drive, the Morning Mix replacement raised a meager $1500 on good days. On other days, it brought in only $650 an hour in pledges. Before it was canceled by Engelhardt, the KPFA Morning Show regularly averaged $5000 an hour in pledges during fund drives.

The last two KPFA fund drives were the worst planned in memory. “Planning usually starts at least 6 weeks out, but Phillips and Core only met with programming staff the Friday before the drive started,” one worker told SaveKPFA. “The managers then repeated programming that had failed to raise money, and even allocated several hours of air-time for Phillips’ own 30-year-old documentary that he produced in the early 1980s.”

Listeners appear to be voting with their donations and sending a clear message, one that is confirmed by Arbitron, the company which surveys radio listeners nationally. Recent data shows a drop in over 10% of KPFA’s audience — or 13,000 listeners — since the Morning Show was taken off the air.

So for all the talk of expanding KPFA’s audience, Pacifica and KPFA management have done just the opposite: they’ve presided over its contraction. But instead of taking responsibility for these decisions, Phillips told station workers “there may have to be staff cuts,” as he announced a meeting for staff and listeners this Tuesday, August 16 at 6pm in KPFA’s Performance Studio (1929 MLK Way, Berkeley).

WHAT YOU CAN DO: TAKE ACTION!

We must change KPFA’s destructive management before we lose our historic and beloved station. Here’s how you can help:

1) SIGN the recall petition against Tracy Rosenberg, a key person who put Engelhardt, Phillips & Core in power. (Here’s the actual petition: http://www.SaveKPFA.org/recall/petition.pdf

2) DEMAND the resignation of the managers who are destroying KPFA: Arlene Engelhardt (salary $90,000), Andrew Phillips (salary $70,000) and Carrie Core (salary $50,000).  TOTAL: $210,000. This is the management team that has:

* refused $63,000 in listener pledges to restore the Morning Show
* spent $70,000 on anti-union consultants
* issued multiple gag orders against KPFA workers who have tried to inform listeners about developments at the station
* overseen 2 disastrous fund drives
* decreed programming changes that will cost over $500,000
* ignored listeners’ desires, and removed KPFA’s excellent programs to put their friends on the air, essentially “firing the listeners” and reducing KPFA’s audience

Why should listeners pay $210,000 dollars for these 3 managers’ salaries, when their incompetence is destroying KPFA? CLICK HERE TO SEND AN EMAIL to these 3 managers, with a cc to members of KPFA’s and Pacifica’s elected boards. Tell them that KPFA needs excellent programming, not wasteful bureaucrats. Use our sample letter or write your own, but please voice your outrage!

Is there now censorship at KPFA?

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David Gans, host of Dead to the World

Station management inflicted another serious wound to KPFA’s goal of honest, free speech radio last week when it dropped a disciplinary letter and gag order on unpaid music programmer David Gans.

Gans made brief comments during his August 10 show that were critical of management, eliciting a written warning from interim program director Carrie Core not to discuss “internal issues.” Gans published his comments and Core’s letter on his blog, calling the incident “another salvo in an ongoing battle for the soul of KPFA,” and urging listeners to sign the recall petition against Tracy Rosenberg, a key supporter of management.

“Managers freely broadcast their own anti-union positions and Pacifica’s,” noted KPFAWorker.org, “but slap ‘disciplinary actions’ or gag rules on KPFA’s workers when they speak their minds about the radio network they have labored to build over decades.” Disciplinary letters have also been sent in recent months by Core to paid staffers Mitch Jeserich, John Hamilton and Mark Mericle for reporting on layoffs at the station.

Sonali Kolkathar, host of Uprising

Core also said she’s going to remove the popular Saturday morning program Uprising, hosted by Sonali Kolhatkar. A veteran Pacifica journalist working out of KPFK in Los Angeles, Kolhatkar has made several on-air statements of solidarity with KPFA’s workers.

What would replace Uprising? A “labor show” by management ally Steve Zeltzer. As KPFAWorker notes, “the same managers who supported paying over $70,000 to fight the station’s union workers” put Zeltzer forward to replace respected KPFA producer David Bacon.” Like most unpaid staff at the station, Bacon has refused to cooperate with management’s replacement of union staffers.