The station ended its Winter Fund Drive one week ago, $125,000 short of its pledge goal. This is sad news for everyone who cares about KPFA, and it underscores the importance of change at Pacifica.
Pacifica’s re-programming of 6-10 AM is behind the shortfall. Those time slots used to raise 40% of KPFA’s total pledges. Since the destruction of the Morning Show, that’s dropped by more than half. For a time, station management was able to offset the plunge by lengthening fund drives, but they’ve run into diminishing returns from that strategy. (This year’s Winter Fund Drive ran 24 days, a whopping 50% increase from the length of the last Winter Fund Drive before the Morning Show was axed).
By any measure, the morning lineup that Pacifica imposed on KPFA has been a catastrophic failure. But instead of fixing it, Rosenberg, and the Pacifica managers she backs, are still defending it. They rejected over $63,000 that SaveKPFA raised to pay for the reinstatement of the Morning Show. They spent more money on lawyers to fight Morning Show co-host Aimee Allison‘s reinstatement than it would have cost to keep her on payroll for a year. And they’ll keep doing it until KPFA’s voting members call them to account.