Pacifica's Future

6 May 1999: Pacifica wants to take its progressive radio network --with stations in the Bay Area, LA, Houston, New York and Washingtion DC-- to a larger audience. But what makes each station successful is the tie to the community. The conflict between the two goals is hurting KPFA, Pacifica's flagship, as well as the Foundation. Pacifica needs to embrace a new, technicaly oriented strategy, using micropower broadcasting and the Internet to reach communities, and its five licence stations to take the Progressive movement to a broader audience.

This April, the Pacifica Foundation's board of directors started an ugly episode when they chose not to renew the contract of KPFA's Station Manager. The staff of KPFA responded by talking about the incident on-air. That's a violation of Foundation policy. (The licences for the five Pacifica network stations are held by the Foundation.) A popular reporter and on-air personality, Larry Bensky, was dismissed because of this. The firing fed back into the fears of station staff, and loyal listeners who had convinced themselves that the Pacifica Foundation was going to 'sell-out'. KFPA's 50th birthday turned into a bust as organizers and donors scuttled plans.

Last night, after a month's silence (except for one statement read on-air and posted on the Foundation's server) the chair of the Pacifica Board listened to sixteen angry listeners on a special edition of the monthly call-in show "KPFA's Report to the Listeners." Because of that month's lag, the listeners had already made up their minds about Pacifica's intentions. No matter what Chair of the Board, Mary Frances Berry said, she could not convince the callers who labeled her 'heavy handed', 'fascist' and 'racist.' Pacifica had lost credibility by not answering, on-air, sooner. As Marc Cooper, a contributing editor for The Nation and host of a show on LA Pacifica station KPFK, said, Berry should had been on the first plane to Oakland as soon as the dispute started.

I'm new to the matter. I only started listening and contributing to KPFA last year. As my friend Tom Becker says, it's nice to find a radio station that makes you feel as if you were a moderate. I don't know the station's politics. I don't know the complete history of KPFA's frequent fights with the Foundation. But I have a picture. You may not agree with it. But I have a model of why things are going badly.

Hard Limits

In her remarks last night, Pacifica Foundation Chair Mary Frances Berry said that the foundation wants to take Pacifica to a broader audience. I assume that means more programs like "Democracy Now," and more general interest progressive left programming. And that would make less room for programming targeted to particular communities. It is easy to fill a station's programming day, and difficult to find more frequencies.

The Communications Act of 1996 made radio licences into expensive assets. KPFA, for example, sits at 94.1, an accident of history since in 1949 FM civilian FM reception was unheard of. That licence would be worth millions in the Bay Area radio market. If the Foundation expands general interest programming, there's no place on the current spectrum for community programming to go.

The net effect is that Pacifica will become diluted. One caller last night described the history of another progressive Bay institution, The Co-op. The Co-op wanted to expand the franchise of providing healthy food inexpensively, but it didn't scale. The Co-op folded. Scaling works fine if you're Oracle. Pacifica needs to work on replication instead.

Infinite in Some Directions

Pacifica should uphold both goals. They need to be what Marc Cooper calls "The Newspaper of the Left" as well as its Slashdot. KPFA's the only place you'll find reporting on labor issues (unless it involves striking Teamsters,) and it follows through on stories that affect communities after they have fallen off the tragedy of the day meter at KRON. KPFA's reporting on the health effects and causes of the Tosco and Chevron refinery fires are good examples of this.

To support both goals, Pacifica will need to change its focus, from being a licence holder, syndicate and fund raiser. Their mission needs to include technology transfer, infrastructure development and lobbying. The two initiatives they should start:

Micropower Radio

The FCC is warming to micropower, community radio. Here's where Pacifica should work on replicating the success of their stations. First, they should be involved in lobbying the government to allow micropower radio. Second, they should be using the five network stations as training grounds for the people who will run the stations. Teach them reporting, operations and engineering. Build a national, Web-enabled help desk with radio engineers ready to handle questions. Design and build, or contract out the task, the transmitters and other station equipment. Use the Internet to distribute and share programming.

Internet Radio

Yahoo paid an extravagant amount for Broadcast.com. Internet radio is going to be big in cubicle land. Cubicle land is where Pacifica will find its general interest audience. And, to some extent, Pacifica gets it . You can listen to "Democracy Now," "Radio Nation," and the live KPFA feed on Real Player. (Except when "Dead to the World" is on and the Real Media server's maxed out on connections.) Pacifica should be serving every syndicated show off of streaming servers. They should also be using FreeAmp and IceCast: one because it's open source, two because they can turn around and teach the community micropowered stations how to use it.

In the mean time, expand...

The Franchise

The five stations in the Pacifica Network reach large, urban populations. Use these resources strategicaly. More shows like "Democracy Now" leavened with community targeted programming. Do what my employer tells its customers: repeat the station's URL until the listener sees it in their sleep.