I am at the point when recalling events from my childhood feels like digging up another historical epoch. Nonetheless, if I do not attempt the memory excavation now, when will I get around to it? So here I ponder a question that has poked at me for many years: what was that strange music that […]
The last days of August, 1968 were probably the most tumultuous of the 1960s. Tens of thousands of protesters had arrived in Chicago, Illinois to protest the Vietnam War at the Democratic National Convention. By August 27, the city’s police department had, over the previous two nights, relentlessly attacked demonstrators, reporters, and newspaper photographers. The nation’s most […]
I’ve added some more programmers to my community based classical radio show list: James Irsay and Sarah Cahill, both classical pianists. Irsay has a show on Pacifica station WBAI in New York City. He’s been around the station off and on in one capacity or another for quite a while. Back in the 1970s he […]
Lisa Hollenbach is a literary scholar interested in poetry broadcasts from the 1950s to the 1970s. In her recent post for Antenna Blog‘s Radio Preservation Task Force series she describes her work as dealing with “several neglected cultural fronts at once, examining forms long declared dead” including poetry, radio, spoken word recording, and the Pacifica […]
Some tickets are still available for Sex and Broadcasting: A Film About WFMU (our review here). The documentary will premiere at the Doc NYC festival on November 15 and 17. Director Tim K. Smith will appear at both showings at the IFC Film Center in Manhattan. There’s also a San Francisco showing scheduled for February. Full details […]
The New York Times has a graceful obituary for Steve Post, talk radio host at WNYC-FM and before that for Pacifica station WBAI in New York City. I listened to Post endlessly on ‘BAI in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and like many others I read his book Playing in the FM Band: A […]
NPR reports that one of its most beloved and distinguished correspondents, Margot Adler, has died at age 68 after a struggle with cancer. The NPR remembrance observes that Adler shaped “what we would call the NPR sound today: human, curious, conversational.” It should be noted that prior to her joining NPR, she was a mainstay at […]
Unfortunately, just because the occupation of Pacifica Radio’s national office in Berkeley is over doesn’t mean that there aren’t troubles elsewhere in the network. Pacifica’s WBAI-FM in New York City is facing “imminent eviction” of its transmitter from the Empire State Building. That’s according to a recently surfaced report to the Pacifica National Board from […]
As expected, the Pacifica Foundation has released a Request for Proposals to run Pacifica station WBAI in New York City via a Local Management Agreement. Various interesting strings are attached to this RFP, among them: Pacifica must retain “ultimate control” over the LMA’s programming and even be able to preempt or reject various shows to […]
Editor’s note: On October 3, the Pacifica Foundation National Board passed a resolution instructing its interim Executive Director to release a Request for Proposals for Public Service Operating Agreements (essentially leasing arrangements) for Pacifica station WBAI in New York City. Seven days later the board passed a motion instructing the ED “publish the RFP as […]
