All
is not well with Pacifica public station KPFK (90.7 FM). According to
sources, employees were told in August that salaries would be cut in
half for a period of four months ... and that the move was made due to a
staggering debt in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Now
that debt is chump change to companies like Cumulus (owner of KABC 790
AM and KLOS 95.5 FM) and the other major players. But it’s huge to a
small station like KPFK and Pacifica, a company that has essentially
been hanging by a thread for at least a decade.
This
is unfortunate, as unlike college stations that were originally
intended as educational outreaches or student radio laboratories, KPFK
was conceived as a public (service) station and has a long history of
fighting for what it considers social justice. Perhaps it at times comes
off as leaning so far left it is actually communist, it is also the
only station in town to take on institutions and people that KPFK
staffers and management feel are doing things wrong. LAUSD’s former
superintendent John Deasy is but one example.
Of course those managers and staffers are what also made KPFK so irrelevant to much of Southern California.
This will be difficult to fix.
Building a Program
Over
at Cal State Long Beach, the radio program that was gutted when
student-run radio station KSUL was shut down in 1981 in favor of
professionally-run KLON (now KKJZ, 88.1 FM) is slowly but surely making a
return.
Sources
tell me that at least one class is in the works at the university, and
that the hope is for a full radio-television major of study to return.
Danny Lemus, the driving force behind student-run K-Beach (heard on the
digital HD3 stream of KKJZ as well as on line) is the driving force
behind this development as well.
SPERDVAC Convention Update
Recreations
of classic episodes of radio’s Fibber McGee and Molly; the Lux Radio
Theater; Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar; and Sherlock Holmes are on tap for
the annual convention of SPERDVAC, the Society to Preserve and Encourage
Radio Drama, Variety and Comedy.
In
addition, there will be panel discussions featuring Noel Blanc
(speaking of his father Mel), new radio dramas, celebrating the life of
Spike Jones, the history of KABC (790 AM) and more.
The
convention is November 6th, 7th and 8th at the Holiday Inn Media
Center, 150 E. Angeleno Avenue in Burbank. For details on the
convention, or on how to join SPERDVAC, head over to www.sperdvac.com or call 877-251-5771
Readers Write
“Your
comments regarding ‘automatic sound' due to strong radio signals took
me back to 1959 when as a ten year old I saved up enough money to buy an
early transistor radio. The first portables featured two transistor
circuitry that lacked much selectivity.
“I
hurriedly rushed home to La Mirada to try out my new radio only to
discover that I received KFI across the whole dial. Turns out that their
broadcasting antenna was only about a mile from our home. Their 50,000
watt signal was too much for my humble radio.” -- Joe Paire, Long Beach
“I
grew up on 178th street perhaps less than a mile from the KNX
transmitters. We could all hear KNX whenever we picked up the telephone.
A neighbor kid made a receiver out of a pair of headphones and about
two feet of wire. And there were a couple of adults in the neighborhood
who claimed they could "not not" hear KNX because of the number of metal
fillings in their teeth. Our telephone experience gave their claims a
lot of credibility. -- John Billings, Long Beach
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