WBAI Board Rejects Moving Station Off Wall Street To Prevent Insolvency

Proposed Measure Would Have Slashed High Rental Costs With Smaller Studio in Cheaper Neighborhood

(Updated August 30, 2012) The board of noncommercial peace-and-justice radio station WBAI (99.5 FM, wbai.org) voted August 8 to reject a proposal to move the station out of its high-rent studio on Wall Street. As the station and its parent Pacifica Foundation (the owner of four other stations) face worsening financial prospects, board members from the WBAI Justice and Unity Campaign, a progressive anti-racist activist coalition, proposed slashing one of the largest fixed expenses – the $380,000 annual cost of studio rent and utilities. The motion, an amendment to the pending annual budget, failed on a tie vote of 8-8, with only Justice & Unity members voting in favor. Opponents, part of the variously-named List-Prog/ ACE/ Independents group that has supported the managers installed by Pacifica since 2009, gave no reason for their rejection of the measure.

The cost-cutting proposal comes as influential voices in the national organization, citing the crisis, are calling for “swapping” the station’s mid-dial position for another frequency, almost certainly resulting in a less powerful signal range, or selling it, and either way generating millions of dollars. One “swap” advocate, Carol Spooner — a former Pacifica board member from Berkeley station KPFA and longtime supporter of the current WBAI board majority — has even suggested dissolving the network and having the five stations operate on their own. WBAI local board member Steve Brown has gone further. (Brown is a multimillionaire, former direct-mail entrepreneur who organized expensive voter mailings that helped elect the current board majority.) He recently called for selling all five Pacifica stations and converting the network into an Internet-only operation. Justice and Unity opposes any proposal that would reduce our current audience and coverage area.

Justice and Unity member Bernard White, the station’s former Program Director elected to the board in 2010, authored the proposal to move, arguing, “It is obvious that if WBAI is to survive, it must move to a new location. There is no logical reason for a community radio station to be located on Wall St., paying rent at market value.” He continued: “All terrestrial media are undergoing a decrease in listenership and readership. Media entities across the nation have resorted to scaling down staff and selling their assets to make ends meet. Some in the Pacifica Foundation are also unfortunately and unwisely considering these options. WBAI can counter this push to dissolve the network by relocating and scaling down its rental expenses and ultimately relocating in a reasonably priced facility that it owns.”

White’s proposal called on station manager Berthold Reimers not to go through with his announced plan to sign a three-year extension on the Wall Street office and studio lease, which expires on December 31, 2012. Instead, White moved that management “immediately work to obtain temporary smaller quarters at another location in the signal area at a lower rate of rent.” In addition, the motion urged Reimers “to immediately seek technical advice on possible options for relocating WBAI’s antenna from the Empire State Building” — which costs the station over $500,000 a year — “to a lower-rent location without losing signal strength or reach.” The motion further called for Reimers “to quickly involve paid and unpaid staff, listeners, and LSB members in brainstorming and discussion about how to accomplish this, and an emergency fundraising campaign to bring this about.” White advocated that the station stay at the smaller quarters until a capital campaign can be mounted to raise funds for a move to a permanent, owned location.

WBAI continues to run six-figure budget deficits and spends more days each year in on-air pledge drives, prompting increasing listener complaints. For each of the past two years, Pacifica’s independent auditor has issued a “going-concern” alert owing to Pacifica’s continuing losses ($560,000 in fiscal year 2011), stating that he had serious questions about whether the network would be able to pay its bills when due.

As far back as 2007, Pacifica’s then–Chief Financial Officer, Lonnie Hicks, wrote a report that stated, “WBAI has the highest rental, utility and tower costs of any unit in the Network — more than 7 times the costs of any other unit at 736K. It is clear that the station must move to less expensive quarters.”

At that point, White, who was Program Director, established a “Building Fund,” to which $150,000 had been donated. In 2008 White formed a committee of listeners and staff that be-gan searching the city for new quarters. Management was preparing to launch a public capital campaign in 2009, but in May of that year, White and Anthony Riddle, the general manager, were abruptly removed from the station without due process. New management aborted all efforts to find a new location and raise funds for it. In 2011, manager Reimers resumed some efforts, although without either consultation with or timely disclosure to the unpaid program-mers or Local Station Board. Reimers later claimed that Pacifica’s Executive Director blocked further action, citing inadequate funds, but more recently asserted that a possible deal fell through due to changed terms by the property owner after he learned more about WBAI/ Pacifica’s financial condition. However, the $150,000 in the Building Fund could cover most of the cost of a temporary move, as per an estimate recently obtained from a real estate expert.

The Justice and Unity Campaign is urging all concerned listeners and staff to contact WBAI General Manager Berthold Reimers at (212) 209-2820 or berthold@wbai.org , and Pacifica Interim Executive Director Summer Reese at (510) 849-2590 x208 or summer@pacifica.org , as well as the Pacifica National Board at pnb@pacifica.org (and cc info@justiceunity.org), to urge them not to extend by three years the lease on the current studio to begin a search for more affordable quarters.

An online petition has also been established at https://www.change.org/petitions/save-wbai-move-wbai.

For the motion, implementation plan, and background information, click here.