Note (2004): This article was written with great sadness in 1997. Mama O'Shea was still alive, and KPFA was moving away from its activist-community roots. Today, thank heavens, KPFA is back in the hands of the people...but it took a lot of shoutin' out and fightin' back to keep the old, corporate-minded Pacifica Foundation from selling out the original ideals of community radio. So, while this article is filled with despair, the Pacifica Radio situation is much happier these days.
My Life In Pacifica (Radio)
By Janice Leber
She looked a little disappointed as she reminded me that "they don’t put girls on the radio; you’d better think of something else."
She was right. In my rural/suburban
upbringing I had never heard a female voice on the radio. So I shrugged and
tried to think of something else to do when I grew up. I moved to Cotati to
attend Sonoma State, where a neighbor mentioned that there was a radio station
I should listen to. He tuned to KPFA, flagship station of something called the
Pacifica Foundation, and there I heard women, real females, actually talking
What a shock! What a change from the corporate-sponsored crap I was so accustomed to! It opened me up to a new world where all things were at least remotely possible.
At the time there was no radio training at Sonoma State. I moved from Sebastopol to Los Angeles (Lord forgive my naivete, I thought California was all one state) and studied Mass Media. UCLA was uplifting but I got a much better education in the nuts-n-bolts of radio production by volunteering at the local Pacifica station, KPFK. That training got me a job at a commercial radio station in Oregon, which got me into a real radio career.
In the last couple of decades I’ve worked in commercial, non-commercial, national and community radio. You can accurately say that Pacifica Radio is responsible for the direction of my adult life, and I can never feel anything but profound gratitude for the atmosphere that enabled me to become the person and technician I am today.
Unfortunately, that atmosphere has ceased to exist. Pacifica Radio is there, all right, but it’s not the hang-out, "seat-of-your-pants" radio I fell in love with 25 years ago. It’s not even the heady, urgent community experience it was during the Gulf War. Pacifica is in lockstep with the corporate culture of total control.
For me, enduring the inevitable travails of trying to have a career in radio, I could happily remember that "at least there’s always Pacifica." It was like Gibraltar to me. I knew there was one place I could walk in off the street and help out and feel welcome. In 1987, when I suggested to Program Director Ginny Berson that KPFA should have a regular satire program, she was enthusiastic with the idea – but only if I did all-original material. Writing, performing and producing 5-10 funny minutes every week single-handedly is no small trick and I would never have been so audacious as to have thought of it myself. I was able to do "Chopped Liver" for over seven years because KPFA’s door was always open to anyone with an idea and a little skill.
In August of ’95 they rudely threw many much-loved, respected longtime programmers off the air with as little warning as possible. These people included, of course, Mama O’Shea, who had been doing her "Shoutin’ Out" call-in show for over 20 years. Mama was something of an icon to many of us. I personally adored the woman. The first time I heard her show I said almost out loud, "I am going to make this person love me," and I’ll be damned if I didn’t succeed.
Unlike KPFA’s door, Mama's heart is still open.
In the old days KPFA was funky. The building smelled funny. Every square inch of worn carpet reeked of history. People who inspired the people who inspire you – they walked through those halls. A precious, anarchic institution was handed down to whoever wandered in, in hopes they would understand and preserve the unique character of this anti-establishment.
I hate to say it – and others disagree – but I feel the Pat Scott regime was the beginning of the end for Pacifica. She was named General Manager of KPFA around 1986 – without two seconds’ worth of radio experience – and never really understood or approved of the culture she was inheriting. All she saw was a slimy building and odd-looking people and strange cartoons all over the walls and she didn’t like it one little bit, all this "hippie shit" (her term). The very idea of having a blackboard in the bathroom was just too off-kilter for her to countenance.
A
new building would be a shining monument to the New Pacifica. Pat Scott’s
crowning achievement was obtaining the funding for the shiny new building on
MLK Jr. Way. How I cried when I learned they were moving out of the raunchy
old 20’s-era tenement that had been converted into Pacifica’s flagship
station! And paid staff would ask, "Don’t you think we
The new building smelled pretty raunchy too, but it was fumes from the new carpet and other space-age chemical wizardry attacking our senses. But I’ll admit it – it’s a beautiful space. It was open and airy, with plenty of newfangled equipment to try out. I tried to convince myself the new building was maybe a good thing. Yet, every week or so when I came back to the new KPFA, there were more doors. There were more locks. A few days after a Programmer’s Memo announced that a computer was available for use by unpaid staff in such-and-such a place, I tried to use it and was immediately booted out. Soon a new locked door had been fashioned to protect this computer from scum such as I.
There was quickly a more pronounced notion of proprietary rights. The new building had no "Public Affairs Office" where various producers met, sat around and talked for hours and came up with new programming ideas. Instead there was "Philip & Kris’ Office" and the "Flashpoints" office and other than that, just the "Freelancers Need Not Apply" lobby, where everybody everywhere, upstairs and down, could hear what you were saying (if they tried). Even Larry Bensky, Pacifica’s National Affairs Correspondent, once told me he felt like an outsider there.
When they instituted a contract-type relationship with programmers in 1995, it really felt like a natural progression from the paranoid, insular environment KPFA had already become. People who were paid to work there (or were in the apprenticeship program) had already gotten into the habit of covering their butts. They accuse the old programmers they’ve dismissed as "trying to protect their turf" – that ain’t nothin’ compared to what the paid staff has done to protect their paychecks.
They don’t even send me the Programmer’s Memo any more. I asked in writing if I could please be continued on the mailing list, and I was a lot nicer about it than I wanted to be. But they’ve cut me off completely.
They are, you see, trying
to make Pacifica’s flagship station sound more "professional." Guess what,
folks? I’ve worked in all kinds of radio, even for money; I’ve been
heard coast-to-coast on NPR and
The most valuable thing about the old Pacifica was its heritage. The list of people who have been heard on Pacifica Radio throughout its colorful history is astounding.
The most valuable thing
about the new Pacifica is – its signal. FM Radio is comprised of
two bands; the lower frequencies are reserved for non-commercial radio (and,
amazingly, KQED-FM in San Francisco is allowed to claim that title!).
Pacifica’s 94.1 frequency at KPFA in Berkeley, and ‘middle
of the dial’ at WBAI in New York, are in the higher
There’s talk afoot. There’s this suspicious notion that Pacifica General Manager Pat Scott is thinking long and hard about all those millions of dollars Pacifica is continually being offered for access to their commercial frequencies. As she consolidates power in the Pacifica establishment – and the tactics we’re seeing are downright Stalinistic – those dollar signs just get closer and closer.
They say it’s a lie. Their new national PR man, their very first openly-PR man in Pacifica history, Burt Glass (former hack for the Justice Dept.’s Community Oriented Policing Plan), vehemently denies that they’re giving any serious thought to selling off those precious, historic commercial frequencies.
That’s how I know
it must be so.
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