Back of the Book links for the August 4, 2003 program

Well, with the blackout and the lightning storms that passed through this afternoon and evening it's now Sunday night 8/17/2003 21:11:57 and this page is finally done. Before this program I had more computer problems, even the printer function was being affected. We covered the topics below and more. Not much E-mail, but what we got to is here, not in the usual order.

Here is the latest on the saga of Pacifica. The big meeting of the interim Pacifica National Board (iPNB) which was supposed to take place in June in New York City, was postponed until August and now is postponed some time into the Fall. This link will tell you why.

The iPNB had a telephone meeting in June to finally approve the bylaws for Pacifica. Once again the usual obstructionist factions stopped the bylaws from being approved, even though two thirds of the iPNB members present and voting voted in favor of them. However, iPNB Secretary Carol Spooner filed a motion with the judge to declare the bylaws passed and get on with this process already! And the judge granted the motion! Read more about it here. Now 3 of the 5 Pacifica Local Advisory Boards must agree to the bylaws for them to go into force. Unfortunately, only two did. Here's what's happening next.

The previous iPNB meeting was held March 7-9, in Los Angeles, CA, to discuss and possibly even pass the new bylaws for the Pacifica Foundation. Well, it was a big flop, the various schemers sank the bylaws again. I'll be updating this link one of these days.

WBAI now has a program schedule up on its Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out. Here's a schedule made by a listener who has Web links for various programs and producers.

Our colleagues from Off the Hook now have both a RealAudio streaming web cast operating, and a new MP3 stream both of which were working at about 9:58 PM last night. The MP3 feed is now the preferred feed.

The Pacifica Foundation, which owns WBAI, has revamped its Web site and now has something called the Pacifica Lounge where you can post messages about Pacifica, WBAI and other Pacifica radio stations. This may be a good thing, and of course there are other, long term fora in which to participate.

The folks at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) have been sending out a lot of subpoenas to people whom they accuse of pirating their “intellectual property.”

We got to only a little bit of mail on the program. We start with a question about what's happening with the signal these days.

Subject: What's Up with Late Night Low Power Transmissions on ALL FM Stations?
Date: Sun, 03 Aug 2003 12:15:31 -0400
From: John
To: rpm@glib.com

Dear R. Paul:

You talked about it a little on your last show but not in depth. Late nights around 12:45AM on a daily basis stations switch to a low power mode. WHY? For How Long? If you are listening on a battery powered small radio you are almost out of luck in getting any FM stations. The background “noise” is formidable, almost canceling out the station(almost ALL FM Stations).

Don't the gurus of radio realize that NY Radio is almost totally destroyed; especially the “overnights.” That each station has at least one full time staff member totally devoted to ruining local radio; he/she is the Program Manager. That nothing else need be done to insure the doom of local radio in New York. To put it plainly: New York Radio, “SUCKS.” Well not completely yet, but they are working on it! BAI needs some help here as well, as I am sure you will agree.

So, is there any hope? If not ,want to buy my CC Radio-CHEAP!

Please read this on the air and let us know what the transmitter problems are!

PLEASE READ THIS TONIGHT-NOT SOMETIME SOON!

Love your show and Uncle Sidney's as well. Question: Should Pickles of the North have a shorter name? If so, lets ask the listeners! Best regards,

John, Fading Fast on the radio dial.

What's happening is that the Empire State Building Antenna Consortium is doing some sort of serious maintenance on the antennas on the Empire State Building. Just about all radio stations heard in New York City, and the TV stations as well, are a part of this. So every night for the next several months all stations must switch over to an alternate antenna at about 12:45 AM and then switch back to their regular antenna as about 4:45 AM every single night. You can see the TV stations doing it when you suddenly get a lot of static in picture and sound at just 12:45 AM. In fact Channel 2 has an alternate antenna that doesn't even get into my part of Brooklyn and so it effectively leaves the air at 12:45 every morning. What fun.

Subject: NUFF SAID
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 22:03:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: Andrew
To: rpm@glib.com

Dear RPM,

On tonight's broadcast 7/20/03, you mentioned that Fernando, in one of his letters, said Nuff Said, used to air on Sun. nights. Sidney Smith reminded you that he thought the program alternated on his Sun. nights before Carrier Wave. But I seem to remember Nuff Said airing EVERY Sun night, before it eventually moved to Tues. nights. The reason I remember this is because I used to listen to Nuff Said, and that is how I discovered your program. When Nuff Said would go off the air I always would leave the radio on to see what was up next, and I would always hear “Barracuda” and that's what led me to listen to you. I've been listening to Back of the Book since around '97-'98. But it was Nuff said on Sun. Night that led me to Back of the Book.

Andrew

Well, I've been having some senior fortnights here. In fact Ken Gale, former producer of 'Nuff Said has pointed out to me that his program did indeed precede Back of the Book from July 8, 1996, to January 25, 1999. What was my name again?

There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI. But there is an Internet list called “Free Pacifica!” which you can subscribe to, and these issues are discussed there. If you subscribe to it you will receive, via E-mail, all of the messages which are sent to that list. You will also be able to send messages to the list.

The above list has occasionally produced a high volume of E-mail because of the attention that these issues have drawn. If you would prefer to subscribe to a low volume list that only provides announcements of events related to these issues then subscribe to the FreePac mailing list.

Another list that's sprung up is the “NewPacifica” mailing list. This one is very lively and currently includes over 400 subscribers coast to coast. Being lively, of course, it sometimes also gets a bit nasty. All sorts of things are happening on this list. With that warning in mind, you can look at the NewPacifica list here, and you can join the list from that Web page too, although you'll have to deal with Yahoo! to do so.

There is also the more WBAI specific “Goodlight” Web based message board. This one has a great many people posting anonymously and there's also an ancillary board that's just totally out of hand.

The “Goodlight” Web based message board has expanded to cover all Pacifica stations.