After the meeting the spin began.

The General Manager congratulated and thanked everyone who had helped to make WBAI's coverage of the Republican Party's invasion of Manhattan a success.

The General Manager then reported that professionals were clearing viruses, worms and trojans from the WBAI computers. Weeks earlier one department head couldn't use the office's computer because it was so infected with viruses, worms, spyware, etc.

It was reported that the WBAI Weekly Email Newsletter, which is sent out to all subscribers who give an E-mail address, couldn't be sent out that week due to these problems.

Not reported at this meeting was that a worm had gotten into the E-mail address database and had sent out E-mails to subscribers.

MEMSYS, the official Pacifica accounting software, had crashed and become unusable. The News Department reported that it's computers were crashing at critical moments during production. Various other computers crucial to the functioning of WBAI were hors de combat from the accumulated viruses and worms.

At the meeting it was announced that anti-viral software was being installed on all of the computers on WBAI's local network.

The General Manager reported positively on the launch of the weekly WBAI cable TV show, of which the General Manager is the Executive Producer. He also reported that the Pacifica Internet Radio Station was up and running.

Not reported was that all registered subscribers to the Pacifica Internet Radio Station had gotten heavily spammed, with some subscribers vocally suspecting that the service provider may have been involved in the spamming.

On a couple of occasions during the previous week WBAI had gone off the air due to technical problems. This difficulty was reportedly being worked on too.

The General Manager urged all producers to participate in the Pacifica Audioport project where programs are made available on line to producers in Pacifica and its affiliates. There followed a number of questions on how to actually do this.

The Fall 2004, ‘thon is scheduled to run from October 20, to November 6, with a goal of $900,000.

The Public Affairs Dept. announced that it has embarked on a project to create an archive of WBAI programs. There are a lot of open reel tapes in the Conference Room which will be digitized.

The General Manager announced that he thought his $4+ million budget proposal was realistic and that the suggested $3.5 million budget would cause Paid Staff layoffs. This was interesting to hear since Management's budget had proposed about $500,000 in new hires for FY05 which would involve hiring as Paid Staff the often illegal consultants which had been hidden throughout the FY04 budget.

The General Manager then announced that he had no intention of complying with the LSB's suggestions regarding the budget.

This sparked a feeding frenzy of posturing by the faction currently in charge. Anyone not in the faction got vilified, including me even though I'd made the amendment that had put $330,000 back into the budget. Amazingly, some of the people in the room who'd voted for my amendment had become people who had not voted for it! It is, after all, election time.

With the negative spin coming out of the faction currently in charge it's no wonder that some folks don't understand that the LSB's vote did not take money away from WBAI. A budget is a guess at how much income there will be in the next fiscal year and how that income will be spent.

I think that the $4+ million budget had the potential to cause Paid Staff layoffs if Management's optimism about the income didn't work out.

If WBAI spends as if it's going to have a $4+ million income, and then months from now we end up raising less than that, then the financial damage will be greater than if the station had been spending according to a $3.5 million budget.