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openly called for the PD to be fired for cause, had put out an E-mail saying that Gary Null, who had been purged as soon as the faction currently in charge had achieved a majority on the LSB, had been offered air time on 5 Thursdays to settle his grievance. The E-mail then said that the PD had confronted the iGM and had bullied her into reneging on this arrangement.

This meeting began with the PD declaring that he had not bullied the iGM and that there had never been any deal with Gary Null. The faction rallied ‘round their faction boss. One Staff member did note that there seemed to have been a heated confrontation that day. Denunciations of the LSB member took up a lot of this meeting.

On his Web site Gary Null said that the iGM and Pacifica's lawyer had negotiated this settlement but that right after the confrontation which the PD said never happened the iGM suddenly imposed intolerable conditions on his appearances on WBAI.

The excessive number of premiums was discussed, there were 262 for the Winter ‘thon alone. On the one hand there are too many premiums to manage, on the other hand no one can tell what premium will be “hot,” so there need to be many premiums in the hope of finding a “hot” one.

One producer complained about not even being notified about having half an hour of her air time cut, another pitched a program for herself, bringing in young producers was mentioned and even one faction member wondered if we are pitching too much. The PD said that programming was not about friendship but about doing the best radio with the resources available.



This meeting had been adjourned to this date in order to deal with that motion about the LSB establishing a bank account. However, before the meeting the iGM reported that she and the ED had determined that this was not within the purview of the LSB and that Pacifica Management had opened the bank account. This mooted the motion, and many LSB members assumed that the meeting was canceled. The meeting started an hour and a quarter late.

The Chair ruled that the motion about the bank

account was moot, Pacifica's CFO said that the LSB can't get involved in fiscal items of this nature. I am very glad that the LSB will not be able to get its hands on any of the station's money!

The faction voted to have new elections for the General Manager Search Sub-committee (GMSS). They argued that since they hadn't done anything on it in a full year that the terms had only been for one year. In fact there had been no term limits for the GMSS, but one faction member on it was about to leave the LSB and they didn't want to risk losing their majority on it.

The LSB voted to have a Town Hall meeting on April 22, and then the faction blitzed through the rest of the agenda to get to a motion disassociating the LSB from remarks made by that LSB member who'd put out the E-mail about the PD intimidating the iGM.

It was quite a show the faction put on. They even had non-LSB members attacking the member. But the member wasn't there. At the last meeting, when we'd voted to adjourn to March 16, he'd said he would be out of the state on that night. I argued that this was a disciplinary action and it was cowardly and unfair of them to pull it when the member was n't there to defend himself, but the faction didn't care. Some of the rhetoric was simply insane. By the end of the meeting faction operatives were accusing the LSB member of murder.The PD said that by passing this motion LSB members would, “avoid having yourselves involved in a lawsuit certainly these things are so actionable that there is going to be some response to it.” I look forward to the PD's lawsuit, I'm sure it will clarify a lot. In the end the faction passed the motion and put their “disassociation,” with 5 appendices, on the WBAI Web site. I refused to vote because this motion was out of order, they counted me as abstaining. The bottom line here is that the faction is trying to use station resources to campaign against a LSB member who is their opponent.



The iGM reported that the Winter ‘thon had fall en $53,000 short. For FY06 WBAI was short by $168,000, but the station was getting a handle on its spending.

Page Four of this newsletter


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