The important balance is how many listeners become subscribers/members – in other words, the depth of support and relationship among the niche listening community the station can reasonably expect. Involvement deepens support.

So the Rijio/Lilley strategy of eliminating community involvement is unlikely to financially strengthen the station … and hasn’t.

While the Unpaid Staff organization finally did get itself re-recognized, it was after almost two years of struggling, a struggle that should never have happened.

What some people call stability, other people call an unhappy workplace.

KPFA long ago had a super-fragmented program schedule, and did anyone listen? All of the groups mentioned here should be producing powerful and engaging specials and podcasts, not fighting over airtime. It’s not enough to believe in one’s cause. To be on KPFA you have to make radio that is good enough that mass audiences really want to listen to it….it’s mass media, not just for our friends in Berkeley. Wouldn’t it be better to have all of these diverse voices working in the newsroom or contributing to regular music and public affairs shows, augmented with really excellent specials on individual struggles?

UPSO collapsed on it’s own. The majority of members refused to come to meetings anymore because they were hijacked by a a vitriolic sect of screamers bent on taking-over UPSO. These were awful, antagonistic bullies who didn’t produce radio, but claimed “going to meetings” qualified them for membership. The meetings disappeared and elections were never held so when this tiny group started posting meeting notices, management rightly refused to recognize them. End of UPSO, for now. But new elections are happing, so stay tuned. Maybe new green shoots will grow.

About Ms. Rijo Ms. Lilley, it seems to me that staff and volunteers alike were hungry for leadership and a certain measure of calm stability. Management has been such a revolving door punctuated by gridlock and meltdown of the “democratic” boards and councils. One can keep pushing the labor hot button by citing the UPSO story, but really, is this the central issue (or given the real history, any issue at all?) of running a major radio station? I think they’re doing a pretty good job considering the extreme difficulty of managing an institution that is always growling and baring its teeth.

It’s hard to believe in KPFA as community radio at this point, when it doesn’t even have a functioning Program Council, but well. . . there’s this LSB meeting to try attending this Saturday, 01./10/2009,