By Otis Hardy Maclay

Apply this to what we're currently hearing. Ask yourself, what's not being discussed. And you come up with 'CPB Funding'.

I don't know whether it's on purpose, or just being inadvertently left out of the debate, but in my opinion, one of the most important questions facing Pacifica is what to do about the involvement of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Let's not forget that it was CPB funding which spawned the Healthy Station Project, the National Federation of Community Broadcaster's great (and successful) thrust to dumb down and destroy community radio. Let's not forget that it was CPB funding that provided the impetus and the excuse to remove any number of relevant, valuable and important programs from the air. Let's not forget that it was CPB funding which moved the criteria for success in evaluation programs from the ability to connect to the ability to drag in big numbers.

The CPB provides less than 20% of any pubic radio station's budget (and only provided you adhere to 'Radio Correctness'). Their funding formula now is based on the number of listeners and the size of the station's budget. Thus, big stations get more than little stations. A 'starting' station (remember starting stations?) would get little or nothing at a time it needs support the most. Instead, CPB's job is to maintain the status quo and empower the powerful while ignoring anything even remotely revolutionary. This system in the non-commercial frequencies operates not unlike the commercial band where 4 companies own something approaching 40% of radio outlets. And those are the big outlets with most of the listeners.

So is the CPB's 20% worth it? Or, to put it another way, should we throw out the baby of community radio just to keep the bath water of government money.

I think it's time for us to make it extremely clear, that just as the major actors doing the damage that's been wrought in Pacifica and its five stations must go, so must the source and engenderer of that damage, CPB funding.

One of the inviolable founding principles of Pacifica was that the network would take no corporate funding, that it would be entirely listener-supported. It almost worked. In 1952, the Ford Foundation, a liberal institution at that time, kicked in $150,000 to KPFA in response to an application from Lew Hill himself. But that grant support was the exception, and occurred in response to an emergency appeal by Hill. Then followed the McCarthy era, and the Ford Foundation feared backlash so that $150,000 was it for Pacifica for some time.

But over the years, the listener-sponsored paradigm has proven viable. The cavil presented by the pro-CPB folks is that we need that extra money to do really good stuff. What is not mentioned is that this money goes largely to support the 5 1/2 full-time staff positions that exist to get CPB money, in the first place.

There is another way. WPKN in Bridgeport, Connecticut, runs on only 1 1/2 full-time staff. It is a democratically-run station following (community radio pioneer) Lorenzo Milam's principles with a Program Director who is fully supported by the community in the best emulation of Lew Hill's original principles. (You can hear Harry Minot, the Operations Director at WPKN, discuss this model in our August 28, 2001 show on the radio4houston web page.)

Given the current staff at KPFT, I have to wonder if full-timers are really necessary in Houston. KPFT has no programs, so why have a Program Director? (Okay, there are a few, but the staff never hears them since they leave at 5PM). I don't believe there will be the need to generate playlists to get free CD's from the manufacturers, so why have a Music Director? If we're not going to go after grants and corporate funding, why have a Development Director/Guard Dog? (Okay, the Development Director's gone now, but apparently the Guard Dog remains. Ask Teresa Allen.) I can't wait for the new News Director, Steve McVicker (formerly of the Houston Press, another faux community resource), to discover that it takes people to do radio news. So we can all look forward to a paid staff member who will rip and read from the Associated Press wire that KPFT subscribes to. (Not even Agence France Presse. But AP). Mostly for the weather. Like you couldn't look out the window.

I'm really interested in the arguments in favor of CPB funding since I can't think of any. Sure, let's have the debate.

From over here, however, I would feel infinitely relieved if I heard some major player in our Pacifica game denounce CPB funding in no uncertain terms and put it at the same level as "Garland Must Go".

Bob Dole, who forced the reorganization of CPB, and CPB President Bob Coonrad have no place determining what we get to hear on our community station. And I think it must be stated clearly in the most explicit of terms: No CPB Funding. Ever.

Now.