David Crossley interview

An Interview with David Crossley

At this time, when folks are fighting over the future direction of KPFT, we turned to David Crossley for his perspective on the founding and 30+ history of the station. David was the KPFT station manager from late 1971 to late 1972, as American involvement in the Vietnam War began winding down. The interview was conducted by email over a series of weeks.

Q: What was your earlier involvement at KPFT prior to becoming manager?

I was a volunteer who quickly got involved with the design and production of the Folio. I became its editor and about three months after I started, the National Board suddenly fired the manager, Tim Mabee. He had only been there a short time, maybe 6 months. At the moment I can't even remember the issue, but the staff, many of whom had been there from the beginning, were incensed that such a thing could happen without their advice and consent. There had been a nod from the local members of the National Board, and there had certainly been a lot of grumbling from some staff members about Tim.

Very quickly, a strike of the staff and volunteers ensued and somehow they rallied around the idea that I should be the manager. In the meantime, National appointed Don Gardner as manager. Don had been one of the founders with Larry Lee, and took a lot of abuse for coming back to do this. Larry, in the meantime, was at KPFA, a rising Pacifica star, and he came back to help win the strike, on our side. What a family mess. Ultimately, we won and I was appointed manager.

Q: Having read through the early issues of the KPFT program guides, it seems that there were at least five different managers in just a few years. Why was this so?

From day one, you had Larry, then Tim for a few months (he was very young), then Don, then me. The really short-termers were Tim and Don (who was only there a few weeks). It was chaotic for a lot of reasons, one of them being the three-manager strike period, and the opening days were very difficult with all the bombing, being off the air for so long, and having to raise money all over again. So the early years were tough, financially, and managers weren't thrilled with having to spend so much energy on that.

Q: Who replaced you as manager and for what reason?

Fred Mirick. I was burned completely out. It was a good transition, in which I headed the search team and participated in the hire. We hired him instead of the runner-up; some woman named Linda Ellerbee. What morons we were.

Q: What did you do in the short term at KPFT after that experience?

I think I was the Radio Guide editor for a pretty good while, and had two shows, one was a morning show (name escapes me) and "Lunch", both of them mixed-format, with lots of talk and news and phone calls.

The Various Program Guides Over the Years

Q: What was the significance of the KPFT program guide to the listeners and the general public, what role did it play?

It's hard to say what the significance was to the listeners. It contained the program schedule, of course, although it was never clear whether people actually saved it for that purpose. There was a brief period where it was done as a big poster, just a calendar, and I stopped that as soon as I could.

In some respects, it was a great tool for the station because it could be all about the station. We were always loath to talk about the station a lot except during Marathon and in a once-a-month Manager's Report during which we'd take phone calls and discuss radio.

In its earliest days the guide only went to people who supported the station financially. Somewhere in all that we began to turn it into more of a community newspaper and asked permission of the subscribers to print 10,000 copies and distribute them freely. There was a surprising response to that request, both in terms of numbers and in terms of their attitude, which was, sure, do it.

Q: So-called underground newspapers were a very popular form of communication during the 1970s in Houston and nationally. I know of two papers that circulated locally back then: Space City News and Abraxas, which I think was out of Austin. Was the program guide considered akin to those types of papers? How did the program guide change during the 1970s, for instance, what was the relationship between the program guide and the station itself?

I was only involved a total of about two years, so can only speak to that - 1971 and 1972. It changed first from being the Folio of Larry Lee's days to being a big single-sheet poster that highlighted cool illustrations or photos. That lasted only a month or two because it was throwing away too much value not to be telling the story of the station. Shortly after the strike, Bill Narum, who is a great illustrator and artist and crazed media fiend, took over the production and design, and it became a little magazine on news print with the name Radio Guide. It was full of articles and some pictures, some about the station and some about events. I think the highlight of that production period was the Captain Marathon issue with a full-color cover. That actually worked, by the way, and we had a very hot marathon. Of course, at that time the infamous Bill Fuller led the Marathon cheerleading and people in droves would call in and pledge just to get him to go to sleep or something.

After the magaziney Radio Guide it became a tabloid and was launched as a kind of monthly newspaper, with national political and news coverage and some opinion stuff. I was trying to establish it as its own thing, a paper that connected radio and print but had a community role to play for people more oriented to that kind of vehicle. I think I had grand dreams for it, and if I'm correct in my timing Space City News was fading at that time. Eventually, like everybody else, I burned out on working in the KPFT political atmosphere and disappeared, moved to the country and grew things. Don't really recall what happened to the guide after that because I was beyond the signal and separated from the station for about 5 years.

Q: Are there any famous types now who came out of that early experience?

Famous? How famous? If you mean out of the whole experience (not just the guide) there were some that had some measure of fame. Jeff Nightbyrd (whose real name was Jeff Shero), who did the all-night show and had a zillion groupies, was probably among the most infamous, becoming the guy who set up the first business to sell urine that would pass drug tests. Bill Narum achieved a measure of fame doing the illustrations and branding for ZZ Top. Tom Curtis, who was news director for a time, had some fame for doing the first investigative work on the how the AIDS virus got established in this country. Of course, Larry Lee was an important broadcaster until his untimely death. Sam Hudson went on to work on the MacNeil Lehrer Newshour, or at least did something important at the Dallas PBS station. Mad Dog Lubowsky became Andy Kaufman, I think, or it might be just like him to be Dick Cheney. But I'm not sure I know anyone who turned into Ted Koppel or Madonna. The one we didn't hire, Linda Ellerbee, did become very famous.

Where Should KPFT Be Heading?

Q: In looking over the history of KPFT from the early 1970s program guides, it seems that the writers were always posing the question of where KPFT was headed next. For instance, I read one article that said that the 60s were over and now KPFT must somehow enlarge its vision, and that vision must include women's issues and other growing concerns that were having an impact on American life. Then in the late 1970s, KPFT adopted a programming format to meet the needs of an even larger set of communities when they began broadcasting in nearly one dozen foreign languages. A question I personally asked in the KPFT program guide from 1981 was "who decides whether we play Follow the Leader or Ring Around the Rosie?" What types of questions should we be asking ourselves in terms of the direction KPFT must take now, in 2002? What directions should KPFT be taking now?

KPFT will always be in a seeking mode, always trying to figure out what's next. First, it will always be reflecting a changing world - or it should be - so when we began to struggle with getting women's issues on the air in 1971 it was because women were speaking up, demanding that. Latinos were beginning to be a significant blip on the demographic radar, too, so that was the first "other" language spoken on KPFT, I think. Of course, all that changed the programming, and that changed the audience. Imagine how bizarre it was to our 60s-era audience when we put "Musical Trot with Liselotte" on the air. (Some years later, my wife and I bought a house on Galveston Bay and it turned out our next-door neighbor was of German descent. On Sunday mornings he'd sit under his house with Liselotte on, drinking beer and singing, and then when it was over he'd go out on his pier and fire a submachine gun out into the water. I had to endure that knowing that I'd been the one who put Liselotte on the air. Not that she or her general audience was in any way violent, but she brought a new audience to the mix).

Second, everything goes in cycles, so periodically when people get confused they go back to the roots and try to get closer to original vision, and that's what we were doing as we reprinted all the Lew Hill stuff. What is Pacifica all about? How can we stay true to that? On the other hand, there's always a strong contingent that says history is baggage and the original vision shouldn't be an anchor.

So now it's back to "what kind of questions should we be asking ourselves?" Obviously, "what are we doing?" should be first. Pacifica stations are very rare in media, because they don't first say, "Who is our audience?" They say, "Who are our voices? What are our messages?" and the audience is drawn to that (or isn't). I'd say, first, that KPFT should spend time thinking about the existing audience. It's obvious from the passion at a recent meeting of old and new that the station has been filling some kind of hole in a group of people's lives. So some sort of gift has to be given to them. Those who have contributed money in recent years have kept the station on the air, after all.

But satisfying them has left holes in a lot of other lives, and has left the whole city in a poorer state in terms of examination of public affairs. It's also been poorer as it relates to exploration of music, and much poorer in expression of advocacy and understanding of diversity.

So it seems to me that major Houston needs that KPFT can fill are
- News and public affairs
- Creative music in a much broader sense
- Advocacy and expression of diversity

Concerning news and public affairs, KPFT once had the most original, toughest news broadcast in the region. Life on Earth covered local, regional, and national news every day, and reporters like Mitch Green and Gary Thiher weren't afraid to ask the Mayor or anybody else tough questions. If you wanted to know what happened at City Hall on any given day, you had to listen to KPFT. Today, public officials will say the most outrageous and anti-democratic things you can imagine, will cut terrible deals in full view, because they know there won't be any coverage, they aren't going to be called to answer. So KPFT needs to revive tough, mainstream local news coverage. This is a difficult thing to do without making it simply the editorial opinions of the reporters.

By public affairs, I don't mean advocacy expression. I mean stuff like the productions KPFT used to do, documentaries about right-wing terrorism in the city, or the Sharpstown Bank scandal. KPFT also used to broadcast City Council and the HISD School Board meetings live, and interruptions of those broadcasts resulted in hundreds of phone calls to the station. You could argue that cable TV now carries those, so the need is gone. But the point is that live coverage of civic events is a big deal. We need to shine big lights on this stuff. Also, extensive and fair campaign coverage was a KPFT hallmark. The year I was manager, for the 1971 election, we offered all candidates a forum for their views. When a group of independent school board candidates held a press conference to decry media neglect of their campaigns, they all stood and applauded when the KPFT reporter entered the room.

And of course, we and the other Pacifica stations covered the Vietnam war on a daily basis after mainstream media had lost interest. We covered Watergate on a daily basis long before mainstream media picked up on it; we covered the 1972 Democratic and Republican Conventions live and in reports, and on and on.

KPFT has to find a way to revive that tradition.

As for music, the heart of that effort must be live music and eclectic exploration. Back then we had a very large studio so we could get a band and an audience in the room and did that regularly. Gavin Duffy used to play the piano while he was on the air. And of course when we were playing recorded music you never knew, whether the Jefferson Airplane would be followed by Gamelian Monkey Chants and that by A Bell Ringing in an Empty Sky, or whatever. Because we tried not to have blocks of one kind of music, you always knew that if you could just last through some piece you didn't like, you'd probably like the next one, and anyway you were always learning something. I'm confident that my own bizarre taste in music came from my KPFT experience.

Finally, in terms of advocacy and talk, I think there are two essential pieces. One is turning the drive-time hours morning, noon, and early evening into fascinating, infuriating dialogue. And particularly not to forget lunch (Rush Limbaugh has the biggest audience in radio from 11am to 2pm). We actually had a program named "Lunch", with news, commentary, lots of call-ins, and general goofiness. Every day at noon we'd hang a microphone out the window of the Atlanta Life building (we were downtown then) and for 30 minutes Bill Fuller would interview people on the street about whatever our subject was. Sometimes he'd walk off and leave the mic, and people would just come up and talk into it. It was goofy, but it was hot.

Personally, I think it would be interesting to have a late afternoon drive time show during rush hour that focuses on everything about urban growth and particularly focuses on transportation so people stuck in traffic can call in and vent about city life.

The other part of the talk and advocacy realm is the traditional expression of minority views. We need a lot of that, and with only 24 hours in a day and 7 days a week, you'll need to be very clever about how to do that and all the music and public affairs as well. And let me be the one who says these things don't have to be two hours long, or even one hour. You really have to clamp down on the ownership of turf where people ultimately are reduced to asking each other on the air "What should we do now?" "Oh, I don't know, let's play some music and think about it." When you write an op/ed piece for a newspaper, it's about 700 words, and you can read that out loud in less than 5 minutes. So why should people just get on unprepared and talk for two hours? This is the hardest part of managing KPFT, but because it's at the core of the mission, it's probably the most important part.

KPFT: Broadcast Radio and Beyond

Q: In a January 1973 article you wrote: "Pacifica has got to get into television right now. Sunday. That has got to be rammed down the throats of the administrative council and the board. Our own local board has got to see what we can do and start studying the future right now. No matter what ideas people have about THE future for TV, we have got to start studying it right now. It's the only thing that will save us all." Public Access TV has been around in Houston since 1987, but KPFT has never done any regular programming there. Is it finally time for that? And what of other video mediums, like satellite TV? And what role should KPFT have in terms of the Internet? Do you think that KPFT can effectively use all the available types of media, radio, print, TV and internet to successfully practice its mission statement? Would the use of these other mediums somehow conflict with or lessen the value of its radio operations?

Well, I guess I was out of my mind, right? TV might have been possible if there had been another Larry Lee around. I would say that the Access TV thing hasn't worked very well and I'm surprised by that. Maybe it's partially because KPFT for the last decade or so hasn't been producing a lot of creative media people, some of whom would go on to public TV. I've been thinking about TV a lot recently and I do think it's time to make some inroads there. But having one or two shows on isn't the secret; it's getting leadership into a TV outlet that sees the thing whole. KPFT has such a big job getting its act back together right now that I can't really see how you'd move into that, too. But maybe in a year. It's amazing how fast things can change.

As for the Internet, that's a huge opportunity. If I were there today, I'd be using that much more than the printed radio guide. Imagine the voices you can give people. Internet server space is spectacularly cheap and you can afford to give very broad opportunities to people, almost endless, really. It's much less constrained than radio, although I'd watch out about using it for rich media like sound and video, because then you get into great production and playback issues. But absolutely heavy web play would not interfere with the radio operation. To the contrary, it might be a way to reinforce it and expand it. But first, you've got to focus on creating the radio operation, which right now doesn't make any sense.

Q: Beyond the media aspect of Pacifica, what do you think it should be involved with in terms of mobilizing people along the lines of its mission statement, which says in part: "To encourage, and provide outlets for, the creative skills and energies of the community; to conduct classes, study groups and workshops in the writing and producing of drama; to establish awards and scholarships for creative writing; to offer public facilities to amateur instrumentalists, choral groups, orchestral groups and musical students; and to promote and aid other creative activities which will enrich the standards of art and entertainment in the community." And "To engage in any activity that shall contribute to a lasting understanding between nations and between the individuals of all nations, races, creeds and colors; to gather and disseminate information on the causes of conflict between any and all of such groups; and through any and all means available to this society, to promote the study of political and economic problems, and the causes of religious, philosophical and racial antagonisms."

Without question, this Mission Statement is the comprehensive plan for Pacifica's success, probably even its financial success. I don't know why it's so hard to follow. You lay that out in bullet form and just start developing strategies and programs that fill the bill, and next thing you know you have this incredibly rich tapestry of creativity and expression and people's eyes are opened. Particularly the first paragraph provides very clear direction for the basic fabric of the air. I'd probably have a little committee of two or three people for each part.

The second paragraph is more difficult because it really is a search for understanding and a formula for peace and cooperation. But peace and cooperation are only goals of a small part of the population, as we can very clearly see since September 11. In all of recorded history a minority has kept the world from just exploding by endlessly promoting this appreciation for each other - no matter what. I think it's important to read in that paragraph that these ethnic and lifestyle ghettos that KPFT has always promoted might not be the right way to achieve understanding. For instance, an hour of a proponent of environmental caution and a proponent of market-driven solutions on together is much more likely to draw to some sort of agreement and produce some teaching than each of those being on the air separately. But even when you do that, you have to take great care that the two people are really brave and willing to learn, and that they don't just come on like Crossfire with the intent of killing each other verbally. The problem with the single-viewpoint program is that generally only people who agree with that viewpoint listen, so nothing is happening to the audience during those shows.

Anyway, yes, those paragraphs are the key to making something out of KPFT. I'm not sure what you mean when you say "Beyond the media aspect of KPFT." It's within the media aspect of KPFT that these principles should apply. In the end, Pacifica is about using media to enable expression, dialogue, and change.

Finally, I'd like to say that KPFT doesn't have to be all serious grimness. I remember times on the air that were so hilarious people couldn't speak, craziness that people had never heard on the air before. Mad Dog Lubowsky, covering the Republican Convention for KPFT, reporting from his hotel room as dead-serious WBAI handed off to him, and he very professionally handed off to his partner, Gavin Duffy, who was sound asleep in the bed next to him, and who's first word was "huh?" We caught a lot of flak from BAI and KPFA for stuff like that, but in the end it was Mad Dog running down a Miami street in the midst of a pack of protesters being chased by police who did the best live reporting of that part of the convention, noting of course that as always he was dressed in a bathrobe. And the Bert Herman Show, well, maybe you shouldn't go that far. But still, some humor would be nice.

Does KPFT Belong in Montrose?

Q: A number of the KPFT supporters from the earlier days live in the Montrose area of Houston, such as yourself, Ray Hill, Gertrude Barnstone and Lee Loe. And there are some younger types like George Barnstone, Dan Jones and me who live there too, as well as even younger people than that. To me, Montrose is a type of Holy Land for alternative media. Not only is KPFT located here, but so is access cable TV and various newspapers like the Houston Peace News (and Houston Radio Report). Some defunct newspapers like Public News and Houston's Other were based in Montrose too. What do you see as the attraction in Montrose to alternative media? How has the Montrose area influenced the development of the intellectual and creative culture of Houston over the years? What makes you want to live there?

Montrose has been an eclectic neighborhood for a long time. I remember going to a coffeehouse on the corner of Richmond and Montrose back in the 50s and being just stupefied by the newness of everything I was seeing and hearing there. I lived with my family in Bellaire then, in a typical little white folks subdivision and until visiting that coffeehouse I had no idea what the world really held in the way of surprises and diversity. In the 60s, Montrose was where all the psychedelia happened, and a lot of the music. Wonderful places, like Anderson Fair Retail. Restaurants were everywhere. Even so, Liberty Hall, which was the best music place the city ever had, was over on the eastern side of Main Street, in the Third Ward.

Young people, particularly, like Montrose kind of places because they are new, they are different from the suburbs most of us grew up in. Dreams of New York and Paris and so on often come, I think, from exposure to some local urbanity that is full of promise and opportunity. Since Houston's downtown began to fall apart 40 or 50 years ago there's been no real village life anywhere (expect perhaps in malls).

I think every city has a sort of Greenwich Village, a place that somehow is appealing to artists and creative people. Montrose has been as close as Houston's ever gotten to such a place, although it's never had anything in the way of a "center" so it's never really worked very well. Creative people mostly make connections among disparate concepts, and so they have to be plunged into the middle of great diversity. From diversity, proximity, and intense exchange comes innovation, and since innovation leads to both creation of wealth and personal satisfaction, people with creative impulses seek as much of that as they can get. I really believe the reason Houston's never been able to excel at anything on a global scale (other than oil and gas and all the related industries) is because it's never had to create an economy because the economy just came up out of the ground, a gift. So we've never had to innovate, which means creativity has never been prized, which is why we're in the bind we're in now, when knowledge, talent, and creativity is the center of the whole ballgame, and we don't have as much of that as other places. We're still afraid of it.

This question gets me into the kind of work I do now, which is all about urban growth. The more I learn about the power of cities, the more fearful I am that Houston will never have the level of innovation needed to become a city. It's almost as though parking lots in front of buildings were some kind of plot to keep us from having real public places where people meet and mingle and watch and learn.

But you want me to talk about Montrose and media, and I can't say I think anything especially important has gone on in that regard. Space City, which was the only true alternative weekly we've had, was actually over in the Binz area, as I recall. City Magazine was in the Montrose, and that had promise once of being a significant medium that was, in fact, always accused of having a Montrose or Inner Loop point of view.

I was actually disappointed that KPFT moved to this somewhat suburban location. When it was downtown it was in the heart of the city's life. It responded much more to urban themes than it does now or is likely to do in the future. It's a suburban cowboy station at the moment, although I assume that will change to some extent. Even if it was out on Montrose, maybe in that building on Montrose and Hawthorne, it might have a broader point of view. There were some other radio stations scattered around the Binz and Montrose, but they're mostly gone now, staying true to their suburban roots and moving because Montrose is no longer suburban.

Is Montrose a media Mecca? I don't really think so, and I think it will be less so over time. A good question might be why Houston is unable to produce any medium that really works. I go to a lot of high-level meetings where I hear people say - and I say - that what Houston really needs is a daily newspaper. The Chronicle isn't useless and neither is the Houston Press, but they are both nearly so. Both come from a conservative or even libertarian point of view; neither is urban in any sense. And there's nothing else. TV and radio take their cues each day from the newspaper and when the newspaper is producing so little local coverage; there's not much for them to take. So they take crime and car wrecks and huge public scandals like Wayne Dolcefino's complaint that the park and bayou people are allowing wildlife habitat to exist.

The failure to support energetic and intelligent media is Houston's biggest problem, or maybe the biggest symptom of its real problem, which is again its fear of the new, of the unusual.

Q: Now that the Internet has become a way of life for so many people, does it serve to break down the barriers of neighborhoods in regards to communication and serving the needs of the various communities of our local society? What role can KPFT play in this?

The Internet provides support for a self-centered life as well as for vast communication. A great many people go to it to receive something, so any media outlet like KPFT that provides something others don't provide is performing a service for individuals to enrich their own lives. I said before that KPFT should make huge use of the Web, but of course it also has to be creative and innovative about the main tool, the radio station. I'd like to see some numbers about what time the biggest radio audiences are. I assume it's at the three drive times, and those three opportunities every day are where KPFT should focus, and support them with rich Web material.

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