Join Us for a Town Hall Meeting

"Improving Radio in Houston: What to Do about KPFT"

KPFT, one of the five stations of Pacifica Radio, has long been a center of community activism and progressive media in Houston. For the last several years, Pacifica management has been in conflict with listeners over changes that have decreased listener input, volunteer participation and community-oriented programming. These conflicts have continued to degrade the quality and range of programming available on KPFT. For instance for the last month, the high-quality news program Democracy Now! has not been aired at all in Houston. This is despite the fact that the show is continued to be aired and uplinked to the satellite for distribution. Petty politics and lawsuits have replaced the commitment to producing good radio at all 5 stations, including KPFT/Houston. The failure of KPFT to develop any local news show or any new public affairs programming is also of great concern. Despite a slight increase in revenues, the base of energetic and committed listener-subscribers at KPFT has continued to decline. Because of the continuing strife across the network, Pacifica and KPFT have not been able to recruit quality broadcasters and have no programs in place to identify and develop new talent in our community. We want to help.

We invite all KPFT listeners (old and new) as well as interested community members to a discussion on the current state and future of programming on the station. Our goal is develop ideas to achieve the broadest possible participation in Houston’s only community radio station. We welcome those with prior broadcast experience as well as those interested in seeing their communities represented on the air in Houston.

All viewpoints are welcome. Bring your ideas, your stories and your desire to bring quality radio back to Houston.

The discussion will take on Friday November 9^th, 2001 from 7-9P at the Leisure Learning Unlimited facility at 2990 Richmond Avenue, Suite 12 (between Kirby and Buffalo Speedway).

For more information, email the editors of HRR

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