LARRY BENSKY - THE INTERVIEWBy Kathy Rueve
(3391 Words)
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Against the backdrop of the presidential debates, I spoke with Larry Bensky, former station manager of KPFA, national affairs correspondent and chair of the local board finance committee who was fired twice in the recent purges, about how community radio and progressive causes can maintain their financial integrity when commercial interests control almost everything. While we talked, Larry’s delightfully precocious 3 1/2 year old daughter insisted her mother interview her in the other room, reminding us how our actions influence the choices others make.
KR: Tailoring Sunday Salon’s format to include breaks for advertising for your new Internet carrier has rankled some of us who oppose any inroads sponsors make onto the airwaves of KPFA. We need to grapple with how we find the financial resources to support progressive voices as media conglomerates become increasingly effective in narrowing the channels of allowable discourse. Please explain the background of the recent changes you’ve made on Sunday Salon.
LB: Some time after I was fired the second time by Pacifica, in April 1999, Working Assets of San Francisco which owns radioforchange.com asked if I would help develop a new format of nationwide radio talk show for the Internet. I said I was interested but my commitment to the KPFA and Pacifica struggle was pretty much full time. They asked if I could do a daily radio program for them. I wasn’t, and still am not, sure that Internet radio is developed enough to merit the kind of intensive producing and programming effort that I gave Living Room when it was a daily program. So we discussed how to simulcast Sunday Salon to accommodate their commercial breaks. There was never any question about broadcasting commercials on KPFA-- that’s something we’ve never done and never should do. We came up with the idea of playing music during the breaks and I would talk over the music with community announcements. That’s how Sunday Salon came to be simulcast on radioforchange.com, KWAB in Boulder, on the web. But there’s also something else: they offered to pay me. Nobody in Pacifica has offered to pay me as a broadcaster even as part of settling the lawsuit I filed last December although KPFA has urged such a step. I spend an enormous amount of hours preparing for Sunday Salon. It’s part of what I have to do and always have done: work for a living. If I put in those kinds of hours, I need to be paid. There’s no other way I was going to be paid unless radioforchange.com and Working Assets came up with the money. So, because of the way radioforchange.com is structured, we altered the format, although I’m not really fond of the change. I wish we could go back to the way Sunday Salon was --long uninterrupted periods of discussion with telephone calls, with 20 minutes or a half hour of classical music at the beginning. But, that wasn’t an option as part of this new network. I’m pleased and flattered they thought of me and glad to be a part of what they’re doing because I think it’s very important. I try to get progressive voices on the air daily all across the country to counter the vast barrage of right-wing talk. Pacifica was unwilling to do that even before I was fired. So, this is what I do, this is who I am and this is the way I’m now earning my living.
KR: Will radioforchange.com and KWAB be expanding, for example into FM radio?
LB: They were thinking about buying a larger station in Boulder to reach the Denver area but I don’t think they’re planning to go FM. See, the whole technology is changing now. You’ve got satellite radio coming in. It’s only a question of time until web radio gets into cars, into all other radios. At that point people will have not only the seventy or eighty choices now on Bay Area AM and FM stations, they’ll have five or six thousand.
One of the many tragic things about Pacifica’s behavior in recent years is how they’ve failed to get in on the planning of this expansion of technology to reach the new audience that will be tuning into the Internet and satellite radio. On the other hand if Pacifica has the kind of stations they’re developing in Houston and Washington D.C., there’s no merit whatsoever in putting them on the FM antennas much less on the Internet.
KR: Do you have any reservations about these arrangement with the Working Assets group?
LB: I’m unusual at KPFA and Pacifica in that I have a commercial radio background. Before I came to KPFA as a volunteer in 1969, I was one of the original broadcasters on the commercial underground rock station, KSAN in San Francisco. I also worked at KMPX, KFOG and KKCY. So I have a commercial radio background and there’s no free lunch! I mean, if you’re going to get paid, somebody’s going to have to come up with money. And in order to get that money you can call them compromises but I call them arrangements. I regret that Pacifica completely abandoned its principles, turned its back on what I was part of building for thirty years, and threw me out the window because I was too old, too white, too male and not of Mary Frances Berry’s political persuasion. But I don’t want that to silence me or stop my life or what I do professionally to earn a living.
KR: One of the fears in taking funding from an outside source is that it will change the content and direction of your program. Do you foresee Sunday Salon evolving over time in a different way?
LB: Not in the slightest. I have the same freedom to book guests, to say what I want and to investigate areas of interest to those concerned with humane socialism on this planet. As soon as I see any indication whatsoever that Working Assets doesn’t want that, I won’t work there any more.
KR: So you see it as a win - win situation.
LB: Yes, I think there are a lot of intriguing, good possibilities. There are some really good people at the Working Assets company. They provided KPFA and Pacifica with tens of thousands of dollars before this dreadful Mary Frances Berry coup took place; then they defunded us as they rightfully should have. I think they’re partners in the struggle.
KR: There are people who are upset about the way the breaks come in, affecting the continuity with your guests. Can you mitigate the disruptions, for example by pushing the breaks to one part of the program?
LB: I could perhaps ask that nine minutes of break come at the end of the hour, but no station in its right mind does that because people will tune it out. I’m trying to accommodate their format. I find it somewhat constricting; more so at the beginning than now. Today I did my first week-day show for them on an emergency basis and it felt perfectly fine. I’m not looking for a five day a week commitment. I was perfectly happy doing Sunday Salon plus anchoring the national specials for KPFA and Pacifica before I was fired. I have to work where I can. I’ve got forty-plus years of knowledge and experience and I don’t want to throw that away or not use it to its best advantage.
KR: What do you think of microradio and the possibility of developing it into a viable source of information?
LB: I think microradio should be encouraged. Even though more than half the frequencies have been taken by religious organizations, anything that gives people more choice in communities is obviously to be encouraged. But the technology is developing in a different direction than FM radio. With the Internet and satellite, with the infinity of places on the web, people will start to develop a community sense there too. The problem right now is that the delivery system isn’t there.
KR: Is it coming?
LB: I hope. However, the whole history of broadcasting delivery systems is that the capitalist corporations find a way of co-opting them. We’ve got to figure out a way to keep their big greedy paws off expanded web access. On the Internet some people get fast, wonderful connections and other people get connections where you sit there for two hours and you’re scratching ...
KR: And those with wonderful connections pay more money?
LB: I think that has something to do with it.
KR: We’ve heard rumors that private individuals, perhaps some foundations, give large amounts of money to the station that are not openly disclosed. Is the vision of listener-sponsorship prone to large donations coming from a few sources who might then have an inordinate influence?
LB: You know, the wonderful building that we’re fortunate to have at KPFA was funded largely through private individuals and some corporate foundation donations. I don’t think anybody questions that having our own building is a vast improvement. When I was manager of KPFA in the Dark Ages, the mid-1970’s -- we got some modest amounts of money from wealthier individuals. I don’t remember any corporations donating, there may have been one or two. But, there has to be absolute transparency. Pacifica’s and KPFA’s books have to be open. You can preserve people’s desire for anonymity when they donate five or ten thousand dollars. But if you have a million dollar donation coming in to fund a certain type of music for three hours every Saturday, I think you’d have to call that into question. I’m not aware of anything like that going on right now.
KR: So it’s not even a significant ...
LB: I’m not aware of it but I’m not privy to the finances. Tomas Moran’s been trying to follow the finances but Pacifica does whatever it damn pleases with the KPFA money. That’s more important than any side contributions that come in. When I was fired the first time in December, 1998, Lynn Chadwick told Nicole Sawaya she had to raise $15,000 in three or four days for Sunday Salon to go on the air, saying it had to be prefunded. There had never been a Pacifica program prefunded and any Pacifica program I participated in always raised more money than it cost. Nicole made some phone calls and got the money in ten minutes. It was only $15,000; you get three people to give $5,000 each. I thought that was a tremendously bad precedent. But it was all part of the destruction of traditional Pacifica values and ways of operating.
You asked me if KPFA can be listener-sponsored. I think if KPFA can’t be listener-sponsored, it shouldn’t exist. That’s a core bedrock element of Pacifica radio that has to be preserved. The fact that these usurpers are now in charge and want to abandon that indicates they don’t trust the community, that they don’t trust the concept of listener-sponsorship. That’s why they need to be gotten out. The listeners still understand it. They responded in a more magnificent fashion than we’ve ever seen in the history of KPFA and they’ll continue to do so.
KR We have debated subscriber-sponsorship at the Folio. We were approached by a local Internet company who offered to fund us. We turned it down but we sure thought about it.
LB: I don’t know why you turned it down. Don’t forget when KPFA had it’s Folio, it was full of advertising. None of those advertisers to my knowledge bought ads because they wanted to change KPFA’s programming. They wanted to reach the readership of the Folio with their message.
KR: When we look at Pacifica and what they’ve done, we see a clear connection between CPB funding with its money trail and the type of people who’ve been brought in. Can progressives manage a major multi-million dollar asset like Pacifica without making alliances with businesses and commercial interests? Can we truly be listener sponsored?
LB: Yes, we can truly be listener sponsored! It doesn’t mean we think we’re so high and mighty pure that we exist on another planet. As I said, the Folio always accepted advertising. I’m not aware of any advertising they turned down although I can think of some cases I wouldn’t be happy with it but then I see ads in The Nation that I would wonder about running.
KR: They say they’ll print anything if you pay for it.
LB: I don’t agree with that although it can be debated. But I think you can be listener sponsored. Don’t forget it’s a tremendous accident that these FM radio licenses became worth two hundred or more million dollars. It’s only people who don’t value principles but value property who would look at this as unrealized financial entities. That’s what I think the usurpers on the Pacifica Nation Board are all about. And Mary Frances Berry very cleverly made sure she would have mostly African-Americans without interest in Pacifica’s core principles to help her carry out her dirty work so that she could yell "racist" at people who try to stop them.
What Berry and her cronies don’t understand is that there’s no price you can put on free speech or community expression and community control. There’s no price you can put on any of the true values of Pacifica even though the stations’ frequencies happen to be worth a lot of money. Myself, I can’t think of anything I would like to see done with the assets of KPFA and WBAI other than what they were intended to be used for. KPFA is not money to me. It’s where I’ve tried to develop and practice principles consistent with the values of the organization. If I wanted to work for money I never would have left commercial radio.
KR: What about the sources of revenue like the affiliates and the sidebands?
LB: The affiliates bring in almost no money. If they bring in $100,000 out of nine million a year I’d be surprised. Most of those stations are very poor and don’t pay much. The sidebands can bring in money and have been rented traditionally for things like readings for the blind or communications channels for high schools. They are a significant source of revenue when well managed, nothing wrong with that.
KR: There’s enough money coming from places other than the stations to give the national governing board enough resources to be dangerous.
LB: Any money that gets into their hands now is dangerous, including the 17% or more they get from the stations and the $100,000 they’re charging KPFA per year for their outrageous attack on the station. They do whatever they damn please with this money which is why we have to get this board of directors out of there. And one of the steps of getting them out and to prove their malfeasance is to get full disclosure of the finances. That’s why Pacifica has fought so hard to keep any of the current lawsuits against them from proceeding. And, incidentally, we have no idea where they’re getting the money to oppose our lawsuits. Only when we get our legal actions in motion will we being to understand what I suspect are serious depredations that Berry and her cronies have done to destroy the principled operation of Pacifica.
KR: When the National Board is removed, should there be other structural safeguards to prevent this from happening again?
LB: Over the years I’ve seen the national board and national office completely changed from what was consistent with Pacifica’s principles. Yes, there have to be structural differences. The national board should be elected by the subscribers, the same way the local boards should be elected. There are all kinds of ways that creative people of good will can figure out to make a representative and constructive national board consistent with Pacifica’s principles. That’s why the election of the Local Advisory Board is so important; it’s the first step.
But assuming we get an elected national board in place before Pacifica has completely destroyed and bankrupted the organization, we’ll have to revisit how this national office has become a money draining, self perpetuating, useless bureaucracy. Transparency of finances is one of the key elements. Anybody who ever gave a dime to Pacifica who wants to look at these books should be able to. There should be no crony consultants hired, no sweetheart deals made for people who have worked there, no credit cards floating around for executives, no crony lawyers hired. They’re fighting this so hard in part because they want to keep that kind of thing going. It’s a disgusting betrayal of listener money.
KR: Carol Spooner thinks there are legal actions happening that may be able to dissolve the Board fairly quickly. If that happens, there’s a lot of work to be done. Looking at this wonderful demise, do you have any insights into what kind of structure can be formed? For example, the formation of an alternative national board.
LB: It completely depends on who’s on it and how hard they’re going to work. It will involve a major time and energy commitment. There are such people, of course, and they would have to be representative of the signal areas. Jeff Cohen of FAIR put names out over a year ago. He went to the trouble of going to every signal area to find a diverse collection of people who were willing to serve.
KR: There was a problem with that proposal coming from the top down rather than the bottom up.
LB: I think there’s danger in top down. There’s also a danger in excessive bottom-up if you strangle yourself in endless meetings and proceduralism until the last bodies remaining in the room get to decide things. But I have confidence enough in democracy as I’ve seen it practiced wonderfully around this KPFA struggle with so many good people who have come forward that we never knew before.
KR: Those of us working from the bottom up believe in ourselves, our ideals; we believe in our ability not to compromise our values, but it’s a big task.
LB: I’ve seen organizers over the years that I’ve really respected, like Cesar Chavez. He said if you’re right, if your principles are correct and you’re doing the best for the people, you’re going to win. It isn’t easy. It’s easier to sit back and let someone else do it for you.
We believe we have a valid philosophical and political tradition at Pacifica. If we don’t, we’ll find that out; we’ll collapse. But this is a political struggle. If we’re well organized and right, we’re going to win. I had no idea it would be this painful or as difficult and long but we’re not losing. I think we’re going to win this. I don’t intend to stop.
Going back to the Working Assets questions, we have to consider what we’re doing in trying to re-establish Pacifica as...work! I like think that what I want to do, and what I believe I do best, can allow me to survive economically. In fact, I really liked working for Pacifica over the years until we got this cast of characters, starting with Pat Scott and leading through Mary Frances Berry, that are completely off track. There are plenty of Pacifica people and potential Pacifica people who have a lot to contribute. We’ve lost a lot of very good people at KPFA and in the network because of Berry and her gang’s activities. But we can rebuild and the more we have the kind of freedom of speech we have on KPFA, the more they will surface.
There are difficult internal processes that are imperfect and always have to be worked on and updated. But by and large over the years we’ve done a good job incorporating change and renovating structures. Perfect, no; far from it. But there are a lot of people of good will still there and more attracted all the time. We have to keep working, the lawsuits have to very quickly get to discovery of the books to see what they’ve done with the money and we’ve got to get that board out of there.
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