Opinion -

The Agony of KPFK

 

By John Martinez

(2756 words)

 

In this third part - Martinez details the regressive policies of KPFK Management in relation to music programming, copyrights, double standards re: promotions, union busting and more under KPFK General Manager Mark Schubb.

Part Three

Returning to Mark Schubb's 'Playground': In1996 I was still in the 'good graces' of K's Management. During a staff meeting GM Schubb said Radio Chican@ could be a program candidate for national distribution. But I began to voice criticisms to Program Director Kathy Lo about the station's negligent coverage of local communities we're supposed to serve. So, rather than emerging as a tokenized programmer of color propped up as a Pacifica/KPFK poster boy from L.A., my internal exile began. Conversations with management/staff became fewer. In1996*** KPFK hired Betto Arcos as programming consultant 'to improve KPFK's on-air sound'. A native of Veracruz Mexico with an arts-oriented radio background, hiring the artsy Betto Arcos to advise K's programming made as much sense as CPBer Lynn Chadwick directing Pacifica National. Trying to establish himself, initially Arcos schooled programmers with an arrogant insecure 'I know best/I'm in charge' attitude. All Arcos offers is mainstream NPR-basic type of programming advice. Whether it's David Acosta on the PNB or Betto Arcos locally at KPFK, they're examples of what I described in part 1: a product of Pacifica's pattern of hiring the colonized/assimilating/mainstreamed persons of color. Maybe with some relevant media experience, they're usually hired due to their skin melanin, ethnicity or culture. But a closer [usually too-late] look proves they're organizational or programming misfits in relation to Pacifica's Mission. With Arcos' arrogant/insecure interactive style and careerist opportunism, many programmers, Spanish Language Programmers included, resisted even Arcos' good advice. As K Management cut Spanish Language Programming from 6 to 3 hours weekly & Radio Chican@ from 60 to 30 minutes in April '97, Arcos is later rewarded the position of 'Operations Director' though he knew little about the technical day to day running of a radio station. I witnessed one day in the run-down/neglected upstairs production graveyard known as PCR-Studio D, as Arcos tried to explain the operating principle of the signal flow when reel to reel machines are in 'playback' & 'record' modes. He couldn't. With limited technical expertise, one initial effect with Arcos as Operations Director was the massive scaling back of live in-studio music performances. On the airwaves, as with Garland Ganter's 'programming vision' with the "Sound of Texas" at KPFT Houston, Betto Arcos with similar 'vision' crafts "The Global Village" in L.A.--15 hours weekly of CD-driven 'World Music' with at least 4 more hours on an already music-saturated weekend schedule. Arcos can and does boast of successful fund drives, but fund drives in the HomeBuyer's Shopping Spree context: mixing CD giveaways, concert tickets & other material goodies. "The Global Village" is a more 'ethnic' b-version of K's local radio role model: music driven NPR affiliate KCRW in Santa Monica. Coincidentally K's 'Music Library' is located in the Operations Director's office. Expanded CD-driven music programming all at the expense of locally produced public affairs and politics.

Let The Music Play/Y2K Coercive: In 1998 several music programmers complained as Mark Schubb tried to grab all rights & the majority of money generated from compilations created via live studio recordings. 25+ year programmers Roz & Howard Larman of "Folkscene" air live studio performances weekly Sunday evenings. The Larman's attorney at that time got Schubb to temporarily back off. But not satisfied with mass purges of grassroots programmers & killing community access via the now non-existent Apprentice Program, late last year K's Management came at programmers again. "Y2K Compliant" is a document they deem necessary in this era of radio webcasts. Straight from KPFK's "Y2K Compliant" Programming Agreement: "Pacifica Foundation/KPFK has successfully negotiated internet agreements with major music publishers ASCAP, BMI and SESAC, which allows KPFK to stream music on the web. This agreement was not only needed to Webcast music shows, but our news, talk programs and even on-air announcements use music affected by copyright issues." K Management fails to mention stations like KPFA have had no such agreement & have webcasted for sometime now. At KPFK it's all about control, and who the Schubb/Cooper/Arcos/Lo clique allows to personally capitalize on the listener-sponsors'/community's airwaves.

While Betto Arcos is creating his public image as an alternative media-arts personality, his in-house reputation among programmers is one of being Schubb's bulldog for his purging & intimidating programmers into obedience. Veteran music programmers like Nigerian-born DJ Namdi have felt Betto Arcos' strong-armed careerist opportunism. Namdi was suspended for promoting the annual African Village Music Festival at the neighboring John Anson Ford Theatre (JAFT) as Namdi resisted managerial control re: his role in the festival. Yet Arcos gets the green light to pimp the hell out of a recent Puertoriquen~o Music Festival. More recently Arcos scores a reduced rental rate at JAFT for the June 20th KPFK Benefit Concert featuring Mexicana Lila Downs and Chicano groovers Quetzal. In exchange Arcos/K must promote JAFT's "Summer Nights at the Ford" concert series. According to series Marketing Director Linda Chiavaroli, Arcos/K agreed, in exchange for a reduced rental rate for the June 20th concert, KPFK would promote, weeks in advance & several times a day via pre-produced PSA's/the airing of the artists' music/interviews with the musicians & ticket giveaways, KPFK's airwaves would 'serve' the Pacifica Mission by promoting this 3-month concert series. More concert promotions while the station hacks the Community Calendar 80%. K's Management should also read their own dictates contained in their 'Y2K Compliant': "Programmers may not receive money or any type of consideration or goods in exchange for air-time or even consideration of air-time. Any such offer is considered a bribe--called "payola"." While listening to 90.7fm Tuesday afternoon July 11th, I heard the DJ promote the same African Village Music Festival management suspended DJ Namdi for promoting. Also, people asked me why members of Quetzal, a conscious creative Chican@ musical collective would participate in a KPFK 'Benefit' after they cut Radio Chicana? I answered that we've only begun to comprehensively raise awareness as to how regressive K has become, and until we've genuinely organized...sorry KPFK, no divide & conquer this time.

Control is the bottom line with K's "Y2K Compliant": "All rights to content and all copyright interests in any and all material produced under this Policy Agreement are assigned to Pacifica/KPFK. Pacifica's rights shall include the worldwide right to distribute the work on any current and/or future communications medium, including the internet. Programming created for and/or executed in the KPFK studios or with KPFK equipment is solely owned by Pacifica/KPFK, unless otherwise agreed upon in writing." Many programmers have already signed Y2K Coercive, some have re-worded the terms to allow K/Pacifica to webcast their programming material...we'll see who are the next programming casualties in the fall-out of Y2K Coercive.

Elitist classism under the Schubb/Arcos School of Managerial Control: the much respected L.A.-based Conscious Hip-Hop DJ 'Dusk-1'. Dusk axed from KPFK's airwaves drew a rare critical article from the L.A Weekly (LAW) where both Arcos & Schubb denied making the cut. Schubb has said the Hip-Hop programs 'alienated K's 30+ years old audience' with way out concepts like One Love. At the PNB Meeting in Houston last year Schubb explained K 'focuses on the 35+ college-educated crowd, and that 'minority' listeners range in the 30th percentile'. A demographic reality check shows whites continue to become the numeric minority in Southern, and all of California. Schubb admitted K's audience surveys didn't even sample Asian Pacific Islanders. Word inside K was that Betto Arcos called for taking Dusk's Conscious Hip-Hop off the air. The L.A. Weekly article about Dusk/Hip-Hop at KPFK was a local media exception, as the LAW rarely writes on the current Pacifica Crisis. After all, L.A. Weekly Executive Editor Harold Meyerson (co-signer on Saul Landau's "Stop the Pacifica Bashing" Letter), Meyerson is a regular guest on K's airwaves. Several LAW writers are given air time as well, trying their hand at playing radio hosts. Meanwhile Conscious Hip-Hop at KPFK has become more marginalized, from 2 weeknight slots now to airing midnight Saturday morning and late night Sunday. Conscious Hip-Hop is more than music. With the current criminalization of urban & working class youth, Hip-Hop raises awareness towards political change in these times of Prop. 21 the Prison Industrial Complex and the National Security State. But what does this have to do with the Pacifica's current 5+ Year Strategic Plan? At KPFK today, there's no in-house station-wide or station/listener dialogue as to what constitutes 'good programming' in the Pacifica context. There's also no managerial creativity to stimulate veteran programmers to rejuvenate or expand their radio collectives in order to produce better programming. It's just 'do what we say or get hacked'.

Libertad: With no station process to appeal KPFK's recent cycle of ethnic cleansing in '97 and after creating my own appeals process and having it rejected by PD Kathy Lo, I informed Radio Chican@/Mexican@/Spanish Language listeners & supporters about the station's internal regressive realities. Dozens responded via e-mails letters faxes & phone calls to the management. Whether support for Chicana Radio came from various local veteran activists or individual listeners, it didn't matter. The now insulated and entrenched KPFK Management now believed they knew best. For speaking out to the community I was "suspended for 2 months" from my KPFK Newsroom base. The Schubb/Lo managerial tag-team rationalized their attacks due to my "insubordination" and "toxic attitude". Actually I was pissed off--suspended for using a newsroom computer & internet account that KPFK management refused to pay for. No management supported internet access for the News Dept. and no managerial hires in 3+ years of any full-time/permanent staff to assist then News Director Frank Stoltze. This was one of several negative organizational by-products of the Pacifica/Schubb labor negotiations1995-97 as now former News Director Stoltze was then a negotiating UE Shop Steward. The newsroom computer & e-mail account was donated by Dave Adelson of current 'Adelson v. Pacifica' fame & Chair of the embattled KPFK LAB. K's LAB was recently given the ultimatum by the all of management & most staff to either remove LAB Chair Adelson, or face their own possible dissolution. After 2+ years of internal-exile, petty insults & harassment by both management & staff, still "suspended for 2 months" from the newsroom 3 years later for not kissing ass, inspired by the Berkeley struggle last summer and better informed about the Pacifica Crisis as Bay Area/KPFA activists visited/protested in L.A., I freed myself from Fort KPFK last October when what was left of Chicana Radio exposed, for it's entire 30 minutes, the current Pacifica Crisis. Former volunteer & Free Pacifica activist Siu Hin Lee videotaped in master control as Radio Chican@ documented the crisis to appreciative listeners. To avoid conflict I persuaded the engineer to turn down the volume in Master Control as the program aired, as I "wanted to get to know him better". 24 of the 25 calls that half-hour were supportive. The one possible dissenting call came from K's Program Director Kathy Lo. For some reason the line went dead after we identified her voice...?What Gag Rule? But KPFK Management's in-house/on-air clampdown on independent thought hit dozens of other paid & unpaid staff, dedicated volunteers.

Neo-Liberal Worker Flexibility-KPFK Style: Sara Harris was assistant to Program Director Kathy Lo from November '98 to May '99. In KPFK's twisted work culture today Sara had a big problem: she actually spoke her mind. I met her in KPFK's kitchen area one day as she told me how much she enjoyed Radio Chican@. I told her to keep that under wraps. She initially survived well enough to be allotted a weekly program 'Radio Active'. Somewhere it finally went wrong between Sara & KPFK Management. According to former Apprenticeship Director morning host and UE Shop Steward Marcos Frommer, in a October 14 1999 e-mail after leaving the station "Schubb fires a union member whom the PD can't get along with (there are many people program director Kathy Lo can't seem to get along with) and then [Schubb] tries to claim that she's not a union member (thus not subject to progressive discipline); on legally shaky ground he decides instead of firing her to make her life so miserable that she's forced to resign; he tells me in a "confidential" meeting "it doesn't matter how she performs: I'm going to fire her anyway". A typical K post-script: after resigning Sara Harris then applied for a position upstairs in the same building at the Pacifica Radio Archives. K's PD Kathy Lo personally told the National Archives Office not to hire her. Sara later decided to not to pursue the application for the position. One more time from "Y2K Compliant": "I understand that if I breach this agreement, I may lose the privilege of producing at KPFK." Ah, the privilege of being at KPFK.

Like Ronald Reagan, Mark Schubb claimed union experience via the Screen Actors Guild. He also had a brief stay with Jim Hightower's Texas radio program. As Lyn Gerry, long time KPFK volunteer/staffer former UE Shop Steward now veteran Pacifica Dissident tells it: union busting via the Schubb regime came early during the marathon '95-97 contract negotiations as management hired the American Consulting Group (ACG). One of ACG's mottoes: "Maintaining Productivity & Profitability: The Secret to Being Union Free". Management was exposed for hiring the union busting ACG, but as Schubb claimed ignorance GM/PD manipulator & veteran programmer Marc Cooper of 'Radio Nation' would later apologize for it in print. We were further warned in 1996 about the new KPFK GM's 'essence' during the 'Media & Democracy Congress' in the bay area. Then KPFK News Director Frank Stoltze & I rode with Hollie Ainbinder to the airport. A former co-worker in L.A. with Mark Schubb at the office of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, Hollie Ainbinder dreaded detailing Schubb's combative manner. In near tears she told us about Schubb's conflictive behavior 'like a little boy who balls up his fists & refuses to let go'.

Again from Mark Schubb's KPFK 'playground': contract negotiations begun in September '95 between Schubb & KPFK UE drag on for over 2 contentious years. Previous negotiations took less than a month. These negotiations hit a impasse that was only resolved as Pacifica 'professionalizer' Pat Scott came in & ended this playground session in less than a week. UE ratified the contract in December '97. Terms of the contract: gone were decision-making guarantees of staff inclusion re: hiring. Gone also: staff consultation as to policy during layoffs. But 'management's rights' expanded in the contract's vague language where Schubb & Co. could hide, like during the stalled hiring in the KPFK Newsroom. KPFK paid & unpaid workers/volunteers were further divided by the new contract job categories "On Air" "Hourly" and "Other Support Positions". All the while, no contractual mention or above-board station policy re: the rights of unpaid workers or volunteers. In 1995 K had 16 UE members 2 'temporary' employees (I was one as Premiums Coordinator) and 4 management. Today there's 10 UE members from the staff, 9 paid employees with an unclear status, and 3 management: GM Mark Schubb PD Kathy Lo & OD Betto Arcos. A recent example of the incestuous nature of KPFK's hiring policies includes the Assistant to the GM, a position held by Candy Cooper, sister of staunch Schubb ally, Marc Cooper. Chief UE Shop Steward of the bosses' union at KPFK today is Heidi Pickman, staff assistant for the daily drive time program 'Marc Cooper's Daily Review'.

Again from Marcos Frommer's farewell e-mail "...the management style of...Mark Schubb, whose rather unique mix of Nixonian paranoia, frequent retaliation, and campaigns of intimidation has left the staff divided & has caused the departure of some of the best staff members & volunteers." At least Frommer left on his own time-line. Morning co-host with Frommer was Kathy Gory. She was given 24 hours notice to vacate. Of the dozens of KPFK volunteers 'disappeared', David Saenz was ousted after he raises the issue of Barnes & Noble corporate underwriting credits aired on K during the series 'Story Lines California". One outspoken ally of the Schubb regime, on the basis of in-station 'order' and 'fiscal responsibility' is Pacifica rerun Marc Cooper.

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**OUTRO: John Martinez will return next month with details of the antics of Pacifica apologist Marc Cooper. He'll also analyze KPFK's recent Fund Drives, and detail the current struggle of the KPFK LAB.