"Spitting in the Wind"

 The sweaty screed below I had posted on our radio station's message board. Wbai.org is where I work, and or live. 'Been there 34 years so I guess it's home. Anyway we're financially supported by our listeners more or less. 

Lately like the rest if the world we're in a financial shit hole, and actually seem to be deliberately digging ourselves deeper. This below is a rant about how to save our worthless butts from oblivion.

Btw for those just tooling by a "Premium" is a goodie like a book, cd, dvd or some such geegah we use to get folks to give us money. Like I say below we don't always send them to those what paid for'em. ...not good for business.

Anyhow here goes....

Some at this radio station are thinking of an intervention.
An intervention for Wbai.
Much as is done when a friend or family member goes off the rails into something dangerous self destructive.
We discussed meeting with the boss, and not asking, but demanding radical action on the air, and internally.
What we currently do in both of these areas of our responsibility doesn't work.

We've 'failed' the listeners each other the Mission Statement the works.
We're pushing a format out of step with the reality of how folks now listen to the radio.
We've 'never' embraced the newer technologies, and we're culturally stuck in the 20th century..the middle of the 20th century.

'And we're currently in the second the SECOND! Decade of the 21st.
We've failed the listeners I say again.
We actually need to 'Publicly' say this to them.
Say it in the clear on the air with no slippery equivocations. We need to ask them to help us rebuild the once strong trust between us.

A trust we've broken in so many ways. Perhaps best symbolized by so many indeed at one point "Thousands" of unsent 'paid for'...do you hear "Paid For" premiums
Ripping them off year after year by not fulfilling their premiums, and giving them too often uninspired dreary tired programming.

We rarely move anyone. Same'ol same'ol drab routine in the same rut year after year.
We have no sense of humor adventure wackiness curiosity fun or any of the rest of the things that makes a person or institution interesting.

Look you know all this.

 What we have to do is publicly say what everybody on both sides of the mic has known for a very long time now. The damned program grid basically unchanged since the early 1990's needs to go...Now.
Not tinkered with not rearranged not negotiated this way or that.

It needs to pass away.

How we raise money needs to change too. 'And change Now.
We must quickly very quickly go cold turkey off the opiate of excessive dependence on Premiums.

That's a Biggy.

We need to do it, and we need to do it now..at the next fundraiser in May.
As we've seen the listeners 'Will' respond when we offer 'Ourselves' instead of magic water or glow in the dark beans.

'We're' the premium. The listeners Want Us! Not the assorted hacks, and snake oil three card monte artist we foist on them.

There's a reason that our Fund Raisers come in Two to $300,000. short time after time year in, and year out.
The listeners have been sending us a message:

"WE DON'T LIKE WHAT YOU'RE DOING, AND WE'RE NOT GOING TO PAY FOR IT".

They've been demanding telling us to "get it together" for years by their lack of financial support.
They've been saying it, and we've been ignoring it. Instead we sit mystified as to why they don't contribute.

The clear answer was right in our face for YEARS, and we didn't see it.

Instead we dug up more even 'more' offensive do-dads, and cons as premiums. Which of course didn't put us over the top.
These things, and the unchanged programming guaranteed failure.
Yeah we kept doing the same thing again, and again, and again hoping for different results...know what that is? Right.

What would a listener say?

"It's the System Dummy!"

"Your System"

"It it chains you to grey complacency. Makes you blind to how the world really actually is, and the reality that we 'want' to to succeed That, and want you to see as as partners in the station.

WBAI is the Premium.

Just as we've been saying in this emergency "...The Transmitter is your Premium!"

You bet'cha! 'And you've responded in a big way!
When you look at the Empire State Building that's what you brought!

Well when you subscribe in the future that's what you're sending your dough to...the Radio Station! Symbolized by the brightly lit Main Mast of the Empire State Building!

Hey I feel a t-shirt com'n on.

Anyway this is part of what the thinking is here.
Many of us have been relegated to the fringes of this sad circus, and now we need to be in the center ring.

I fear things are so dangerously critical now that change has to be 'forced' on us. Not asked for it or waited for it because there simply isn't the time anymore.

Darwin said nature favors "the most adaptable". Not the "fittest". If it we the latter we'd be up to our butts in sabre tooth tigers.
"...the adaptable".
Well that 'better' be us or we're history.

More later.