Site Presented By
Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Not that much has changed on the Houston schedule so far. But by replacing one daily three-hour music block with a diverse, constantly changing lineup of shows covering everything from labor issues to Tejano culture to poetry, the station has already increased its locally produced talk programming from 6 to 21 hours a week. It's also rethinking the syndicated material it airs, and has already dropped Public Radio International's daily newsmagazine "The World" in favor of "Flashpoints," a more radical program produced at KPFA. (It was in a Flashpoints interview that Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., made her infamous accusations about President Bush's alleged foreknowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks.)
KPFT plans still more new programs, from a teachers' show to a show produced by and for those they teach. "There's a school where they have a recording studio," says Maclay. "The kids go there after school, they're just doing wild stuff. We're looking at getting them involved.
"We're determined to have this be a real Pacifica station," he adds. "That means offering things that are not heard in other places. We've got probably 15 talk shows in this town, besides what we do, and they are all absolutely right-wing. Though G. Gordon Liddy's show got dumped -- he was too hot for Houston."
When I half-jokingly suggest that KPFT could give Liddy a time slot, Maclay replies, "I would seriously consider it. I don't agree with him, but of all of the right-wing talk shows, he's by far the most interesting. He's somebody who has a connection with what he believes, some underpinnings. Most of these other guys are disc jockeys who discovered that if they talk right-wing, they can make money. Liddy at least would engage with some issues." And engagement, Maclay feels, is what Pacifica should be about.
Then there's Los Angeles. It's hard to say what shape the station there will take: The new general manager, Eva Georgia, has only just been hired. Two things are sure, though: At least some of the people at KPFK the station are thinking creatively about how it might be improved, and whatever direction the station goes will mark a change from the immediate past.
The previous administration's philosophy had been to build an audience with predictable "strip" programming, in which a listener knows he'll hear the same sort of show at the same time each day. The former managers claim to have doubled or even tripled their listenership this way, but the figures don't quite add up. "There are different definitions of growth," notes David Adelson. "The type they were trying to optimize was time spent listening by a core audience," that is, by people who listen to you more than other stations. Under Mark Schubb, KPFK increased the number of listeners who donated to the station by about 20 percent and increased the amount of money they were bringing in by 100 percent -- but didn't actually increase the total number of listeners at all.
Since the recent regime change, a few programmers have left, but the basic structure of the schedule has stayed the same, with personality-driven talk shows dominating the morning and afternoon drive times. It's unclear how far KPFK will move from this model, but Adelson thinks the issue needs to be discussed. "It's not that I dislike it particularly," he says. "What I object to with personality-driven programming is that you're trying to form a bond of trust between the audience and the programmer. The audience takes what the host is saying as true based on that trust as opposed to their own critical analysis of what's being said."
So what's the alternative? "You ask questions about what the evidence is for each assertion," Adelson replies. "When somebody talks about how the paramilitaries and death squads in Latin America are linked to the right-wing government or the U.S. or whatever, I would like somebody, rather than using that as a starting point, to ask, 'How do we know that?' There's a difference between preaching to the choir and teaching the choir. The choir can go out and talk to other people in the community, but not if they're just echoing things that they're already comfortable believing."
There's a clear tension between this model and the popular stereotype of Pacifica as an outpost for ideologues, and Adelson, although clearly a man of the radical left, is uncomfortable with the idea that Pacifica should limit itself to "left-wing radio." The point isn't that it should attempt a "Crossfire"-style "balance," but that its hosts should be as willing to question their own ideological framework as they are to probe the cracks in other points of view. Adelson also calls for more "unmediated voices," presented without a host poised to interpret everything into familiar political categories.
Along those lines, he proposes that KPFK start covering community sports, such as the extensive networks of city soccer and basketball leagues in which so many of Los Angeles' Latino and African-American residents participate. "The city soccer leagues have every low-income immigrant community in Los Angeles involved in them," Adelson says. "You have people who are specifically tuning in to hear that, and you could put on a program right after which is specifically dealing with issues of interest to those communities. These are people who come from places that have an actual political spectrum, who are familiar with political discussions and have a particular take as immigrants on what it means to be in this country, what their expectations are of it, and why they left."
