Analysis
A Sad Victory
By Paul DeRienzo
The news, apparently in the form of a letter from WBAI General Manager Don Rojas, that he will be undertaking a "comprehensive review of all the station's fund-raising activities," after the second dismal showing of a WBAI fundraising marathon in as many months is a victory of sorts, but nevertheless a sad victory, for listeners and supporters of Natural Living. GM Rojas points out in his purported statement (Rojas’ letter is yet to be published on the official wbai.org website) that during last month’s "mini-marathon" at WBAI "…we raised around $160,000 in pledges (our goal was $300,000)." The June marathon was an exceptional event necessitated by a dismal showing during the regularly scheduled 3-week spring marathon, which fell more than $200,000 below the officially stated goal. This nearly half-million dollar shortfall in just two short months, following what apparently (at least according to WBAI issues press releases and a national TV appearance by Pacifica Executive Director Dan Coughlin) were record-breaking fall and winter marathons follows the removal of Gary Null from the Wednesday show where he has broadcast for the past 26-years. Considering that these last two failed fundraisers occurred after the initial month of combat in Iraq during a severe national crisis, a time when WBAI has traditionally been at its best and raised the most cash support, then this event is a sign that Gary Null’s audience sat this one out and that WBAIs Program Director Bernard White has dropped the ball.
General Manager Rojas also informs the WBAI community that, "we must raise around $1.2 million net in each of our three major fund drives and around $250,000 net in our mini-summer drive," amounting to a total of nearly 4 million dollars in the next year, an amount that GM Rojas himself says "…is barely adequate to function effectively as New York's radio voice for peace and justice." Despite GM Rojas’ eloquent exposition of the financial problems facing WBAI he nowhere hazards an analysis of why WBAI has failed. The reasons for WBAIs pathetic failure are numerous and mostly obvious.
Traditionally most of the money raised to support WBAI has come from the efforts of Gary Null. When WBAI first broke the million-dollar fundraiser barrier under Valerie Van Isler more than a third of all the funds raised came from Gary Null’s programming. Gary went all out for WBAI, despite the fact that in 26-years he has not been paid for his services, nor has he received any help to cover the expenses of putting on his show for WBAI. He’s paid for his own ISDN lines and connection-time, he’s paid his production and research staff out of his own pocket, and Gary has on numerous occasions forgiven WBAI the wholesale costs of the books and videos that he provides (an amount limited to no more then 10% of the premium charged for each item), and Gary has on occasion even paid the mailing costs for his premiums when WBAI could not (an amount equal to about $30,0000 per mailing).
Look at how much that WBAI is down in its recent fundraising, look how little Gary Null was allowed to raise by Program Director Bernard White, look at Gary’s performance on Pacifica stations KPFK in Los Angeles and WPFW in Washington DC. It’s clear that the shortfall at WBAI is equal to what Gary would have raised if it weren’t for personal animosity of Bernard White towards Gary Null. Why is there this animosity? That question can only be answered by Mr. White himself. But we can guess that the reason is connected to Gary Null’s 560-page report on the Pacifica crisis, parts of which were read over the air on WBAI last summer. White and his supporters obviously do not want anyone to talk about the internal politics of WBAI on air. That’s ironic because Mr. White’s own struggle against Pacifica in 2001 was based on an alleged gag rule by Pacifica management concerning internal station politics. The so-called gag rule was extremely unpopular then, but now with the shoe on the other foot a de facto gag rule, backed up by more than 75 firings and banning carried out by the current Pacifica and WBAI management, now aimed primarily at Gary Null is in force.
The fact is that anyone else who had undertaken the same report would have found the same results.
The fact remains that when WBAI claims that you are supporting Gary Null when you purchase a premium, it’s not true, you are not supporting Gary Null. Gary doesn’t get a penny, many at WBAI hate Gary and they hate the show.
Gary Null’s show was preferred for syndication by Pacifica over other shows like Democracy Now, by former respected program directors Andrew Phillips and Samori Marksman. Yet the group around Mr. White manipulated backroom politics to sabotage and undermine those manager’s efforts.
The only way to fix this problem is to return Gary Null to Wednesday’s on WBAI, his home for more than a quarter of a century.
