PNB Meeting - Jan 2007 - KPFA Report

Administration:

Financial Position:

We have just completed our November financials with a projection for the remainder of the year. If our spending remains on budget we will meet our expenses this year with a minimal deficit.

Our savings account is holding steady at $700,000. There is enough money in the checking account to get us through mid February when fund drive revenue starts coming in. Our balance sheet for the month of November looks very good.

Compliance with FCC Regulations:

KPFA continues to be vigilant about compliance with the FCC’s policies on obscenity, indecency and profanity. While aware of the importance of our Constitutional rights, the management team continues to raise awareness among staff to observe compliance, while at the same time taking clear action against violations to ensure that KPFA’s and KFCF’s licenses are not jeopardized.

In the coming three months we plan to take similar steps to ensure compliance with payola/plugola regulations.

Programming:

Report from KPFA Interim Program Director, Sasha Lilley

This year KPFA can expect to build on its trailblazing fifty-seven year history, by both drawing on the strengths of the past and embracing new means to reach younger and more diverse audiences.  We are well positioned to do so.

In the past year, KPFA proudly upheld its mission of promoting peace and investigating the causes of conflict, whether in Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine, or Oaxaca, Mexico.  On May Day, KPFA covered the largest strike in US history, with daylong reports from immigrants in the streets of cities around the country. We ran special coverage of Israel's attack on Lebanon, explored what was at stake in the November elections, and recently spearheaded national coverage of the Gates hearings and Bush's plan to escalate the occupation of Iraq.

Our music programmers continued to open our ears to the richness of sounds from around the world, featuring live interviews and performances with Susana Baca, Zakir Hussein, T-Bone Burnett, Lenine, Blackalicious, Spanish Harlem Orchestra, Bela Fleck, Two Foot Yard, Badi Assad, Judith Owen and Harry Shearer, among many others. KPFA's arts and literature hosts brought to the air interviews with luminaries like Gore Vidal, Zadie Smith, Francisco Letelier, Tony Kushner, as well as innovative documentaries and compelling radio dramas. And our daily public affairs programs touched on a wide range of issues, from AIDS in the African American community to the history of Jewish anarchism, from the Nicaraguan presidential election to the crisis in public education, from hip hop star Mos Def to labor struggles in France. And that's to say nothing of KPFA's ongoing local and regional news coverage, including from our Labor, Environmental Justice, and State Capitol reporters.

Not only is our terrestrial listenership is loyal and stable; we have been very successful in adopting new media platforms.  Every day, listeners from all over California, the United States, and the world tune into kpfa.org. Thanks to the superlative work of our web director Michael Manoochehri, they can listen via streaming audio, downloads, and podcasts from one of the largest online archives of any US radio station (archiving more than three years of programming, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week).

There is, however, still much room for improvement.  KPFA and Pacifica were founded on the dual principles of dialogue and dissent.  While our station does well in airing voices of dissent, we do less well in presenting voices in dialogue and debate, in accordance with our mission. We tend to forget that there is a wide range of disagreements within the Left and often the more radical voices get lost.  In the next months, KPFA will be airing debates on controversies amongst progressives and will be encouraging programmers to include differing perspectives on their shows.

We will lay the groundwork to get back to our celebrated roots by mentoring programmers in making sound-rich radio documentaries.  This will allow a greater diversity of voices to be heard, while moving beyond the somewhat predictable sound of our station.  Simultaneously, KPFA plans to reorient its programming to be more inclusive of the larger region in which we operate, given that our signal, in concert with that of KFCF, reaches a third of California.

Operations:

Report from KPFA Chief Engineer, Michael Yoshida

Oakley Booster. As of the end of November the Oakley booster has been operating at 45 watts. We have received messages from listeners in Lodi indicating that the signal strength there was increased slightly. Because the carriers are not yet synchronized, there is a slight modulation mismatch exhibiting itself as a constant low-level noise that becomes audible during quiet parts of programs. We still need to adjust the carrier frequency while listening to the radio in the transition zone around Covington behind Mount Diablo. This should take place when Don Mussell returns from one of his contract jobs in early February. If all goes well, I think we should be ready to enter into a lease agreement with KSTN for tower and transmitter space but the end of February.

Our sister station KFCF is willing to front the money to purchase a new Ku amplifier to replace the SSE-4 transceiver which is on the way out. It could fail any time although it has been behaving recently. Rych Withers has located a new unit for around $10,000 from a company in San Carlos. They don't have any confidence in the used unit we got shipped from WPFW, which came without a manual and without anyone knowing if it’s working, or not. There's no easy way for us to bench test this used gear, which is very different from what we currently have in place. Vic Bedoian, KFCF GM will talk to Greg Guma directly about whether Pacifica can assist KFCF or enter some sort of payment agreement.

NPR is still having reliability issues with their new Content Depot system. Parallel operations will continue beyond the Feb 28 cutoff that was originally announced. Thus we are running dual systems although 95% of our program acquisitions are coming from Content Depot. Only the daily live feed of Democracy Now over the Ku and the backup DAT-tape recording still rely on the legacy NPR system.

I have automated the regular and special switching requirements of the Ku Right channel. So far only the Spanish language newscast is on the right channel daily weekdays. Otherwise it's Pacifica national special events coverage.