Re: KPFA (was MALIK RAHIM: Yesterday’s Radicals Devolve….)
Joseph Wanzala wrote:
For me, as long the process is democratic, it provides a potentially level playing feild for the many competing visions, rather than letting whoever happens to be on staff pretty much decide everything.
One of the problems I have with this is the definition of “democratic.” The constituency for a radio station is highly plastic, and the number of votes required to win seats on the board is quite small (as low as 200 in some cases). So a gang of loons could easily organize themselves and vote in representative loons, who could then program loonily, shrinking the audience to a hard core of loons, etc. Listeners driven away by poor programming would then have no voice.
But maybe things work better in the Bay Area.
Doug