FYI - At the end of this email I have appended an article from the internet that ought to shame Pacifica. Following that article is a copy of a recent letter from a senior KPFK producer revealing specific figures from a recent KPFK fund drive. I reprint them here to remind people (sigh, once again), that there is a quick and cost-free solution to WBAI's (and Pacifica's) worsening financial crisis. And that is to ask Gary Null to bring his program back to WBAI -- provided, of course, that he could even be persuaded to return -- as well as to other Pacifica stations. Not that anyone with influence in Pacifica will bother to consider this rather simple and sensible course of action, because it would require them to re-examine their misinformed prejudices, and perhaps also require them to apologize -- not merely to Null -- but to the entire WBAI membership for allowing (and in some cases even assisting) the station's program director, Bernard White, to fire Null without cause, in order to gratify a personal political vendetta that had nothing at all to do with WBAI's programming, and indeed has been the largest contributing factor to WBAI's bankruptcy for the last 3 years -- and one of the main reasons that WBAI may not be able to survive as we have known it, if it manages to survive at all. For 27 years, until he was fired in December 2004, Null regularly raised up to a third of WBAI's revenue. And in 2007, and again 2008, he was responsible for rescuing KPFK's fund drives from failure. In the same years (and in virtually every prior year) he was also the top fund raiser for WPFW. For WBAI, the consequence of Null's firing has been that no fund drive since his firing has been able to achieve its stated goal in the time allotted. In fact, almost all have failed to reach their goals by almost precisely the amount of money that Null used to bring in. As a result, WBAI is bankrupt (nearly half a million dollars in debt) and has been so for almost every year since Null's firing. Am I saying that the financial health (and audience stability) of WBAI for 27 years was almost totally dependent on Gary Null? The answer -- no matter how unpalatable many might find it -- is yes. (Or rather, more or less "yes," since after February 1996, Democracy Now, which had just begun broadcasting, soon became a second pillar on which WBAI's financial stability came to rest, even though Null's audience remained the station's largest, and even though his fundraising ability, on an hour-by-hour basis, regularly outstripped that of Democracy Now.) Having WBAI depend so heavily on Null's fund raising ability was not something that Null himself relished, or even liked to call attention to. Nor did he call attention, either, to the fact that, more than once during his 27 years at WBAI, someone from management would phone him urgently in the middle of the night, asking if he could please rush down to the station with his personal check to cover the station's hugely overdue Con Edison bill, which had to be paid by the next morning or the station would be yanked off the air. (The station never thanked him, and never offered to pay him back; nor did he ever ask it to.) As Null himself pointed out many times, it is extremely unhealthy for a radio station to depend so heavily on a single broadcaster, even if he was that broadcaster. But it is even more unhealthy, as well as monumentally stupid -- as many at WBAI (myself among them) pointed out at the time of Null's firing -- to fire such a vitally important broadcaster without first replacing his audience and revenue stream from other sources. Yet that is what WBAI did -- and it is still suffering the consequences. It is certainly true that other factors besides the firing of Gary Null -- e.g., the overall decline in the economy, the rise of the internet, etc. -- may have contributed to WBAI's financial difficulties, and to those of public radio in general. But it is quite clear, and easily documentable, that by far the biggest blow to WBAI's financial stability dates from Null's firing. With Null gone, WBAI is now almost totally dependent on Democracy Now for its financial survival. Amy Goodman raises approximately 25% of WBAI's (and Pacifica's) yearly revenue (compared with the nearly 33% that Null used to raise for WBAI). If she left, as she might well have done had her contract not been renegotiated at the 11th hour, late in 2007, the entire Pacifica Foundation would blow away within 90 days. But even though Amy Goodman has now promised to stay with Pacifica, we may well wonder -- at what cost? In my opinion (and I have no inside information), the new contract with Amy Goodman may be, if possible, even more costly and humiliating for Pacifica than the one it replaces. As we all (should) remember, the original Democracy Now contract was negotiated in absolute secrecy by former Pacifica Chair Leslie Cagan and former Pacifica Executive Director Dan Coughlin, and was also signed secretly, in June 2002, without a single other member of the national board having read it, let alone been able to comment on its terms, which caused an uproar when leaked to Pacifica's membership. There is another reason to believe that the new Democracy Now contract may be even more onerous than the last. And that is the fact that this new contract, too, was negotiated and signed in absolute secrecy; and that, instead of issuing a network-wide celebratory public announcement that Pacifica's flagship program (and main financial support) had been persuaded to stay, and would not, as many feared, desert the network -- in other words, a triumph that the national office could justly pat itself on the back for -- Pacifica made no public announcement at all, and in fact hid all mention of the contract's renewal (until the October 2007 WBAI election mailing by ACE inadvertently forced Dan Siegel to admit, in an attempt to embarrass ACE, that a new Democracy Now contract had indeed been signed, although he would not utter a word about its terms). Below is an article about the content of Gary Null's broadcasts, reprinted from the internet. No, I didn't write it, but I agree with its conclusions and can confirm its accuracy. I include it to demonstrate that inviting Gary Null back to WBAI would not only help alleviate our fiscal crisis, but would also, as the content of his programs demonstrate, help to fulfill and advance the Pacifica mission. It is also worth bearing in mind that Gary Null himself has earned more prestigious awards for broadcasting than all of Pacifica's other producers put together (not something to be proud of). Here is the article: http://www.leftgatekeepers.com/articles/GaryNullContributionByAngelsOfTheAir waves.htm Gary Null's Contribution to Pacifica Radio Posted By: Angels of the Airwaves Date: Sunday, 5 December 2004, at 8:53 p.m. We decided to do some checking on Gary Null's work. We visited Gary Null's archives. We were surprised. We never knew he had done so many shows. More significantly, we were not fully informed as to how many major movements he either spearheaded or supported. He has done more programs on women's health issues than anyone else on radio, somewhere around 500. He led the effort to end the use of DES, he was instrumental in the banning of DDT, the removal of MSG in baby foods, and was the main voice on the radio working with Dr. Michael Jacobson at the Center for Public Science and public interest in the banning of sulfites. He led the media effort on radio to challenge the Dalkon shield plus The copper coil, since the beginning of synthetic hormone replacement therapy he led the challenge against using them. His radio work started in 1968(long before WBAI). He alone debated the meat industry, the sugar industry, the dairy industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the agricultural industry. By 1972 he had already prepared over 30 major original investigative reports. He, along with some major media, worked with Paul Rudishan of the Agent Orange coalition and recorded over 100 hours of broadcasting to get 3.6 million Viet Nam vets a $2 billion award for damage done to them from Agent Orange. He's done more than 700 programs on the environment. And he was voted environmentalist of the decade by Margaret Meade's Earth First Foundation. He did over 400 programs on the abuses of the mental health system. He led the nations media challenge against fluoridation, and thousands of cities stopped fluoridation because of that. He led the national campaign to remove the use of silver amalgam fillings, as well as the national movement to promote orthomolecular psychiatry. He saved the entire industry of chiropractic, via a series on the politics of the AMA vs. Chiropractic medicine. He did a series of over 100 programs on the plight of Native Americans, including a 10 part series on the All American Genocide Machine. Gary's shows on vegetarianism have helped hundreds of thousands of people to change their lifestyles and diet and this is just a tiny sampling of the major issues he has taken on. Last year alone and up to this banning, he had more original in depth investigative reports than all the other producers combined at WBAI. From pathologizing African Americans by Psychiatry, the drugging of our children, Fatal Fallout and nuclear threats, and more than 37 original reports in the last 24 months. By speaking with 2 people from his office, we were amazed to see that he has won more than 400 awards for his work, including the most prestigious given in broadcasting. Then we called WBAI, WKPFK, WPFW, KPFT and KPFA and after numerous phone calls were made we were able to determine that last year Gary Null won more awards for outstanding broadcasting than all 535 producers from Pacifica combined. So we need to ask- how is it that someone who does so much important work for the left and for progressive causes and is humble enough not to promote these facts; someone who saves lives and influences lifestyles and legislation, is thrown out- and there are still some on the left who seem indifferent about it. Without question there is no one in the history of non commercial radio who has done so much to address the plight of human suffering as Gary Null has. And this does not even include his work in Africa, India and Haiti. Sadly, a number of Pacifica people (including some otherwise very fair and sensible members of the Pacifica National Board) have for some time reflexively sneered whenever Gary Null's name was mentioned -- often without ever having listened to a single one of his programs. They have simply internalized the many snide insults spread about him over WBAI's airwaves for the past several years, very unprofessionally, by the program director, Bernard White, on his 15-hour-a-week Wakeup Call show. White is helped in this by Erroll Maitland and others who never lose an opportunity to come up with insulting remarks about Null on the air. Listeners who do not know of Null's work hear this and, since radio voices are usually trusted, believe what they hear. >From our above investigation, however, it appears that the Null putdowns are unjustified. And it is not Null, but those who have been attacking him, who are doing the biggest disservice to WBAI and its listeners. Now that Null has been fired, he will go elsewhere. But wherever he Ends up, I'm sure it will be a place that actually appreciates what he does for them. It would be a sign of intelligence and ethical responsibility for some members of the Local Station Board and the National Board to speak out against this firing, which I understand was politically motivated and took place with no notice, no due process, no right of appeal, and was a violation of the station's union contract with its unpaid staff. ------------------------------------------ Here is the letter from one of KPFK's senior producers, followed by his report on Gary's fund raising for KPFK. ----- Original Message ----- From: Roy Tuckman <mailto:royetuckman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: [deleted] Sent: Saturday, May 24, 2008 2:03 AM Subject: Gary Null's Fundraising Hi [deleted], These are Gary's figures for the February fund drive. He does this every time - now that he is ''allowed'' to be on in the day. On WBAI he was on from 12-1pm M-F and brought in 50 percent of their income - and after they took him off for internal political reasons, they never had a successful drive. On WPFW he was on M-F also and brought in (I think) about 30 percent of their income. They took off his Wednesdays, and his audience rebelled by not pledging so now they are threatening to take him off altogether. Brilliant plan!!! Gary is not that easy to deal with, but after 18 years with him I can say he is honest and not trying to personally profit from the station (he doesn't need us) and he has already been where some want to go (Oprah, Donohue, commercial radio etc). As I told the National Board last year - we have to listen to the listeners. Gary doesn't just give health advice, he is a health advocate and environmental activist par excellence. It is only our unfortunate internal politics that keeps him out and keeps us poor. One of the difficult things about Gary is that he want accounting in detail of his fundraising hours, in hard copy on station letterhead. Well, it's not too big a price I guess. I might be able to find my letters from earlier fund drives if you want, but I'll have to search my station computer. Roy [Tuckman] 323 876 3175 March 5, 2008 To Whom it May Concern: KPFK has just finished our Winter Fund Drive in 19 days (456 hours) with an on air pledge total of $1,226,875. A major portion of this total was brought in by Gary Null who, in 35 hours, brought in $221,935, over 18 percent of the income within 7.6 percent of the hours of fundraising. Furthermore, Gary's fundraising, both live and rebroadcast on CD, was broadcast totally in either the low audience hours of weekdays after midnight or during afternoons or evenings where his voice and his program are unknown to the audiences. In addition, while the average pledge to the station was about $122.00, the average pledge during Gary's hours was $88, meaning that even more people called in responding to his appeals than the figures reveal. 2520 people responded to Gary's fundraising appeals. In the entire fund drive, the average income was $2690.50 per hour while during Gary's time, the average income was $6341 per hour. He established several records. In the entire fund drive, the station brought in over $10,000 in an hour 18 times, and of these, Gary Null made it 7 times and of the top hours in the entire fund drive, Gary's hours rank first through 6th highest income hours, from $16,000 to $23,000. On Wednesday afternoon, February 27, from 2-4pm, he brought in $21,760. On the two previous Wednesday afternoons, playing popular and successful programs, the station brought in $8510 and $12,155. On Thursday afternoon, 2/21 he brought in $17,500 between 2-4pm and on Thursday the 28th, between 1-4pm, he brought in $29,450.00 On the previous Thursday, without Gary Null, the station brought in $3575 between 2-4pm and $6960 between 1-4pm. On Thursday evening, February 28th, Gary's CD pitches brought in $9470 between 8-10pm. On the previous Thursday evenings, using popular programs, the station brought in $4795 and $4300 respectively in those hours. As an experiment, the station put on CDs of Gary fundraising on Saturday, March 1, between 8-10am which brought in $15,010. On the two previous Saturday mornings, with popular programs, the station brought in $2355 and $2800 respectively during these hours. Gary pitched live on two Saturdays between 11am-2pm to new audiences. He brought in $27,515 the first week and $47,750 the second, which include the top, second, and third highest hours of the entire fund drive. On the first Saturday, the station's special programming brought in $16.680 with popular programs. On my night show on Tuesday night between midnight and 5:30am where Gary is familiar to the audience, the overnight totals were $5735, $30,655, and $12,710. The nightly totals for my program which is on Monday through Thursday nights, midnight to 5:30am ran from $1100 to $5300 except on Gary's night which is Tuesday night. His totals for his three nights were $5785, $30,655, and $12,710. His all time record for the night show is slightly over $35,000 which topped the previous all-time record of $11,500 attained before Gary appeared on the show. Gary established the top fundraising hours during the fund drive and without doubt received the largest number of pledge calls during his times, breaking many records. In my 31 years of broadcasting on KPFK I have never seen anyone equal his record breaking fundraising acumen. I will be happy to discuss any of this with interested parties. My voicemail is (818) 985-2711 ext. 221 and email rtuckman@xxxxxxxx Yours truly, Roy E. Tuckman Host-Producer-Engineer