The only thing WBAI has money left for is the transmitter bill at the Empire State Building.
They won’t be able to make payroll, so all of the on-air staff has been laid off. They can’t keep paying the $40k/month for their building on Wall Street in New York City. They owe a lot of money to the company that produces Democracy Now. They have been in fund raising mode all year and no money is coming in.
The goose is cooked.
http://stream.wbai.org/64kmp3stereo.pls
How could Obama let this happen?
WBAI-FM is 4,300 watts and reaches all of New York City. I bet CBS would make them an offer.
They are a non-commercial station on a commercial frequency. Something might be buzzing at their antenna atop the Empire State Building. 😉
The guy who writes the NE radio watch newsletter guesses the license is worth about $50 million. What pushed them over the edge was the Empire State folks took them to court for non-payment. I think what then happened is the mother ship in Oakland CA said OK we’ll bail you out for a month, but only if you turn the keys over to us.
Lots of details were leaking out as this is very contentious – they mentioned that Democracy Now! (Which started at WBAI) has an annual budget of $13 million, roughly the same as all of Pacifica’s stations combined. Amy is doing very well for someone who hates rich people.
I thought it was just the AM stations who are in the Death Spiral.
Anyway, why pay $40k/month for a building on Wall Street? Why pay for on-air staff? Get some illegals, everybody else is doing it. Those people were going to get fired anyway. Once the Immigration Bill is passed fewer natural citizens will ever be hired since the illegals will be made legal and employers will not have to pay for their ObamaCare. If there are 30 million people without health care insurance now in 2013, that number will triple or even quadruple in 2014.
Not to worry folks, everything is going according to the Plan.
AM is further down the path – but one of the things WBAI said this morning is they realized they made the mistake of ignoring young people and social media. They were targeting the anti war baby boomers who are now either dead, broke or living in Florida. About the last thing your typical 20 year old is going to do is tune in to hear Amy Goodman ranting about death squads in Paraguay killing peasants.
They’ve faded with their interest in César Estrada Chávez.
Just wait till the ‘death squads’ in America ramp up, then it’ll be wayyyyy toooooo late! They did not heed the call of the NRA.