2024-05 GM Report to the Local Station Board

General Manager's Report to the Local Station Board May 12, 2024

Technical matters and the move

We continue to face technical, material, personnel and financial challenges because of the required move to the new rented location in Glendale, which we persevere in addressing and overcoming. The most recent was the failure of the board during an overnight shift when a music programmer was operating it during what otherwise would've been an automated period. The next music programmer in early Saturday morning was able to communicate with me, and I drew in Moe Thomas, the Pacifica chief engineer, Charlie Wilken, our interim (unpaid) operations manager, and volunteer audio and networking technician Ian Scott, and were able to get the baord up and running again, but other audio input/output problems persisted. The cause was apparently a heat induced excessive power spike that tripped an local circuit breaker on one of the racks of tech gear; workarounds and solutions are in the planning stages and will be implemented this week.

We are in the process of setting up a direct studio-to-transmitter link from the new location and getting it licensed as an addition to our existing but not currently in-use STL from 3729 Cahuenga (that we will eventually return to). This involved the purchases of antennas/dishes for the roof of the new facility and for the tower on Mount Wilson; the former has been installed and is being readied for use, and the latter will involve a tower climb later in May that will also allow some other needed work and checking to be done on the tower, including looking for air leaks that allow moisture into some of the lines to the antennas, a problem can be solved (at additional expense at a later date once we identify them). This will involve definitely reducing power further for the climb, and possibly cutting power for a period of time on May 21 if time permits climbing to higher elevations on the tower to do that checking. Several people have committed to being involved as needed on the ground, and we have contracted with a pair of experience tower climbers needed for the climb to install the dish and check the lines if possible.

We have sent several failed power supplies from the transmitter to a company that Charlie found that promises to repair them fairly economically, and to warranty the results, as a test case; if they are successful, we have about a dozen more older power supplies that we can have refurbished similarly, which would allow us to return to full power on the transmitter and probably lengthen its life. KPFK chief engineer Stuart Landau is also planning a trip up to the Santa Barbara translator site  with Ian Scott to install a longer antenna higher on the hillside there to get our 98.7 Santa Barbara County signal back up.

I have been able to get KPFK streaming restored on MyTuner and vradioapp.com, but we have had nagging problems with TuneIn despite repeated service tickets; Otis Maclay, a national technical and compliance officer for Pacifica, is working on trying to identify the cause and resolve the problem. I have urged the ED to follow up on an offer I received from Amazon to allow our stations access free of charge and with the potential of advertising revenue at our option, on their Echo smart speaker platform (Alexa, play KPFK...). We are also moving towards replacing our Microsoft based email and utilities system with similar functions from Google for Non-profits, which is what all other Pacifica stations are already using, which will hopefully solve some nagging email and related issues and also allow us to participate more fully in certain shared services and communication channels with the

Escrow is now scheduled to close June 5, and I am working on getting most operations and staff moved out and to the new location prior to that. We may have access to some office furnishings and furniture from another tenant in the new location who is moving out, that is newer than most of what he have at 3729 Cahuenga, and would be easier to move just across the hall rather than trucking over from Studio City, but there are servers and phone lines that also need to be moved, so we are working on scheduling that with the service provider.

Programming

Marlena Bond, the interim unpaid program director and I are working on putting together an advisory program council to assist with evaluation of existing and proposed programming, and we have also submitted to the LSB programming oversight committee a chart of our existing programming (and some podcasting) and its target audience and subject matter focus, with the aim of continuing improvement and development of our programming to meet community needs and to rebuild our audience and impact. I have urged the ED and PNB, and got some immediate concurrence from other GMs that Pacifica should immediately move to offer ourselves as a platform for Chris Hedges for his Report program, which was canceled by The Real News Network. I hope that can come to rapid fruition. We have been actively seeking additional programming from and focused on Asian-American-Pacifica-Islander communities and have a couple of prospects or possibilities but not yet any firm proposals or commitments. We will be carrying special (inter)national English-language 24-hour programming from the Radio Free Palestine project for Nakbah Day, May 15, the anniversary of the dispossession of Palestinians from their homeland in 1948 into refugee camps and an international diaspora. This is being coordinated and produced by our sister station WPFW in Washington DC and in particular by its PD, Katea Stitt. A number of our programmers have provided content, including Middle East in Focus and Radio Intifada from the SWANA Region collective, as well as Out-FM that we have picked up as part of Somethings Happening from our sister station WBAI.

Finances and Fundraising

As I mentioned last month, we were technically in the black including central services for the first quarter of the current fiscal year, 10/1/23-12/31/23, although this is somewhat an artifact of bookkeeping, as in fact the large number of aged payable from earlier fiscal years that we had to pay down meant that we could not in fact make the Central Services payments. However our payroll continued to shrink during that period, and has continued since, due to voluntary departures, attrition, the end of severances, and the increase in volunteer unpaid staff involved in the move. We have also paid off the back-due bills to Southern California Edison and are current for the first time in more than two years with them, reducing expenses by the $3000 a month we were paying them to whittle down the past-due amounts as part of a payment plan. We still have many aged payables, including to the platform that handles our credit card processing and donor data base that  is part of a larger sum owed to them by Pacifica as a whole; there is a plan to pay that off from proceeds of the sale.

The major donor efforts and the project to expand underwriting from local small businesses, community organizations and compatible non-profits, in compliance with FCC regs and the limits and stricture of a PNB policy, have been back-burnered slightly because of the ongoing demands of the move and the related tech and training challenges, but we anticipate getting them up and running again soon, and incorporating those revenue streams into budget planning for the next fiscal year. I have a meeting scheduled with the Executive Director and the National Business Manager for Wednesday, to begin drafting a management proposal for the FY2025 budget which we anticipate bringing to the LSB treasurer and local LSB Finance Committee by the end of the month, and to the LSB for a special budget meeting in June, hopefully with the outcome a balanced budget that the LSB can forward to the National Finance Committee and the PNB. We have been in discussions with the new LSB treasurer Stephen Meeks, about that. We may plan some p/t hires or consults.

The move has been very challenging financially because of the repeated delays in closing escrow in order to clear some real and some phantom liens on the Studio City property. This has meant we have had to cover the rent and the equipment purchases and related expenses from current revenues (and to rely on various expenditures being met out of pocket at least temporarily by the chief engineers and other employees, and by a number of unpaid staff members, who will need to be reimbursed). And as noted above there are further such costs at the tower necessitated by the move, in terms of both equipment and contracted personnel.

The last on-air membership and funding drive was short, April 9-26, because of the extension of the prior, February, drive into March, and the demands of the move. The next one will begin in June, date to be determined after further consultation with the membership department in particular, because of the demands of and issues related to the not-yet-fully-completed move. We thankfully received a very large bequest (which has the potential of an additional sum once the trust involved is fully accounted for) which has eased our financial burden and stress and allowed the payment of some nagging aged payables going back more than two full calendar years, and to stay current on payroll.

I have obtained a pro-bono consultant on social media marketing and promotion through the auspices of the Taproot Foundation, which puts non-profits in touch with such potential no-cost professional expertise, and I am in the process of putting together a social media marketing team. Volunteers are welcome and needed. This will require the capacity to produce, edit, and upload meaningful and attractive video content on multiple platforms. We are looking into services such as Streamyard for this purpose. In the process I have also been seeking access to and reviving a number of social media platforms, including especially YouTube and LinkedIn, which other non-profits use effectively.

Governance and elections

The ED has hired Renee Peñaloza as 2024 National Election Supervisor, and the next delegate election process is essentially underway. I have posted the timeline to the website, and included a notice of it in the Dispatch, and we will begin airing carts from the NES this week. I am committed to having on-air candidate forums with listener call-ins, as we did during the last cycle, and as is required by the Bylaws. The date of record for membership is June 30, which is also the deadline for nominations, and I am preparing a preliminary staff membership list and have asked Terry Guy and the membership dept. to prepare a preliminary listener membership report for the NES.

I missed my monthly on-air report to the listener last month due a somewhat protracted bout of a respiratory infection that ended up with a severe case of conjunctivitis in both eyes, but I am mostly better and will be doing a belated Dialogue with the Listeners on air on Tuesday, taking and responding to calls for at least the last half hour.

Respectfully submitted

Michael Novick, interim General Manager