They gave us wings to fly, but then they took away the sky

[sovay]

I am staring at the screen and crying because 99.5 WBAI FM was shuttered by its parent station today, with no warning to either the local station or its listeners. The archives also seem to be gone. My parents who lived in New York in the '60's and '70's used to wake up to its daily broadcast of Phil Ochs' "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends." I was interviewed last summer by Jim Freund for the long-running science fiction program Hour of the Wolf. Now all that history's pulled out as if it never had been. The station was a Brooklyn institution—local, political, progressive, hands-on. Syndicated nationwide content is not the same. And it cannot pretend it always was.

Comments

[sovay]

WBAI incubated so many people and projects—the guys who founded Tekserve, which became a model for the Apple Store and a legend among independent computer repair shops, did audio tech for WBAI back in the day.

I didn't know that, but I'm not surprised. It seemed like a good place.

I hope Jim's okay.

I hope so, too. I've e-mailed a general sense of hugs.

[edit] While looking for further information, I found the Twitter account of Linda Perry, program director at WBAI. She reports: "From @ WBAI Station Manager @ BertholdReimers #WBAI managed to get an injunction to stay the takeover of the station. This means the station is legally back in the hands of WBAI's personnel . . . @ WBAI Producers are meeting at 6:30pm tonight at 325 Hudson Street Near Van Dam. We also have an Local Station Board meeting on Wednesday." Right in time for Yom Kippur, oh, God, but it's something.