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

[julian]

God damn, I don't even have a connection to it, as a station or an institution, and the archive-missing thing makes me *angry*. The rest of it, too, but don't disappear history, people.

[sovay]

The rest of it, too, but don't disappear history, people.

Yes. It's false. I hate it.

[yhlee]

Oh, no. I'm so sorry, Sonya.

[sovay]

Oh, no. I'm so sorry, Sonya.

I understand that radio stations are not immortal, but it's a bad time for local color to be nationally homogenized. You don't delete archives.

[lilysea]

Oh, no!

I'm so sorry, especially about the archives.

I'm surprised they didn't rehome the archives to a national institution for preserving them.

For example, in Britain

"The British Library is recognised as the home of the nation’s radio archive. The current radio collection comprises around 250,000 hours. Additionally, via a longstanding arrangement with the BBC, the Library also provides research access to the extensive radio collections of the BBC Archives.

To address the gaps in our recordings, the National Radio Archive project (part of the Save our Sounds programme) plans to create a digital radio archive that will preserve a representative proportion of ongoing UK radio output and make this available for research.

Our first step is to build a pilot radio archive, covering up to 50 stations from across the UK, with the potential to develop this into a long-term service.

We will be using speech recognition technology to increase the searchability of radio and to encourage its integration with other, text-based media. The selection of content for the archive will be determined as much by research need as preservation requirements, and we will be interested to learn from research projects where we might be able to collaborate as part of the pilot development."

Surely there would be something similar in the US?

[sovay]

I'm so sorry, especially about the archives.

It's terrible about the archives. I don't understand the harm of leaving them up even after the station itself ceased to broadcast locally. I don't understand making link rot. It's like disappearing the station.

Surely there would be something similar in the US?

You would think!

(I'm glad the UK has that.)

[spatch]

Now all that history's pulled out as if it never had been.

Killing an archive instantly is like shooting history in the neck, which you can't do, dammit.

Dammit.

[sovay]

Killing an archive instantly is like shooting history in the neck, which you can't do, dammit.

YOU CAN'T.

Mow.

[sara]

Oh jeez. Our local npr and jazz station was threatened with this a couple of years ago and the community bought it from the university that had owned it and it's doing very well now, so sometimes there's hope.

[sovay]

Our local npr and jazz station was threatened with this a couple of years ago and the community bought it from the university that had owned it and it's doing very well now, so sometimes there's hope.

I'm glad your local station is thriving. I really want the community to rally about WBAI and I have no idea, with radio stations, how that works.

[gwynnega]

Awful. I hope they make the archives available again when the dust settles. I also hope my local Pacifica station, KPFK, continues to stick around.

[sovay]

I hope they make the archives available again when the dust settles.

I hope so, too. There are decades of strangeness in there. Hour of the Wolf alone was an invaluable genre resource.

I also hope my local Pacifica station, KPFK, continues to stick around.

Fingers crossed!

[nineweaving]

Archives? God damn it.

That is evil.

Nine

[sovay]

That is evil.

"404 Not Found."

I think so.

[sholio]

*hugs* I'm so sorry. I hope the archives at least can be saved -- the material is all still there, so hopefully it'll be possible for enough people to rally that something can be done.

[sovay]

I hope the archives at least can be saved -- the material is all still there, so hopefully it'll be possible for enough people to rally that something can be done.

Thank you. I don't want the information lost. I would just also have preferred the station not shut down.

*hugs*

[lilysea]

Okay, I googled and

"American Radio Archives is located within the Thousand Oaks Library in Thousand Oaks, California and contains one of the largest collections of radio broadcasting in the United States and in the world. The archives was established in 1984 by the Thousand Oaks Library Foundation. The collections include 23,000 radio and TV scripts, 10,000 photographs, 10,000 books on radio history, and 5,000 audio recordings. The archives also house manuscripts, sound recordings, scripts, books, photographs and other materials related to the history of radio and radio broadcasting.

The American Radio Archives are part of the Special Collections Department at Grant R. Brimhall Library. The purpose of the archives is to collect, preserve, and share materials related to the history of the radio in perpetuity. The Archives has collected materials since the 1990's. They now also house materials from the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters, an organization of people working in radio or related fields. The addition of the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters materials greatly expanded the collection in both size and scope."

I wonder if it is

a) worth emailing them about this yourself if you have the energy?

b) worth passing on their contact details to the organisation that has taken over the stations operations?

http://www.americanradioarchives.com/index.htm

[rosefox]

I was aghast when I saw. It's such a shock. 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.

There's a very weird and ungrammatical fundraising message on the front page of WBAI.org with a Paypal donation button that goes to the Pacifica Foundation. But there's no fundraising goal, other than to eventually "(re)launch" WBAI. I don't get it at all.

I hope Jim's okay.

[rosefox]

There's also the Paley Center for Media, formerly the Museum of Television and Radio.

There are phone numbers for the Pacifica Radio Archives here, plus an email link that doesn't work:

https://pacifica.org/contact_pra.php

Maybe I'll call them and ask where the hell the WBAI archives went.

[vass]

Fuckers.

[callunav]

Dammit dammit dammit dammit. If I said 'I'm sorry for your loss,' would you understand that I meant it 100% sincerely, because it was the first thing I thought when I read this, out of the sick place in my gut?

So tonight I turned your station on
just so I'd be understood,
instead another voice said I was
just too late and just no good--

(Dar Williams, Are You Out There?)

[redbird]

I am both sad and puzzled. I hadn't listened to WBAI (or much other radio) in recent years, but late-night programming there was valuable to 16-year-old queer me back in 1980.

I remember being told that WBAI was consistently having trouble raising enough money to pay its bills, and staying on the air because their creditors treated the license for 99.5 FM as collateral for debts. (The frequency and license would allow them to be an ordinary commercial station.) From that angle, dropping all the interesting local programming is puzzling in favor of syndicated Pacifica programs is puzzling.

[kenjari]

We do have something similar in the US, the Radio Preservation Task Force.
Pacifica also has its own archives, which partners with the Radio Preservation Task Force, so hopefully the WBAI archives are not gone, just in some sort of transitory state. They do make their contact info available, so they can be questioned about it.

ETA: And I didn't read to the end of the comments before posting, so I see that lilysea and rosefox already posted the Pacifica info.

[sovay]

Maybe I'll call them and ask where the hell the WBAI archives went.

I like this plan.

[sovay]

Fuckers.

It's not all right.

[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.

[sovay]

If I said 'I'm sorry for your loss,' would you understand that I meant it 100% sincerely, because it was the first thing I thought when I read this, out of the sick place in my gut?

Yes, I would, and thank you. That song.

*hugs*

[sovay]

I hadn't listened to WBAI (or much other radio) in recent years, but late-night programming there was valuable to 16-year-old queer me back in 1980.

It seems to have been valuable to a lot of different people in a lot of different decades on a lot of different fronts, and that should not be junked as though it doesn't matter.

From that angle, dropping all the interesting local programming in favor of syndicated Pacifica programs is puzzling.

Per the NYT: "Pacifica has not released any financial statements since 2017, when its auditor cited doubts that the organization could continue as a going concern." The money problems were not just WBAI.

[selkie]

I'm so sorry. That's a bitter waste. Also, it does not detract from the general entropic cloudy atmosphere of WHAT THE FUCK.

[drwex]

I recognize that a static record is no substitute for a living institution, but:
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://wbai.org

[sovay]

I recognize that a static record is no substitute for a living institution, but

The framework of pages is there, but the recordings themselves aren't.

[sovay]

I'm so sorry. That's a bitter waste. Also, it does not detract from the general entropic cloudy atmosphere of WHAT THE FUCK.

It really doesn't! And I could use a break.

[asakiyume]

;_;

That stinks

[ethelmay]

I remember when that happened to the Child_Lit listserv. Really pissed me off.

[sovay]

That stinks

It really does!

The station is fighting. The owners are disobeying the law. It's going to have to go to court.

[sovay]

I remember when that happened to the Child_Lit listserv. Really pissed me off.

It's a thing to get angry over! I'm sorry about the listserv.

[skygiants]

For the record, the Pacifica Radio Archives have a hard-working but pretty minimal staff and have been dealing with their own challenges from the Pacifica Foundation for the past several years. As part of the Pacifica network, WBAI has definitely been delivering at least some of their older material to them on an ongoing basis -- I know because we digitized some of their older open reel audio as part of the AAPB project. Personally, what I'd be most concerned about is recently produced or digital-only material that may never have been transferred from the local station to the PRA, since I don't know what their backlog or current backup procedures are like.

[sovay]

As part of the Pacifica network, WBAI has definitely been delivering at least some of their older material to them on an ongoing basis -- I know because we digitized some of their older open reel audio as part of the AAPB project.

I appreciate the information.

The recent digital material is also the thing I am worried about. I know Jim Freund kept personal copies for Hour of the Wolf and can only hope the other broadcasters did the same.