Urban Unrest

30 April 2005 | Community | Ernesto Aguilar

Many apologies for the lack of Newsmongrel and blog updates. The last ten days have been amazingly hectic. Schedule begins tonight. Please check it out. There are likely to be small tweaks over the next few days, however.

http://www.kpft.org/newschedule.htm
http://www.kpft.org/new_schedule.pdf [in case formatting is bad]

I believe Christiane will be prettifying (I don’t think that’s a word!) the schedule for this weekend. I hope to get her new show descriptions this weekend.

These changes are being conducted in lieu of the Program Council. Management is committed to working with the Council, and looks forward to seeing this body functional. Changes are being made now in recognition that such entities are not formed overnight, and that this committee will be tasked with building and refining a multitude of processes and guidelines for proper management of KPFT. Currently, the station remains in a relatively healthy financial position; potential challenges are in the distance, though, and our effort is to make refinements now, and then endeavor to work with the Council as the need for more change arises.

This schedule represents a series of changes that were not as ambitious as we had originally envisioned, but give listeners an opportunity to see some gains with new offerings and new structuring that encourage their support. Management anticipates working in concert with the Program Council to make more significant changes in the coming months.

[On a personal note, I was a member of/secretary for the Program Steering Committee two years ago. We dissolved our committee after doing lots of work that was ignored by a previous PD, so I can tell you I am very excited about getting to work with a similar body and being the responsive person I, as a PSC member, never got. Seeing this kind of entity is a great development for me to witness.]

In all honesty, the amount of work this has taken reminds me how simple the old-school method of issuing a program schedule and letting the chips fall where they may could be. However, that method can also suck. Meetings, calls and emails back and forth with programmers has been time consuming; wrangling with personal schedules and dealing with a shifting program schedule (and the sometimes maddening here-today, gone-ten-minutes-later nature of accepting new spots, then other spots opening) has also been daunting. I am sorry to everyone who might be irritated by how things worked, offers changing from one day to the next, needs shifting, etc. The reality of this situation is that, in order to put together 168 hours of volunteer-run radio, lots of people need to be consulted with, often all at once, and the schedule gets completed in a rapid, jumpy way. Despite that, my commitment to programmers has been to communicate to you how we can make this system effective. Right now, I agree it needs lots of work, because it’s being created as we go along. No personal slight is intended in the process, and I hope to make amends with anyone who feels upset. I am still very committed to creating a better system with you.

The most controversial changes (among board members; programmers were outspoken on this a few weeks back) thus far have been to switch Democracy Now! to 6 p.m. and moving local programming to 7 p.m. and shifting Flashpoints back later in the evening. One of our board members has since promised a “war” over programming, some board members and programmers have pledged to join in. Though I certainly respect people’s opinions on programming, and encourage programmers to work with management and appropriate bodies to see their concerns are addressed (or at least agree to disagree and stay united in station growth), I do want to remind folks that we have equally important issues facing us from the outside.

Harris County tax officials are challenging KPFT’s exempt status and seek to levy $11,000 in taxes on the station. Board member and attorney Mike Martin, Duane Bradley and our business manager will appeal this decision, but our overall service to the city of Houston is being called into question. Issues like how much work we do with area nonprofits, the services our programs provide to residents and more are being discussed as Harris County looks at whether KPFT is truly a nonprofit. Our license renewal is coming up, and I expect there will be challenges to it, no doubt stoked by conservatives emboldened by FCC decisions against ‘indecency.’ Our internal debates are important, to loosely paraphrase one board member, when we start to threaten and attack one another over our differences, we only succeed at tearing down the station and shifting our energy to each other, rather than our service to the community.

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