ABOUT PACIFICA RADIO
From a 1962 broadcast on WBAI-FM, New York City

This is Eleanor McKinney.  Here in the WBAI studio before a microphone,
I speak to you in the privacy of your home.  On listener-sponsored
radio somebody is always having his say about something-or-other.  But
today, since many of you have asked about Pacifica Radio and how it
grew, we're going to take a brief look backward to the early days of
this experiment in broadcasting.

   It began in 1946 when Lewis Hill, a White House correspondent for a
Washington, D.C., radio station, left his job and traveled to
California with an extraordinary idea.  Lew Hill envisioned a new use
for this powerful and sensitive microphone through which you now hear
my voice.  Was it possible to bring into American radio the human being
at his best --his music, thoughts, art, controversies, his ancient and
modern accomplishments and conflicts?  Was it possible that listeners,
given the chance, would voluntarily assist in this adventurous
experiment in communication?

   With a few friends who shared the excitement and hope of this idea,
Lewis Hill formed Pacifica Foundation.  The name was chosen not for the
Pacific coast, but for the aims of the new broadcasting institution--to
explore the causes of strife between individuals and nations which
plague mankind with war.  The potent communicative instrument of radio
broadcasting had never been used in the serious service of these
problems.  Nor had radio ever been able to provide an atmosphere of
freedom and diversity which would attract serious writers, artists, and
thinkers.  Limited advertising was first envisaged as the means of
supporting the new experiment, but by 1948 the concept of
listener-sponsorship had evolved.

   Pacifica Foundation was formed then, in the San Francisco Bay Area.
It was incorporated as a nonprofit educational corporation.  It had no
money, no prestige, no impressive list of celebrities on a letterhead.
It had no organization backing it.  It was simply a small group of
individuals with a vision, and the determination to see that vision
become a practical reality.

   The vision seemed at that time idealistic beyond that faculty so
dear to the American heart--common sense.  In the imagination and hope
of these few ordinary people in the San Francisco Bay Area was a dream
of radio stations in major metropolitan areas throughout the United
States.  Each would be supported, not through advertising, but
voluntarily by its own local community of listeners.  A quality of
programing unprecedented in the history of radio would in time reach
millions of listeners daily.  The art and thought of contemporary and
traditional times would be broadcast, along with the most thoughtful
possible exploration into all issues affecting the individual in each
community and in the nation as a whole.  Individual talents and
insights seldom heard in the public life of a community would be given
a voice in an atmosphere of informality, candor, and freedom.  And
ultimately these stations would become production centers for the
distribution of programs reflecting the best in American life to
countries throughout the world.

   This was a whopping and ambitious project for a few utterly unknown
and unfinanced individuals.  But there was one very important
ingredient present in this high-flown idea.  And that was, in fact,
common sense.  Lewis Hill combined very rare qualities, almost
extremes, which are seldom brought together in one man--the radical
ideals of a visionary and poet, and the practicality of a man of
action.  He believed most of all in _doing_, in putting to work and to
the test any ideas he had.  Pacifica Radio was designed to the most
minute detail--its economic structure, its budget, its policies, even
its program format.  All this was put down in a bulky prospectus, and
sent to people all over the United States, seeking contributions to
obtain a radio channel, to build a station, and to begin the first
experiment.

   It took three years to raise the minimum for this purpose.  From
January, 1946, until January, 1949, the group evoked interest in this
idea, and slowly funds were accumulated.  They were placed in trust.
If enough money could not be raised to begin the first station, all the
funds would be returned to the donors.  By November, 1948, enough money
had been collected to apply to the Federal Communications Commission
for an FM station of 1,000 watts.

   The group had a critical decision to make.  The $15,000 in the bank
was enough to build a station and operate it for about a month.  Yet
there was little prospect of raising more money without an operating
radio station to demonstrate what could actually be done.  A meeting
was held to decide whether to return the money to the donors and give
up the project, or to take a leap in the dark and begin the
experiment.  The exciting prospect of creating the radio station we had
all dreamed about was compelling.  To be liberated from the tyrannies
of the stop watch and the commercials, from typical radio's
condescending concept of the audience, was an inducement of immense
challenge.  We were all convinced that the commercial notion of "all us
bright people in here broadcasting to all you sheep-type masses out
there" was completely false.  We longed for a chance to produce
programs to share with the many discriminating listeners we knew filled
the community--to address them as people of intelligence instead of
aiming for their pocketbooks.  (I'll have more to say about the irony
of this, later.)

   Finally, Lewis Hill reminded us, "In a crisis--grow.  That's the
only creative possibility--take a risk and expand."  The phrase was to
become the key to many decisions in the future.

   So we got to work.

   The small radio station was built into existing offices on the sixth
floor of an office building in Berkeley, California.  The studios and
control room were custom-built, mostly from used equipment.  Friends
and strangers heard about the new venture and came up to help stuff
sound- proofing materials into studio walls, hammer on sound tile, help
with carpentry and painting.  The program schedule was designed, and
the volunteer program talents so richly present in the San Francisco
Bay Area were called upon.  The offices were jammed with different
groups rehearsing programs, with carpenters, engineers, and three KPFA
staff members trying to be everywhere at once.

   One night the first signals of the new transmitter were tested.  At
home, in the early morning, we turned on a radio.  There came the
familiar voice of our engineer, testing.  The thing actually worked.
It seemed like a miracle.  At three o'clock in the afternoon on April
15, 1949, Lew Hill stepped to a microphone, and the workmen, hammering
down the carpet at the last moment, paused in their work.  The rest of
us were busy pounding out program copy and continuity on typewriters
nearby.  He announced for the first time: "This is KPFA,
listener-sponsored radio in Berkeley."  For a moment the typewriter
copy blurred before our eyes-- and the project was underway.

   Soon there were delighted telephone calls from listeners, and
cautious praise in the newspapers along with predictions that such an
experiment, which depended on listeners for support, would have a short
life.  Visitors dropped in to "see for themselves" where such
extraordinary radio programs came from.  They were curious about the
ideas behind the radical difference from ordinary radio.  They enjoyed
the absence of radio's conventions, hearing an announcer casually say,
"The tape just got tangled up" or "The background music you hear is
leaking from the other studio where they're rehearsing the next
program."  They never heard, "Technical difficulties beyond our
control...."  There were no fanfares, no themes, no organ strings.
Duration of programs was designed to fulfill natural content--not to be
chopped off in regular segments by the stop watch.  So that programs
could begin at scheduled times, the spaces between the flexible endings
were filled with bits of prose or poetry, or simply by silence when the
mood or impact would have been jarred by a sudden shift to another
subject.  The spontaneity of staff and program participants sharing
their best talents with each other and the listeners created an
informality, a delighted enjoyment, that was communicated over the
air.

   In the first five months, six hundred program participants appeared
in live programs, which ranged through drama, literature, public
affairs, music, and children's programs.  There was no attempt to
please everybody or to be all things to all people.  The aim was to do
a few things very well.  Listeners were invited to listen elsewhere if
they were not interested in the immediate broadcast.  We sometimes
delighted in breaking the radio taboo about mentioning any other
station's call letters and specifically recommended good programs on
other stations.  In commentary and panel discussion KPFA explored
majority viewpoints and minority views seldom or never heard on radio;
it stressed the basic ethical realities in human relationships that
underlie all public problems.  After all, why were we all engaged in
this broadcasting experiment?  At the root was concern and respect for
human beings.  It was really as simple as that.

   As the days passed, curious visitors, attracted by the informality
and personal address to the listener, wandered up to KPFA's offices and
offered to help.  Listeners found themselves voluntarily trapped once
they set foot inside the station.  They were taught to be announcers,
or mimeographers, or engineer-helpers, or envelope-stuffers.  A large
volunteer staff soon participated in the work of the station.

   For fifteen months the experiment continued.  However, voluntary
subscriptions sent in by listeners remained inadequate to relieve the
difficult task of raising funds to meet operating costs each week.
Although community response had far exceeded expectations, the station
had to reach a larger audience if it was to survive.  The Foundation
decided to suspend broadcasting in order to make a full-time
fund-raising effort.

   When the staff announced over the air that KPFA was to stop
broadcasting, the telephones began to ring and listeners came in to
plead that the station continue.  At their suggestion, a public meeting
of KPFA listeners was announced.  To the discouraged staff it was an
overwhelming experience to see the meeting place crowded with listeners
who valued the station so much that they were determined to give their
own energies and money to its survival.  A working fund of $2,300 was
raised immediately.  Vigorous committees and volunteer workers plunged
into fund-raising and getting subscription pledges for a new KPFA, and
carried on an intensive campaign for nine months.  Strangers to each
other, but joined in the common bond of interest in KPFA, listeners
worked together--some ten hours a day, six days a week during the nine
months the station was silent.

   KPFA had generated an intense loyalty in the large nucleus of its
audience, and wide interest throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.  The
response in the community to the candid, the genuine, the original in
radio programming was dramatically demonstrated in these months of hard
work.  That KPFA had communicated its goals was unmistakable.  Its
public- affairs programming had particularly affected its listening
audience.  Never before had American radio regularly broadcast
old-fashioned free forums--with no subject or view precluded provided
that the participants observed the responsibilities that go with
freedom.  To some of the public, merely airing a point of view
signifies sympathy with it.  Certainly KPFA was accused of every bias
known to political theory, from far right to Communist.  The reaction
of the listening community to these charges was demonstrated at the
first meeting to save KPFA when someone accused the station of being
"extreme left," which provoked nothing but laughter.  The audience gave
vigorous approval to the only radio station within its experience in
which radically different points of view were aired in an atmosphere
devoid of fear or censorship.

   And so, after nine months of this community effort to bring back
KPFA, it returned to the air with a much enlarged signal range.
Community enthusiasm had given the project new life, which was renewed
when a few months later the Fund for Adult Education of the Ford
Foundation gave Pacifica Foundation a three-year grant of $150,000.

   In testing whether listeners would voluntarily subscribe to a radio
broadcasting service, the KPFA experiment was of unique importance.
Newspapers and magazines, which had minced no words in predicting the
early failure of a station expecting listeners to pay for a broadcast
service they could hear for nothing, now continually wrote feature
stories about KPFA.  Its live concerts, premieres of composers' new
works, no-holds-barred controversial discussions were news, not just
radio-page notices.  In time even the U.S. State Department began
sending foreign dignitaries to KPFA to study this uniquely independent
kind of broadcasting which Americans were voluntarily supporting.  But
always, like an ominous undertone to the delight and success of the
work itself, was the problem of money, money, money.

   Pacifica's founder, Lewis Hill, died in 1957.  Dr. Gordon Agnew,
Chairman of Pacifica Foundation, described his contribution in a
broadcast on KPFA: "I regard Lewis Hill as one of the truly creative
personalities of this generation.  His contribution to the intellectual
and cultural enrichment of our society is one of such dimensions as to
defy adequate evaluation.  Lewis Hill envisioned a pattern in which
KPFA would be the pilot experiment of a movement ultimately extending
nationally and internationally.  He was a founder of the Broadcasting
Foundation of America, which has already commenced exploratory
activities in Europe and Asia.  Lewis Hill needs no monument of stone
to stand as a tribute to his life.  Pacifica Radio constitutes a
monument, and we share with you...this audacious and challenging
adventure of the mind and of the heart."

   In October, 1957, Dr. Harold Winkler became Pacifica's new President
and Director of KPFA.  He was a former member of Pacifica's Board of
Directors, and had been a professor of government and political science
at Harvard University and the University of California.

   Just before the station's ninth birthday, the George Foster Peabody
Award for Public Service, radio's highest award, was made to KPFA for
"courageous venture into the lightly-trafficked field of thoughtful
broadcasting, and for its demonstration that mature entertainment plus
ideas constitute public service broadcasting at its best...."

   Then, after four years of planning and groundwork, Pacifica
Foundation completed plans for a sister station in southern California,
and KPFK began broadcasting in July, 1959, in Los Angeles.

   One day, while struggling with the innumerable problems besetting
Pacifica in its main office in Berkeley, California, Dr. Harold Winkler
received a long distance call from New York.  At the other end of the
line was Louis Schweitzer, a remarkable man whose exceptional
individuality expressed itself in his unusual philanthropies.  Mr.
Schweitzer said, "If Pacifica wants a station in New York, I'll give
you one."  Mr. Schweitzer, among his other activities, was owner of a
commercial station, WBAI.  During a newspaper strike he discovered that
when the station had enough commercials to make it solvent his
intelligent program policies were crowded out.  "I realized right then,
when we were most successful commercially, that was not what I wanted
at all," Mr. Schweitzer reported.  "I saw that if the station ever
succeeded, it would be a failure."  Mr. Schweitzer had long been an
admirer of Pacifica Radio in California, and realized that it was doing
exactly what he would have liked to do.  And so, in 1960, Pacifica
began broadcasting on the eastern seaboard.

   With the conclusion of this capsule history, I return to this moment
and the irony I mentioned earlier about working at Pacifica Radio,
where audiences are not manipulated but are offered the fullest range
of thought and information, where their intelligence, not their
pocketbook is addressed.  The dilemma of Pacifica Radio always was, and
is, how to communicate to the listener that if he is to keep this
broadcasting service it must be his responsibility--that it cannot
exist or survive without his support.  Many interested people and
foundations have from time to time given large sums of money to help it
survive one crisis or another while listener subscriptions were growing
toward the point of self-support.  But they gave these funds precisely
to help this new economic concept: listener-sponsored radio
broadcasting.  And all these years and three stations later, we're
still communicating to you: Help provide for yourself this unique
broadcasting service, even though you _can_ hear it for nothing.
Pacifica uses the radio instrument for the most meaningful purposes it
has ever been used, and challenges you to recognize that responsible
broadcasting is made possible only by responsible listeners.

                                        --Eleanor McKinney, 1962

From _The Exacting Ear: The Story of Listener-Sponsored Radio,
and an Anthology of Programs from KPFA, KPFK, and WBAI_, edited by
Eleanor McKinney with a preface by Erich Fromm, published by Pantheon
Books.  Copyright 1966 by Pacifica Foundation.
.