@Deja

KPFT has made some big changes recently. For a while there, they were sounding to me like a pop country station - especially mid weekdays. No longer. I haven't had a chance to scope it all out yet, but will as I only listen to KPFT and whatever the University of Houston PBS FM station is now. Of course KPFT is still Pacifica, but the content is much different than the other Pacifica stations.

Further, KPFT is now running three separate (and different) streams simultaneously. You can listen to any of it online, and I can get all three streams in my car. My car is a 2012 and must have some kind of gee-wiz radio; my wife's car is slightly older and can only receive the main FM signal.

Did you know that KPFT is the only US radio station that has been bombed? Twice? The KKK hates KPFT. Here's what Wikipedia says about violence against KPFT:

The station's transmitter was bombed and destroyed May 12, 1970, two months after going on the air. The new station was off the air for three weeks until it was repaired. Five months later, October 6, 1970, while the station was broadcasting Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant," the transmitter was bombed yet again and the damage was significantly more extensive. The second bombing took KPFT off the air for three months. No other U.S. radio station or transmitter has been bombed.

On January 21, 1971, KPFT management invited Guthrie to visit the Houston studios, where he performed "Alice's Restaurant" live as the station commenced transmitting yet again.

After months of inactivity by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local police, Pacifica took the initiative to mount a media campaign designed to draw attention to the unsolved case and seek support for pressuring authorities to act. Federal agents ultimately arrested a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Jimmy Dale Hutto, and charged him with the KPFT bombings, as well as with plotting to blow up radio stations KPFA and KPFK. Hutto was convicted and imprisoned in 1971.

In the early morning hours of August 13, 2007, a bullet was fired into the studio, breaking a window and narrowly missing a woman's head, but no one was injured. The shooting followed a week-long fundraising drive. After the shooting, one of the windows was covered with the KPFT banner and the front entrance was locked.

On July 16, 2008, a man demanded access to KPFT's studios. After being rebuffed, he punched out a window pane on the back door with a knife. The man was apprehended without resistance, and was promptly arrested.

An assailant severed power lines to the station's transmitter on June 28, 2010, leaving the station's program available only to online listeners. Damages were estimated at approximately $10,000. Power was restored the following day, and regular broadcasting resumed.

Houston has kpft.org

It looks similar to yours, but afternoons are all music. Some of it I can handle, but much I can't stomach. I really liked when they played a reading of Orwell's 1984 every Tues morning for an hour during the "From the Vault" show, and when they played documentary recordings of interviews from a commune in the South back in the 50s or 60s on the same show. Very cool!

I no longer drive to work at 5:30 am, and no longer work in a warehouse, so I don't get to listen to it anymore (in an office on the phone a lot now). Don't miss Thom Hartmann, or hearing Amy Goodman repeating Dem talking points, though. I did appreciate Amy's coverage of the DAPL protests.

I'll check out your suggestion.

@Mark from Queens @Mark from Queens There was this guy, Larry Josefson(?) and during a pledge drive he put on "Ballad of the Green Berets" or Kate Smiths "God Bless America" and said, I'm gonna keep playing this until we meet the goal. And he did, over and over and over and (you get the idea). It was entertaining in a s/m kind of way.

edit: sorry OT again.

WBAI in NYC.

May also be part of the Pacifica Network.

Radio has fallen into the abyss, both for music and news. Thanks to Bubba’s deregulation of radio in the 90’s and odious conservative cabals like Clear Channel (now We Heart Radio) it’s been a desert of RW propaganda monopolies and nauseating homogenized corporate music.

I also listen to a lot of podcasts. Best of the Left, Jimmy Dore, Citations Needed, The Intercept, Chapo Trap House. YouTube subscriptions too.

Good idea for a thread, thanks.

@Mark from Queens
I remember when they had their own correspondent in and reporting on the war in Vietnam.
And after midnight musicians like Arlo Guthrie and the guy they called Lampman might come on.
When it came out they played John Wesley Harding for a whole day and took listener comments.
Thousands of years ago!

WBAI in NYC.

May also be part of the Pacifica Network.

Radio has fallen into the abyss, both for music and news. Thanks to Bubba’s deregulation of radio in the 90’s and odious conservative cabals like Clear Channel (now We Heart Radio) it’s been a desert of RW propaganda monopolies and nauseating homogenized corporate music.

I also listen to a lot of podcasts. Best of the Left, Jimmy Dore, Citations Needed, The Intercept, Chapo Trap House. YouTube subscriptions too.

Good idea for a thread, thanks.

@SoylentGreenisPeople

They've had so many internal shake-ups and establishment take-over attempts, not to mention the possibility that many of their programs are probably clandestine CIA operations (for example, Ian Masters' "Background Briefing" show in the afternoons), that they are largely unlistenable to me me anymore. And yes, in many ways, I've come to see Amy Goodman as a sell-out and/or left wing gate keeper.

I know there were years long fights over seating board members, and accusations that the board had been packed to shut up the lefties.

I used to listen to Pacifica. I don't anymmore

(as is WBAI.)

I used to listen to Los Angeles' KPFK back in the late 80s/early 90s. Then I moved from L.A., to places where such "left wing" radio had apparently never been heard before, with the most "left-leaning" radio that people had ever heard being an NPR affiliate. (That's how long the media landscape has been impoverished in the United States.)

I came back to L.A. a few years ago, and quite honestly, Pacifica has gone downhill. They've had so many internal shake-ups and establishment take-over attempts, not to mention the possibility that many of their programs are probably clandestine CIA operations (for example, Ian Masters' "Background Briefing" show in the afternoons), that they are largely unlistenable to me me anymore. And yes, in many ways, I've come to see Amy Goodman as a sell-out and/or left wing gate keeper.

Well, at least I can comfort myself in knowing I was exposed to Pacifica when it was still good. Through them, I was exposed to Chomsky, Howard Zinn, David Barsamian, Edward Said, Michael Parenti, and a whole host of truly alternative viewpoints and information. In fact, it was my exposure to Pacifica that first woke me up to the fact, in the late 80s, that NPR, for all of its supposed "liberal" slant, was really no more than establishment media. After listening to the old Pacifica stations, any NPR station could be discerned to be clearly "mainstream/establishment" media in its approach.

(If one wants to learn about the history of NPR/PBS and why public broadcasting is so bad, one should read David Barsamian's "The Decline and Fall of public Broadcasting," which came out in about 2000. Both NPR and PBS were created by the government in response to things like Pacifica (which were left wing, subscriber-supported stations) and the fact that other countries also had public, non-profit radio networks. But the fact that they were created by the government, and always relied on the government for part of their funding, is what ultimately undermined their independence and kept them "on a leash" and in line with the political establishment. Barsamian explains all this beautifully in his short little book.)

These days, there are very few mass media outlets where I get news. If I want real news--or at least, "better" news--I go to any one of two hand fulls' worth of alternative websites, all of which cover the gamut from alt-right, libertarian, progressive, and socialist left. What all these sites have in common is that they are anti-establishment in their outlooks, and they carry facts and viewpoints that I largely don't get in any corporate/establishment media outlets.

Let me be clear: There is no one site that one can rely on all the time to give "truth" and "accuracy." And to look for a particular site like that, is a fool's errand.

As always, look at alternative sources and information. Take what works in them, and leave the rest. Always have one's critical thinking cap on in sifting through and evaluating what one is hearing.

Also, always be attuned to the places from where a particular news source is getting its funding. In other words, "follow the money," because that, more than anything, will determine editorial slant, bias, and unspoken agendas. Thus, for example, even though I have always been a fan of Greenwald, I've noticed that since he affiliated with the Intercept and billionaire Omidyar's funding, the Intercept has carried more and more typical establishment points of view and propaganda, to the point that I've often felt that I might as well just open the New York Times, or listen to NPR, to get the same bullshit propaganda I'm getting on the Intercept.