'A Complete Shock:' Long-Running Freeform Radio Station WBAI Abruptly Shut Down

[DinahMoeHum]

38. Apparently, the corpse lingered on for a very long time. . .

Back in 2013, journalist and radio host Doug Henwood wrote about the problems of WBAI, and said that it was becoming a shell of what it used to be. . .

https://observer.com/2013/08/the-excruciating-demise-of-wbai/

I can well attest to this particular passage, since I experienced the same thing one too many times in recent years. . . (boldface emphasis is mine)

(snip)

. . . most of its problems were home grown.
The programming was mostly unlistenable. Hosts who couldn’t talk very well yammered on about material they didn’t understand. Interviewers knew nothing about their interviewees.
Health nuts flogged miracle cures and conspiracists spun elaborate theories.
I recall turning on the morning drive time show and listening for 20 minutes to someone the host never identified — and, in all that time, I never got an idea of what the interview was supposed to be about.

(snip)

Things were particularly painful in the 2000s, due to turnover and turmoil.

(snip)

There began a decade of civil war within WBAI, with faction fighting faction. Charges of “racism” were lobbed constantly. A succession of managerial mediocrities drove the station into the ground. Excruciating stupidity was embraced in the name of populist programming. For several years in the mid-2000s, the station was run by a cabal of black nationalists of an antique and alienating sort. They were forced out by Pacifica central, only to be replaced by an even less distinguished (though not black nationalist) set of sub-mediocrities.

Through all this internal turmoil and on-air rot, the audience predictably dwindled to the point of becoming nearly immeasurable by the Arbitron surveys. Once a major presence in New York City politics and culture, it became utterly irrelevant. It didn’t even earn a mention in the NYPD’s intelligence files around the 2004 Republican convention, and it was irrelevant to Occupy Wall Street, which occurred blocks from its headquarters.

(snip)

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I could go on, but I think y'all now get the idea.

What a fucking shame.