the town dandy / By Hank Sims

Air waves

(July 26, 2007)  When public radio stations explode, they do so with great force. Generally speaking, public radio stations have among the nastiest, most poisonous political atmospheres of any type of organization imaginable. Think of when Pacifica Radio blew up a few years ago. The recriminations went on for months. At Berkeley Pacifica flagship station KPFA, one programmer accused another of attempted murder. She was convinced that her water glass had been tampered with.

Well, SoHum public radio station KMUD went through another of its periodic mini-upheavals a few weeks ago, when the station decided to boycott the upcoming Reggae Rising festival. Thus, the station took a side in the all-pervading SoHumReggae War(or was merely accused of taking a side, depending on how you look at it.) There was some heated talk — a few people accused each other of being sneaks, dupes or phonies — but it seems to have blown over.

Now to KHSU. Earlier in the month, management from the Humboldt State University side of things abruptly fired Charles Horn, the station’s long-serving development director — the main money-raising man. They also canceled his Friday night show, “The South Side.” (KHUM radio has since picked it up.) And this seems to have sparked something of a mini-rebellion inside the KHSU community.

Longtime KHSU volunteer Brooks Otis announced that he would be quitting the station, partly out of solidarity with Horn and partly because of the “dysfunctional” atmosphere within KHSU. Otis mostly blames Humboldt State’s new corporate culture for the dysfunction, but he also seems to think that the problems are inherent to the left end of the radio dial.

“I don’t know what it is with public radio, but the turmoil is never-ending,” Otis says.

Will the recent KHSU strife be long-lived? Station Manager Elizabeth Hans McCrone, the person who fired Horn, thinks not. “The best thing is for the station to move forward from this,” she says. “And I think it will.”

Perhaps. But we’re also getting word that the station’s volunteer programmers, who seem largely behind Horn and not McCrone, are planning to follow Otis’ lead and to protest in other, perhaps more spectacular ways. It could be a long, hot autumn up at KHSU.

What is it withpublic radio stations? Why is the turmoil never-ending?

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