R.I.P. Al Hart

Veteran KCBS anchor Al Hart passed away last Thursday at the age of 88.

I could say a bunch of nice things about him, but I did that back in 2010. Every word still stands. All I would add is, he had beautiful handwriting.

I hope you and Sally have reunited, Al. You deserve nothing less.

R.I.P. Richard C. Hottelet

The last of Edward R. Murrow's protegés died Wednesday morning (17 December 2014) at the age of 97.

Hottelet, as with his fellow "Murrow Boys" and Murrow himself, was known mostly for his work as a correspondent during World War II. I knew him from a different context, though: he was one of the memorable, iconic voices from my childhood. I was a strange child in that I actually enjoyed listening to the local newsradio station, which happened to be a CBS affiliate. Hottelet's was one of the voices that emerged from the speaker seemingly every morning. I was too young to understand anything he said (I knew some of the words but didn't have the context or sophistication to appreciate their meaning), but I knew that he was A Serious Man. He and his fellow stentorian voices (at the moment the only other name I remember is Douglas Edwards) exuded dignity and maturity. They likely contributed to my fierce desire to grow up, to be an adult and to shed the silliness of childhood.

I have to add that the name "Hottelet" fascinated me for years. Knowing him only from radio, I never saw the name spelled out. I puzzled for years as to whether anyone could really have such a "bumpy" name, a name that sounded like a cart rattling over cobblestones.

Crazy 'bout the blues

... on Friday nights, anyway, when Kathleen Lawton or Greg Bridges is spinning them on 91.1, KCSM-FM.

Crazy 'bout the Blues has been running on Fridays from 9-midnight (Pacific) for decades now — though I can't be sure since I used to tune into Bridges' blues show at the same time on the sadly defunct commercial jazz station, KJAZ. (Darned if I can remember the name of his KJAZ blues show. Maybe "All Blues"?) It's a hell of a way to wind up the week.

Just tonight, for instance, Big Joe Turner electrified me with "The Chill is On", then the Queen of the Blues herself, Koko Taylor, about ripped me open with her buzzsaw of a voice on "I Got What It Takes". Talk about a one-two punch! It left me reeling in delirious happiness.

Whoa. The Slide Brothers' "Catch That Train", a gospel-tinged call-and-response number, captivated me so, I forgot to post this....

Limbaugh the unashamed

I've been busy, so by the time I heard about Rush Limbaugh's vicious attack on Sandra Fluke I thought it would be too late to comment (and frankly, redundant). Leave it to Rush, though, to keep the thing going by standing firm behind his characterization of Fluke as a "slut" and a "prostitute" who, in return for federally subsidized contraception, owed the taxpayers a free sex tape.

Standing firm, that is, until the advertisers started jumping ship. And kept jumping. Finally, enough of them bailed out that Rush had to make pretend amends.

"For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week," he wrote. "In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke."

Bullshit, Rush. You very much meant a personal attack on Ms. Fluke. You're just sorry that your reflexive hatemongering hit the fan this time.

Or rather, your employer is sorry (that you cost it advertisers). You aren't. You never are.

Whether it's racism or misogyny, you delight in playing to the basest, most hateful and most hurtful instincts in your consciousness. You claim hyperbole is needed to ensure that your audience is not merely informed (if that's the word to use), but entertained as well. Everything outrageous about your show is defensible, in your mind, as exaggeration for the purpose of humor.

But "slut" as you used it is not humorous. It's just vile. Most of us know that.

So do you, for that matter. The thing is, you can't afford to admit it. You'd also have to admit that your show's aim isn't to be humorous. You'd have to admit that your show's aim is to be inflammatory.

You'd have to admit that you mean every word you say, that you know exactly the effect each of those words has, and that you aren't sorry for any of them.

That honesty just might cost you your outsized profile in the national consciousness. And you won't risk that because as that profile goes, so goes your income.

And so the rest of us are treated to yet another tedious non-apology from you. Yawn.

At this point, I don't give a shit about Limbaugh's fake apologies (should he bother to give them). What I'd really like to hear is an apology from his listeners. They are the reason he's still on. What's their excuse for enabling his bitter spitefulness, if not that they share his hostility and bile?

Tribute to a lovely lady

I got some news last night that left me saddened and bone-weary.

You probably never heard of Shawn Bates unless you were an aficionado of the San Francisco indie music scene in the 1980s and 1990s. I wasn't such an aficionado until the late '80s, but by way of compensation, when I did get into the scene it was through the hard-driving, tumultuous, and to this sheltered soul, deeply weird world of KUSF, the onetime FM outlet of the University of San Francisco.

KUSF, as most who have volunteered there will tell you, was a tough place in which to find one's niche. It took me ages, and at times I wondered why in the hell I was bothering with this bunch of people who, at best, appeared not to care whether I was around or not. Aside from my fellow newbies, it took a while for me to make even a scraping acquaintance with any of the veterans. One of the first was Shawn Bates.

Shawn didn't go out of her way to befriend me, and I certainly don't fault her, or anyone else, for that: a lot of people passed through the doors and most of them didn't stick around for long. It made good sense not to fall all over new arrivals. However, once I started doing a (very) little real work around the station and interacting with the veterans, Shawn was possibly the first to smile and look me in the eye. A little thing, but it was the first crack in the ice.

Eventually I was trained to be on the air. After a few sessions alongside the resident trainer, the unflappable Marisa, it was time to fly solo for one or two more shows. At the time, the training shift was on Sunday afternoons, so a lot of people potentially could listen.

If memory serves, it was during the second solo shift that I finished backannouncing a set, then haltingly started the next. Or that's what I meant to do, anyway. What actually happened was that I started the wrong record, the one I had just played. In disgust with myself, I uttered an expletive, potted the playing song down and started the correct one. And then I noticed that there were not one, but two active pots (inputs) on the board: the one marked "TT 2" and the one marked "Board Mic".

In short, I had forgotten to shut off the microphone.

The expletive I had uttered was one of the Forbidden Seven immortalized in George Carlin's well-known routine, the ones that get broadcasters into deep trouble. After slowly shutting off the mike, I stood there for a moment, absolutely frozen, not knowing what to do. The only thought going through my head was that I would be the first DJ in history to lose an FCC license before it had even been issued.

At that moment, the staff phone line started blinking.

I had visions of the program director apologetically but firmly telling me to clear out of the studio. I thought it might even be the station's general manager, the usually genial Steve Runyon, calling in to scream at me for destroying the station he had founded. I imagined having to squirrel away every cent of my miniscule salary for twenty years to pay off an FCC fine for indecent language.

I finally realized that no matter who was on the other end, it would do me no good to ignore the call. Slowly I picked up the receiver.

The first thing I heard was a gale of laughter. With difficulty the woman choked down her amusement just long enough to sputter out something that I interpreted as, "We've all done something like that", then hung up.

It was, of course, Shawn. And with her brief call, she unparalyzed my brain so I was able to go on with the show.

This was just one little act of kindness from a kind, lovely woman. And note that it was enough of an act of kindness merely to have listened at all. Training shifts were seldom pretty: raw DJs had no knowledge of mike levels, tended either to babble witlessly or to say virtually nothing at all, and often made dubious musical choices. I was no exception.

I enjoyed Shawn's own show: it consisted of pretty accessible alternative music coupled with her own sense of older tunes that would fit. Ramsay Lewis' rendition of "The In Crowd" and the term "Cocktail Corner" will always bring Shawn's laid-back, joyful show to mind.

Shawn left the station years ago, and unfortunately we didn't stay in touch. I found out last night that she passed away three weeks ago at the cruelly early age of fifty. Well, all right, I suppose that objectively speaking "fifty" isn't cruelly early: that term is usually reserved for one who dies before hitting, let's say, thirty. But as far as I'm concerned, it's the right way to describe the premature passing of a woman who was such a warm, often joyous presence.

Support SaveKUSF

I've been quite remiss in not reminding you to support the SaveKUSF campaign.

On 18 January 2011, the University of San Francisco sold its FM broadcasting license to the Classical Public Radio Network (CPRN), a nonprofit entity owned by the University of Southern California (USC). CPRN, in turn, adopted the staff and music of the Bay Area's last commercial classical-music station, KDFC, turning KDFC's programming noncommercial and airing it on KUSF's former frequency, 90.3 FM. This might seem a net boon for classical-music lovers, except that the range of the 90.3 FM signal is significantly less than that of KDFC's former frequency (102.1 FM). In the end, what the sale did was to reduce the availability of classical music on the air and to eliminate KUSF's programming altogether -- programming that served a far more diverse and far less well-represented set of communities.

I've discussed the issue at greater length in several entries:

• "No more radio for KUSF" (18 January)
• "Thoughts on the KUSF meeting" (20 January)
• "Father Privett responds" (22 January)
• "KUSF in Exile" (18 February)
• "S.F. tidbit: 102.1 ad and the KUSF deal" (27 February)

(There are also a few other entries in which KUSF is mentioned tangentially; search this blog for "KUSF" if you're interested.)

What I haven't done, however, is to point you explicitly to the Web page for the SaveKUSF campaign. SaveKUSF is dedicated to stopping the still-pending sale of USF's license to CPRN.

SaveKUSF might at first glance seem to be a quixotic campaign: the FCC, to my knowledge, has never denied a license sale. However, two Petitions to Deny have been filed; the one filed by Friends of KUSF can be found online courtesy of Media Alliance. Friends of KUSF's petition details the shady way in which the transaction was carried out and the ulterior motives of CPRN's president, Brenda Barnes, who appears to be using CPRN to develop (and ultimately, one assumes, to promote) an online music service. At the very least, the fight for the license may shed some much-needed light on the backroom dealings that involved not just USC and USF, but the media conglomerate Entercom as well.

However, carrying out the legal fight against the sale of the license requires money -- a lot of it. SaveKUSF is asking everyone with an interest in preserving local, community-oriented radio to help with this fight by donating. Visit SaveKUSF to find out how to donate via PayPal or by check.

I've said before and I'll say again that KUSF's programming was worth preserving because it went beyond music: the station served a dozen or more foreign-language communities who can find such programming nowhere else on the radio dial. In addition, there were shows addressing the needs of the disabled, the theatrical community, and other groups. The capper is that KUSF also played classical music, the kind of classical music that KDFC, with its emphasis on "popular" pieces and composers, would never touch.

You can get a flavor of what KUSF was, and more importantly still is, by checking out the "KUSF in Exile" Internet stream featuring many of the programs and hosts left out in the cold on 18 January. Some of the programming is new and live; the rest is from the KUSF Archives. Go to the KUSF Archives for the link to the stream. (Many thanks to WFMU for hosting the stream, and for generally providing terrific advice and moral support to the SaveKUSF campaign.)

Rethinking my take on the CPRN and Entercom deal

Earlier I wrote:

Only CPRN's solid offer to take over KDFC's classical format would have given Entercom the confidence to buy KUFX. CPRN's action cleared the way for Entercom to repurpose the 102.1 frequency for simulcasting to the San Francisco area that KUFX's South Bay transmitter couldn't reach.

Two seconds after I posted that entry I reread that part and thought, "That's really dumb."

The fact that KDFC was one of the last commercial classical stations in an urban area suggests that the classical format at best wasn't making Entercom as much money as another format would. Entercom wouldn't have had any qualms about shuttering the classical format in favor of one more profitable, so it wouldn't have looked around for someone to take the format off its hands. It's more likely that CPRN found out, or suspected, that KDFC's classical format was on shaky ground, and approached Entercom. Entercom would probably have gone through with the format change for 102.1 without CPRN's offer, though.

For Entercom, what counted was acquiring KUFX. What happened to KDFC and KUSF was nothing more than fallout.

It's an historical oddity, by the way, that Entercom owns the two frequencies that most recently broadcast classical music in San Francisco: 95.7 FM (formerly KKHI) and 102.1.

S.F. tidbit: 102.1 ad and the KUSF deal

As part of the deal that handed the University of San Francisco's license for the 90.3 FM frequency to the Classical Public Radio Network (owned by the University of Southern California), the classical format of 102.1 FM, KDFC, was moved to 90.3 FM (becoming noncommercial in the process). Entercom, which owns the license for 102.1, quickly began simulcasting its South Bay rock outlet, KUFX "The Fox." Today I saw the first TV ad for the now dual-frequency station.

TV ads for radio stations aren't that common any more, but they do catch the eyes of those whose ears aren't listening. In this case, Entercom had several million reasons for wanting to pump its audience numbers up. According to radio-info.com, Entercom paid $9 million to buy KUFX in early January 2011.

This is the kind of fill-in deal for Entercom that would've been done pretty naturally in the trading climate of 5-6 years ago. Its announcement now suggests that things might be turning - and that Entercom's feeling comfortable enough to do the deal.

In retrospect, we now see what gave Entercom that level of comfort. Only CPRN's solid offer to take over KDFC's classical format would have given Entercom the confidence to buy KUFX. CPRN's action cleared the way for Entercom to repurpose the 102.1 frequency for simulcasting to the San Francisco area that KUFX's South Bay transmitter couldn't reach. Only that expanded audience would have justified the high price Entercom paid for KUFX.

That wasn't Entercom's only recent investment, by the way. It's touting the addition to KUFX's DJ linuep of "Big Rick" Stuart, a popular local radio personality who until recently was a fixture at San Francisco's KFOG. Stuart could not have been an inexpensive acquisition.

Closing the circle, Big Rick got his start in radio at KUSF -- the station squeezed off the FM airwaves as part of CPRN's deal with USF.

[UPDATE: corrected mangled writing in the first paragraph. Also, I revisited some of this post's thoughts not long afterwards.]

KUSF in Exile

Well, that was a blast, hearing my fellow former DJs on the air, including long-ago host of "Hip Hop Slam" Billy Jam doing the MC honors.

About a dozen other independent radio stations around the country simulcast the "KUSF in Exile" broadcast, physically originating from Amoeba Records San Francisco. As WFMU's Gaylord Fields said when doing the FCC-mandated legal IDs at the top of the hour for all of those stations, reading their call letters and cities was not so much calling off a list as reading an honor roll.

• 91.1 FM, WFMU, Jersey City, NJ
• 88.9 FM, KXLU, Los Angeles, CA
• 91.1 FM, KZSU, Stanford, CA
• 89.3 FM, WXYC, Chapel Hill, NC
• 89.7 FM, KFJC, Los Alto Hills, CA
• 91.1 FM, WREK, Atlanta, GA
• 88.9 FM, WITC, Cazenovia, NY
• 90.3 FM, KDVS, Davis, CA
• 91.7 FM, KVRX, Austin, TX
• 90.7 FM, KALX, Berkeley, CA
• 88.3 FM, WCBN, Ann Arbor, MI
• 92.5 FM, KRFP, Moscow, ID

(There may have been another station that joined in at the last minute, from what I heard during the simulcast.)

I can't imagine how much sweat equity went into pulling this off. WFMU and Billy Jam deserve huge kudos for spearheading this and making it happen.

I have to say, though, that this broadcast didn't capture the breadth that made KUSF such a valuable part of the San Francisco Bay Area community. KUSF's knowledgeable music-oriented DJs were only a part of the sound, and to be absolutely honest, they -- we -- contributed the least distinctive aspect of the station's programming. There are, after all, other stations in the Bay Area, to say nothing of the Web, that provide smart and challenging music programming in diverse genres. (A few of them simulcast KUSF in Exile.)

Far more important, if you care about "the community" in the broadest sense, were the foreign-language and non-music programs KUSF aired. Where, for instance, is the Cantonese-speaking community to turn for local news and affairs programs now that Chinese Star Radio and Good News for Today are no longer available on FM? How about the German-speaking community (Radio Goethe)? At various times KUSF boasted shows broadcast largely or entirely in French, Italian, Finnish, Persian, Polish, and Azerbaijani (those are the ones I recall offhand).

It's these communities who were most screwed by USF's secretive sale of its broadcast license. It's these communities to whom USF should be forced to answer. Unfortunately, USF has ignored these communities entirely.

KUSF on air for a little bit

I really should pay closer attention to my email. Courtesy of DJ Carolyn, the news that KUSF is hitting the airwaves again ... for a few hours. Hope she doesn't mind me quoting her email in full:

We’re getting back on the airwaves Friday, February 18th, Noon – 3 pm PST. WFMU is hosting a live remote broadcast at Amoeba Music in San Francisco featuring KUSF DJs! It will be on WFMU airwaves 91.1fm NJ as well as streaming online on WFMU.org.

Plus KZSU (Stanford, CA 90.1 FM), KFJC (Foothill College, CA 89.7 FM), KALX (Berkeley, CA, 90.7fm), KXLU (Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, 88.9 FM), WXYC (Chapel Hill, N.C., 89.3 FM) KDVS (Davis, CA., 90.3 FM), WREK (Atlanta, 91.1 FM) KVRX (Austin, TX, 91.7fm), WITC (Cazenovia, NY, 88.9fm) and WCBN Ann Arbor, MI, 88.3fm) are all simulcasting it.

Local college and community radio needs to be saved and we're sticking together to fight for it!

KUSF DJs:
12noon to 12:30pm DJ Schmeejay
12:30pm – 1pm DJ Irwin
1pm - 1:30pm Harry D
1:30pm – 2pm Carolyn
2pm – 2:30pm Jantine B
2:30pm – 2:55pm Stereo Steve

Come by Amoeba SF and hang out.

"Noon - 3 pm PST" would be right now, by the way. Tune in!

Low-power FM

With all the blathering I've been doing (and have been keeping myself from doing, just so you know) about KUSF, this piece in the New York Times about low-power FM stations resonates with me in ways it might not have a week ago.

A majority of Americans “still get their news and culture over the broadcast dial,” said Hannah Sassaman, a longtime advocate of community radio. For Ms. Sassaman and others, this month’s bill signing was the culmination of 10 years of lobbying for more access to the airwaves. “I care about this because I have seen these stations light people up and cause political coverage, local music and community organizing to happen around the country and the world,” Ms. Sassaman said.

The bill in question was the Local Community Radio Act, which allows the FCC to give out more licenses for low-power FM stations. Such stations operate at 100 watts. To give you a basis for comparison, KUSF's transmitter ran at 3000 watts; commercial radio stations operate at even higher power levels.

Considering how much time the average person in the U.S. spends in a car, and how much broadband costs, an Internet stream just doesn't cut it if you want to reach a large number of people in the immediate vicinity. Radios are cheap and ubiquitous.

In short, if you give a damn about the local community, especially those who aren't well off, radio is still an extremely effective medium.

(It's okay, Father Privett, we know you don't give a damn.)

Father Privett responds

Apparently feeling the need to defend USF's somewhat tarnished reputation in the aftermath of the KUSF shutdown, USF president Stephen Privett submitted a brief piece to SFGate to describe the university's reason for selling its FM radio license.

I've already explained that I think USF was within its legal rights to dispose of the FM license as it saw fit, so most of Father Privett's statement is non-controversial to me. However, he does attempt to shade things to put USF and himself in the best light, and I feel compelled to set the record straight.

KUSF is not going away, nor will the FM 90.3 frequency go silent. As www.KUSF.org, the station, in an online streaming format, will have the ability to reach a truly worldwide audience without the weather or geographical impediments that a small radio station has.

Fr. Privett harped on this point during Wednesday's meeting with the community, but never seemed to grasp the salient and central point the community was trying to convey in response: KUSF's global audience is not the issue -- its local audience is.

During the meeting, one gentleman asked what KUSF's poorer local listeners who do not have broadband Internet access were supposed to do to access the station's programming. Fr. Privett said that the problem of broadband access for the poor was not within USF's power to address.

The statement is true, but hardly demonstrates the sense of compassion one expects from a good Catholic.

Moreover, the fact that the "90.3 frequency" will not "go silent" is totally irrelevant. USF has relinquished ownership of that frequency, so it has no business making statements about it.

It is true that USF was unable to give prior notice of the sale. This was part of our legal agreement with the new owners. We did not intend to cause hard feelings with those who believe they had a right to be informed beforehand, but we were obliged to follow this part of the contract.

This bland statement totally avoids the real issue I raised earlier:

What about recording a brief message explaining the situation, and having the station's manager, a paid staffer, take over the air booth just before transmitter shutdown to play that message over the air?

Would that have been beyond the pale, Fr. Privett? Did even this meager sop to your (former) station's staff and listenership simply never occur to you?

The station manager was one of those who knew of the sale beforehand. While unable to discuss the matter with volunteers himself, he certainly would have been free (and I know for a fact that he is technically able) to pre-record a brief statement that essentially would have explained that the station was leaving the air, that KUSF programming would no longer be available at 90.3 FM, and that interested parties should look for a formal statement from USF media relations personnel. He would have been able to play such a statement just before the transmitter was shut down. Listeners, not to mention the on-air staff then present, would then at least have had a minimal understanding of what was going on. It would have been a courteous act -- the minimum one would expect from someone who appreciates the "dedication and passion" of the station's volunteers, as Fr. Privett claims.

Then there's this howler:

On Tuesday, we closed the station for engineering and other changes necessary to make the transition. In doing so, we took a number of reasonable and timely security measures. We believe these were appropriate and regret if any individuals were inconvenienced in that process.

Fr. Privett, I ask you again:

Was it really necessary to cut off the transmitter in the middle of a song, and herd the volunteers then present out like criminals?

"Regret" is the most you can muster?

Now, lest you think I'm being a bit hard on Fr. Privett, consider this statement:

What began as a student enterprise evolved over the years into a near-entitlement for the community.

Note the word "entitlement." This word, better than any other, conveys Fr. Privett's true opinion of KUSF and its listenership. It explains why Fr. Privett's protestations of "regret" ring hollow.

"Entitlement" is a politically charged term these days that carries with it the suggestion that the beneficiaries are getting something they should not. An entitlement is something for which "the entitled" are supposed to be grateful. An entitlement is the sort of thing that fiscal conservatives are anxious to cut out of budgets.

When I wrote:

And the tone he set at the meeting was redolent of indifference to anyone but his students, exactly in keeping with the tone set by his staff on the day of the shutdown (except that even student volunteers were treated pretty badly that day).

-- it was because Fr. Privett clearly conveyed his sense that the community had been getting a free ride that it did not deserve. (Fr. Privett also seems to be under the badly mistaken impression that KUSF was entirely an entertainment-oriented station, which suggests he doesn't pay as much attention as he should to details.)

Unlike Fr. Privett, I will speak plainly. Fr. Privett is mouthing pieties, truly an irony for a good Jesuit, in which he does not believe. He has made legalistic statements that attempt to hide the depth of his indifference to the listenership and volunteer staff of KUSF. He and USF are legally within their rights as far as I can tell -- but don't let them fool you into thinking they actually give a damn about what they shut down Tuesday. They don't.

Limbaugh responds

Media Matters excerpted a segment from Rush Limbaugh's 20 January radio show in which he attempted to explain his "ching chong ching chong" gibbering the day before:

... Normally when you watch these things the translation is either simultaneous or else the foreign language spokesman will speak for a while, pause, the translator will translate it, then resume, then the translator will translate, then resume, and what I noticed was, it was the first time ever, they just kept going, both sides of this. So I'm saying, well, I -- I -- I have no idea of what Hu Jintao is saying, I wanted to report to you what he was saying, but there was a translation [sic], so all I could do is tell you what he said, which I did a remarkable job of doing for someone who doesn't know the language.

...

...

...

I'm sorry, I couldn't speak for a moment, as I had to pick my jaw up from the floor.

If I believed that Rush Limbaugh were a comedian as subversive as Stephen Colbert, that would have come off as a carefully considered, maybe even brilliant bit of self-parody.

However, Limbaugh's not a comedian. He apparently thinks of himself as an entertainer (see below), but he's no comedian, and he possesses neither the talent nor the intelligence to pull off subversive humor of the quality of Colbert's. What we got above was a stunning bit of chutzpah.

Perhaps a Yiddish term is appropriate, as Limbaugh continued by invoking a man who speaks only English and Yiddish, but for his livelihood pretended to speak many more languages:

But back in the old days, you know, Sid Caesar, for those of you old enough to remember, was called a comic genius for impersonating foreign languages that he couldn't speak. But today [chuckles], today the left is exercised. I mean, I -- that was racism, it was bigotry, it was insulting. It wasn't. It was a service. I insulted the ChiComs. I insulted the ChiComs, I insulted 3000 years of Chinese history. I did, I insulted -- wait, here, let me find it here, there's a state senator in California by the name of Leland Yee, he's from San Francisco, and he claims that I owe the Chinese community an apology for mocking the speech. [apparently quoting] "State senator Leland Yee [of] San Francisco called on conservative radio personality" -- that's a new one -- "Rush Limbaugh to apologize to the ChiCom community today for mocking Chinese President Hu Jintao's speech."

Let's pause right there for a moment, and work backwards to analyze Limbaugh's impaired logic.

First of all, Limbaugh -- intentionally or not, we'll never know -- uses the term "ChiCom" in his (apparent) quotation of Senator Yee's statement. If you're a Dittohead, "ChiCom" is Limbaugh-speak for "Chinese Communist." Not being a Dittohead I don't know why he feels the need to abbreviate, but there it is. However, Yee did not use that term, nor the term "Communist," anywhere in his statement. According to multiple sources (including the SF Weekly, SFGate, and the San Mateo County Times), here is what Yee actually wrote:

Mr. Limbaugh owes the Chinese community an apology for this pointless and ugly offense.

Forget trying to mimic Mandarin, Rush, you need to learn to read English first.

Now, let's get back to the estimable Sid Caesar. Caesar, as Limbaugh notes, is a comedian, one of the giants of early television. One of Caesar's trademark riffs was speaking long passages of unintelligible gobbledygook that was nevertheless curiously suggestive of actual languages, such as Italian. Of course, Caesar performed his bits as part of comedy sketches on his TV shows. Is that what Limbaugh claims he was doing, performing a comedy sketch? Why, no: "it was a service."

Rush, you can claim you were playing the fool, as Caesar did, or you can claim you were performing a service for your audience, but you can't claim both, even in your weird little world. (By the way, I've heard your original "service," and to mention your extended gibbering in the same breath as Caesar's inspired verbal gymnastics is deeply insulting to Caesar.)

So I'll take him at his word: Limbaugh thinks he performed a service to his listeners, and did "a remarkable job" of it to boot.

You know, Rush, I knew ten-year-olds when I was growing up who performed the same service to their Asian classmates. By your standards, they, too, did "a remarkable job" even though they didn't know the language. Curiously, though, they didn't seem to take the same kind of pride in their job as you do: they only performed their service when no adults were around, and only when they outnumbered their Asian audience. When I was older, I learned the name of this service: "race-baiting."

Those ten-year-olds' excuse was that they were ten. What's yours?

I thought about continuing to quote from Media Matters' excerpt of Limbaugh's show, but what's the point? He race-baits at the level of a ten-year-old, and he defends himself with words and logic that only a ten-year-old could accept.

Is he still pulling 20 million people to his show? That's kind of a sad commentary on this country -- as is the ringing silence from most quarters on Limbaugh's gibbering. Aside from Asian-American elected officials, no one seems to be all that upset. I've seen more commentary and criticism on the Huckleberry Finn bowdlerization.

Limbaugh the bigot

Courtesy Agence France-Press, an article about the criticism of Rush Limbaugh for the most juvenile kind of anti-Asian bigotry. Speaking of the delay in translation that tripped up People's Republic of China President Hu Jintao's joint press conference with President Obama:

"He was speaking and they weren't translating. They normally translate every couple of words, but Hu Jintao was just going, 'ching chong, ching chong, chong,'" Limbaugh said, continuing his imitation at length.

The article quotes Reps. David Wu and Mike Honda smacking down Limbaugh in forceful but statesmanlike remarks. Thank you, gentlemen, but on behalf of us private citizens more evolved than Limbaugh I can afford to be a little more direct:

Rush, shouldn't you make it a little less transparent what an ugly racist pig you are?

Do your advertisers care that you're so singlemindedly intent on pandering to your fellow bigots, or is that exactly the demographic they want?

Thoughts on the KUSF meeting

I attended a meeting Wednesday night (19 January), called by the administration of the University of San Francisco to explain to the community at large, including KUSF paid staff and volunteers, the background behind the university's sale of the FM license and transmitter to the University of Southern California.

There will probably be more comprehensive accounts in various media later today, and I don't intend to provide a blow-by-blow account. This is purely and only my distillation of the high points, followed by a personal comment.

Father Stephen Privett, university president, was on hand to present the university's position. Fr. Privett didn't present any information that hasn't been in news accounts such as those I listed earlier. However, Fr. Privett placed great emphasis on the non-disclosure agreement by which USF was bound from the beginning of its negotiations with USC. Agreeing to the NDA was a requirement for commencement of negotiations, he said, and the NDA also prevented him from discussing the sale with anyone outside a small circle of USF executives until it actually went through.

Fr. Privett also stressed that the sale of the license and transmitter was motivated solely by his judgment that the operation of a radio station was not part of USF's mission, and that the resources devoted to the station would be better directed elsewhere. The fact that the station was regarded as an invaluable community resource was not relevant to his decision, he said. His responsibility was only to determine the best course of action for USF's students.

As for the online stream promised by USF's press release as KUSF's future, Fr. Privett made it clear that every aspect of it would be designed with students in mind. He said no firm plans had yet been made regarding the stream.

I give credit to Fr. Privett for addressing this gathering, and for placing no conditions on who could attend. He got a cross-section of KUSF volunteers, many of whom had not been active participants for some time (by the way, nice to see you, J Boogie, Linda Champagne, Kathy w/ a K, Ratso Russo, Ira of the Morning, Mystery DJ, Squid, Carrie, David Katz, Debi Dangerously; apologies to any other oldsters I saw but forgot to mention), as well as a sizable turnout from the station's listenership, and several current USF students, most of whom are also station volunteers.

I also think Fr. Privett made himself admirably clear on most points.

Let me say that I'm grateful to USF for giving me the opportunity to be on its airwaves, to experiment in its production studio, and to listen to more music than I ever knew existed. I have had a hell of a lot of fun in my more than two decades of on-again, off-again volunteering there. I always knew I was doing so at the sufferance of the university, and I always tried to be a responsible beneficiary of its generosity.

The FM license was always USF's to dispose of as it saw fit. While I am disappointed, of course, that USF decided to sell the license and to get out of the business of operating a radio station, I can understand Fr. Privett's reasoning and feel no need to ascribe malice to his decision.

That all said, I have no respect for Fr. Privett personally.

The inarguable fact is, USF exercised its police powers to shut down KUSF without notice to the volunteers who have done the lion's share of the work to keep the station on the air the last 33 years. It shut down KUSF without regard for the listenership. USF's treatment of all those parties has been shabby, high-handed and contemptuous.

And the responsibility lies with Fr. Privett. He sets the tone for the university. And the tone he set at the meeting was redolent of indifference to anyone but his students, exactly in keeping with the tone set by his staff on the day of the shutdown (except that even student volunteers were treated pretty badly that day).

That's his right, of course, and some university partisans might even consider it his responsibility. But it's not an attitude that will foster respect for him or the university.

Fr. Privett's profound indifference to the community outside USF suggests that it never crossed his mind that it might be a charitable act to allow the large volunteer staff to say goodbye to its listeners over the air. I have no doubt that he will take refuge behind the almighty NDA to explain this misstep. However, my reading of the man from his statements at the meeting indicates that he simply didn't care.

Still, let's assume that Fr. Privett did consider the possibility of a mass farewell, and decided that the logistics would simply not permit it. What about recording a brief message explaining the situation, and having the station's manager, a paid staffer, take over the air booth just before transmitter shutdown to play that message over the air?

Would that have been beyond the pale, Fr. Privett? Did even this meager sop to your (former) station's staff and listenership simply never occur to you?

Was it really necessary to cut off the transmitter in the middle of a song, and herd the volunteers then present out like criminals?

Are you really that devoid of human feeling, Fr. Privett?

In a ludicrous postscript, Fr. Privett guardedly, and only once, invited the KUSF volunteer staff to participate in the online feed, whenever it is back up. At the moment, no facilities exist from which to originate this feed, as the old studios have been vacated and new ones have not been made available. (This small oversight makes a mockery of Fr. Privett's insistence that the license's sale was carefully considered and planned.) More to the point, given Fr. Privett's demonstrated indifference to the volunteers, what on earth would motivate them to participate?

I rather expect Fr. Privett is counting on minimal volunteer enthusiasm so as to compel significant student input from the start. Again, that's his right, but it would have given me a smidgen of respect for him had he simply said this.

Ah well. I'm done with him, and he with me. Good riddance.

Stick a fork in KUSF as you knew it: it's done.

Two world views

The KUSF shutdown and a recent Paul Krugman column prompted some rueful reflections this morning.

Actually, what really prompted this entry was an excerpt from former KUSF mentor/DJ Howie Klein's Down with Tyranny blog, an entry called "The Systematic Destruction Of Independent Media--From KUSF To NBC". Even more specifically, Klein quoted a recent newsletter from Sen. Al Franken, in which Franken lamented the FCC's recent decision to clear the sale of NBC to Comcast:

I’ll be candid with you: This is an awful development for those of us who care about media consolidation. It will restrict your freedom of choice and raise your cable and Internet bills. And it could pave the way for even more media mergers and even less room for independent voices in the media.

Being out of the mainstream in some (not all) of my tastes, I'm sensitive to the loss of small, independent voices in our national culture. My concerns, though, are, if not quite incomprehensible, then trivially irrelevant to a significant percentage of my fellow citizens, as Krugman's recent column, "A Tale of Two Moralities," made clear.

One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state — a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society’s winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net — morally superior to the capitalism red in tooth and claw we had before the New Deal. It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate.

The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That’s what lies behind the modern right’s fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty.

Krugman casts this divide in terms of taxation, but in fact this philosophical divide on the role of government and taxes is but a part of a larger question of how we shape our own society.

One side of the debate vehemently denies that government has any but the smallest role in determining how our society evolves and responds to problems. The federal government is there to ensure that no external power interferes with us, and state and local governments are there to ... well, it's not clear to me exactly what role people on that side of the debate see for state and local governments, but a role exists, if only because the Constitution parses out power between the federal government and "the states." How does society handle everything else? Presumbly it's a tradeoff between state/local legislation and the free market. The market is assigned a rather large role in this world view, because the collective wisdom of its impersonal workings is presumed to be a better guide than the grand schemes of individual technocrats.

The other side of the debate posits that government at all levels is the great leveler, counterbalancing unwholesome influences in the free market and imposing some measure of responsibility on the profit motive. If the free market seems to be steamrolling over some, the government's role is either to stop the steamrolling or to mitigate the suffering, e.g., through unemployment insurance or a last-ditch health care option.

Obviously most of us fall somewhere in the middle of this divide, but the terms of the debate are set by the most extreme advocates of either side.

So what does all this have to do with Sen. Franken's opinion of the NBC/Comcast deal, and for that matter, what does it have to do with KUSF?

Well, Sen. Franken obviously feels that the untrammeled workings of the market in the NBC/Comcast case are, in fact, detrimental to our society. The concentration of media ownership in fewer and fewer hands is detrimental to our national debate because it lessens the likelihood that voices critical of the controlling owners, or critical of policies and trends those owners favor, will be heard. It gives those owners an increasingly powerful voice in that debate. Unsurprisingly, Franken believes government, the FCC in this case, had a role to play, but failed to play that role.

As for KUSF, it was a small voice on the FM dial owned by an entity that had (and has) no other major media outlets. Though not known for political programming as such, its on-air personalities were largely free to speak their minds, and certainly were free to play a range of music that owed nothing to any corporation's pocketbook. It hosted guests who spoke on a myriad of topics, guests who might have found it difficult if not impossible to be heard anywhere else on the dial. Again, these were not political conversations for the most part; these were people speaking on the arts, on culture, on topics of interest to the San Francisco Bay Area. For the most part they weren't controversial: they were simply not significant enough to warrant airtime on bigger radio stations.

I can guarantee you that 90.3 FM, KDFC, will not be airing those voices. That's not its aim. And so, without malice but certainly with some harm, an outlet for those disparate voices is gone.

KDFC will be playing classical music, and that's all. It will not be airing foreign-language programs, or Shoestring Radio Theater, or Rampage Radio, or Radio Goethe, or any of the dozens of other programs serving a myriad of communities. Even whether the variety of KDFC's music can approach the variety available on the old KUSF's airwaves, like MTheo's Monday night show Classics Without Walls, is yet to be seen (but I'm not holding my breath).

Oh, and who owns the 90.3 FM license? The University of Southern California, which already owns its own radio station, KUSC, in Southern California.

I'm not saying USC will do badly by its new acquisition, but is consolidation of ownership always a good thing?

We as a nation are confronting that very question, and have been for a couple of decades, yet for the most part people don't care. Rupert Murdoch's Fox empire, the Clear Channel media empire, the Disney media empire, and now the Comcast media empire -- is it good for us to be getting our information and entertainment (since the two are now so closely entwined we have to consider them together) from such behemoths?

Is it good for us to let the free market operate untrammeled to permit economies of scale in our media? Is bigger always better?

Do we want our government to rein in such consolidation? Is there a need for government to play such a role?

Is the popularity, or market share, of an idea or of a voice a reliable gauge as to its importance to our society?

We will be playing out the answers to these questions whether we like it or not. Unfortunately, my sense is that too few of us feel the answers matter, and so through apathy and inaction we will lose many, many small but significant voices who could have enriched and improved our national debate about who we are and what kind of society we're going to have.

And we'll never know what we missed.

No more radio for KUSF

It's the end of an era: San Francisco's little college station that could, KUSF, is off the FM airwaves, seemingly for good.

KUSF's broadcast license was held by the University of San Francisco (USF), a private institution. Today, USF announced it was giving up that license.

The university has reached an agreement to assign the FCC license for radio frequency 90.3 FM to Classical Public Radio Network, which is launching a non-commercial classical music station in the Bay Area. CPRN is owned by University of Southern California.

The station's nearly all-volunteer staff was caught by surprise, and USF apparently wasn't much interested in such niceties as allowing the currently on-air DJ to sign the station off properly, as is typically required (by the FCC) when a radio station stops broadcasting. According to the Bay Citizen's's account:

At 10 a.m. this morning, Irwin Swirnoff, a DJ and music director at KUSF, was doing some volunteer work in the station when he heard an alarming thing: silence. Or rather, the sound of static as USF, per an agreement with USC-owned Classical Public Radio Network, cut the transmitter.

To those present at the station, including the on-air DJ, Howard Ryan, it seemed that no one had been given warning of the sale.

Here's an excerpt from the SF Weekly's story:

USF officials abruptly shut the doors to KUSF, the college's well-known indie radio station today, locking out students and DJs with no notice.

Security guards walked into the station on campus this morning in the middle of a show and ordered everyone out, according to one student DJ. The university then shut down the station, and allowed staff to go back inside and get their things.

The deal is part of a larger rearrangement of the Bay Area radio dial in which classical commercial station KDFC (102.1 FM) will change formats and call letters, simulcasting San Jose station KUFX, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The actual call letters "KDFC" will be assigned to the old KUSF frequency, 90.3 FM, on which CPRN's noncommercial classical music feed will air. (Apologies for the awkward phrasing, but I'm not interested in clarifying it for the nonce: read the linked articles for the full picture.)

The Bay Guardian also has a piece on the incident, as does the San Francisco Chronicle's Peter Hartlaub. (Note that Hartlaub wrote both an article on the classical-music angle and one on KUSF proper, links to both of which are in this entry.)

Now, I must disclose that I have had an on-again, off-again association with KUSF for a long time. I've been a DJ on New Music Programming and other programs, and I've done my share of recorded announcements for the station, too. I've put in countless hours of my time and provided my own music, at my own expense, for some of my shows. I'm therefore no dispassionate observer of this fiasco.

As you can probably tell, I think it bites. As the license holder, USF was free to dispose of the license as it saw fit, but to do so without notice to the volunteer staff or to the community at large that listens to the broadcast signal was insensitive at best. The word "loutish" best captures my sentiment, I think.

Rather than rehashing what the referenced articles say, allow me to read the tea leaves from USF's own public statements.

According to the University, only the broadcast license was sold; "KUSF" will continue to be heard online.

The call letters KUSF were not sold, and the KUSF logo and all music inventory will remain USF property. All KUSF staff will be offered similar positions at KUSF.org.

The move to online-only distribution gives KUSF a powerful opportunity to grow its worldwide audience. Previously, the station was limited to 100 online listeners at a time, but capacity will be increased to accommodate thousands of listeners.

Also from the press release:

As it shifts to an online-only format, USF will focus on the station’s primary purpose as a teaching laboratory for students.

As a "teaching resource," KUSF's value lay in its operation as a radio station. The station's format -- well, let's clarify that KUSF did not adhere to a single "format" as most people understand that term. KUSF boasted an eclectic range of programming that didn't hew to a single theme or even organizing principle. On weekdays, from midnight to 6 PM, "New Music Programming" held sway; this is the format that gained KUSF most of its fame, as it focused on breaking new and often "difficult" music that commercial stations would not touch -- until KUSF and other college stations helped to build an audience for it. The heyday of KUSF's influence in this regard was the 1980s and early 1990s, when acts like R.E.M. and Nirvana crossed over from college stations to commercial recognition.

However, KUSF's programming went well beyond "New Music." Weekday evenings between 6 PM and midnight, as well as weekends, were given over to a variety of programs, some of them in other languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, Farsi, German, Finnish, French, Italian, Turkish, and Azerbaijani, to name only the ones I can recall), some of them non-musical in nature and focused on specific subjects like theater or food, and still others focused on specific types of music like soul, dance, electronica, obscure classical, heavy metal, etc.

These programs all had small but loyal audiences, as their like didn't and doesn't exist on the airwaves. Also, because they aired on a radio station, they also were far more likely to be locally oriented, even after KUSF became available as an Internet stream. They and New Music Programming promoted local businesses and people, too, either as on-air guests or as underwriters (businesses which donated money, goods or services in support of the station).

It's this web of locality, and the sense of community it nurtured, that USF is giving up. USF is forcing the San Francisco Bay Area to give it up, too.

So, now that we have a better understanding of KUSF's programming, what does USF's declared "primary purpose" for KUSF, "as a teaching laboratory for students," signify?

Well, it depends on what USF is interested in teaching students, doesn't it?

In the old days, KUSF existed to teach students what they needed to know to work at a radio station. (Indirectly, a number of volunteers learned valuable lessons about how to work in the music industry, too, as this reminiscence from former DJ Denise Sullivan notes.) The specific programming on KUSF came about organically due to the need to fill 24 hours of air time, seven days a week; the content of the programming was not of as much concern to the University as the opportunity to practice being on the air (and to cut tape, and to produce recorded announcements).

Now, again, what's USF interested in teaching students?

After that dramatic buildup, you might think I have some clever answer up my sleeve. Sorry, I don't. I wish I did, believe me.

If USF were interested in demonstrating how to construct an insanely diverse, wildly divergent set of audiences for the same 'net feed, I think the current programming would stand an excellent chance of surviving. If USF were interested in demonstrating how a university could nurture goodwill in its local community, I think the current programming would be around indefinitely.

I doubt USF is interested in these things. And unfortunately, whatever its real interests and intentions, I'm not sure how the current programs will fit.

At the moment, the future of the entity formerly known as the FM station KUSF is in flux. I'll be keeping tabs on it.

Radio is still kicking

Never visit The Browser if you're supposed to be doing something else. What was supposed to be a ten-second check for new articles turned into an hour of reading the first one that caught my eye: an overview of contemporary public radio news/talk offerings in the New York Review of Books.

The Browser's summary blurb is a trifle misleading: it promises someone asking (and presumably answering) the question, "Why don't we discuss radio content the way we discuss books and TV?" It could be that the anonymous collator who decided to list this piece was misled by its opening sentence: "Radio receives little critical attention." In fact, Bill McKibben's piece is specifically about the world of public radio, profiling several respected shows in that realm that aren't nearly as well known as, say, All Things Considered.

I'd like to add that it isn't just news and talk that is worth listening to on the non-commercial airwaves. While commercial music radio has been creatively dead since, oh, 1975, non-commercial radio stations have been programming interesting, sometimes challenging, generally obscure genres and artists for decades. The zenith of college radio's influence (this music is most often heard on current or former college radio stations) was perhaps the 1980s and early 1990s, when artist after artist crossed over from those commercial-free airwaves into the public consciousness, turning rock and pop on its ear. The music continues today, albeit at a much less noticeable level as far as the general public is concerned.

The key to non-commercial music stations' influence and continued relevance (and they are very much still relevant) is the freedom of their mostly unpaid DJs. These people volunteer their time and often their money to put together weekly shows just for the love of the music, and that love shines through in the care with which they construct those shows. The best of them mix old favorites, obscure and not, with new releases. It's a way of enticing people to listen to those new releases, embedding them within songs the audience has heard before.

Do you know what's wrong with substituting your iPod in "shuffle" mode for the radio? You won't be exposed to anything new. And while some of you might be happy recycling the same ten, twenty, one hundred, or even five hundred albums (or even, heaven forbid, songs), that just won't work for most of us.

What about the Internet? A number of sites offer up samples of what's new and what's good (in someone's eyes, anyway), and some of them try to guess at what you'll like by breaking every song into discrete characteristics and matching on those characteristics to point you at music you haven't yet heard. None of that, though, matches the skill that a live human brain steeped in music can bring to the party.

A really good radio DJ may plan out sets in advance or may rely entirely on seat-of-the-pants inspiration, but he or she always has the flow of the set in mind. One song might follow another because they have similar arrangements, or because one ends with a note in the same key as the other starts with, or they're roughly the same genre, or the lyrical content is similar, or one ends and the other begins with cymbal crashes, or they have identical beats (or can be coerced that way), or ... you get the idea. Something about the current song triggers the next one in the DJ's mind. Software can't match it. It's magical. And it leads to magical results on the radio. Well, on non-commercial radio stations, which are the only places a radio DJ has this kind of freedom.

Let yourself be surprised, and maybe pleased, by what those who have a passion for music can bring you on the non-commercial airwaves.

Al Hart, gentleman

While summer cleaning, I unearthed my recording of the local TV stations' stories about longtime radio pro Al Hart's retirement ten years ago.

Hart was a fixture on San Francisco news radio station KCBS-AM for 34 years, holding down the morning drive-time (6-10 AM) slot for nearly twenty-five years of that run. That's rare in a business as volatile as radio. He could have kept his job even longer, but retired in order to spend time with his wife Sally, who suffered from ALS. (Sally passed away in 2002.)

Even rarer than his on-air longevity is the universal esteem in which he was (and is) held by his peers and by the public. In addition to being a pro's pro as a broadcaster -- his voice was warm, but his tone was brisk, as befitted a man delivering hard news -- Hart was (and is), by all accounts, an unpretentious and just plain nice man. He seemed genuinely moved, and a little overwhelmed, by the fuss made when he retired. Every local TV station sent a news crew; there were on-air tributes from current and former colleagues, and even by longtime competitors at other radio stations; Gov. Gray Davis declared the Friday that Hart retired, 2 June 2000, "Al Hart Day" throughout California; the San Francisco Board of Supervisors issued a similar proclamation for San Francisco, board president Barbara Kaufman wryly noting that the unanimous passing of the proclamation was a first in the board's history.

One of the last things Hart said on the air that day was that although he had received "a stack" of cards and letters wishing him well, he would reply to every single one of them. He kept his word: my summer cleaning also produced his handwritten note to me, not merely acknowledging that I had written, but replying specifically to a couple of remarks I had made. No form letters for Mr. Hart!

Though I wish he could have stayed on the air forever, I count myself lucky to have been part of his audience for most of his run in the mornings.

I can think of no higher praise than to borrow a phrase from Wodehouse: Al Hart is one of nature's gentlemen.