Bill Weinberg on Losing His WBAI Show
Growing up in New York, I thought of WBAI as part of the environment. What you heard there didn’t always make sense, but it was certainly different, and often amusing.
This article by a WBAI broadcaster and producer is a sad recounting of the canning of his show by the station. I don’t really know if it’s sad that Bill Weinberg’s show is gone, because I’ve never heard it. But his article leaves the impression that he’s a sensible fellow, and the tale he tells of WBAI’s recent decline is sad indeed.
According to Weinberg, the station now either features the following characters on the air or offers their products as premiums to reward listener contributions: Gary Null, who recently departed DC’s WPFW and whom Weinberg describes as a “mini-mogul” who markets “dubious products”, and who is “notorious as an HIV-AIDS denialist;” David Icke, “who maintains that the world is secretly run by”shape-shifting reptilians" from another dimension;” George Galloway, the former member of the U.K. parliament, who — well, Weinberg barely has space to scratch the surface of this shady figure, who supported the election of Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and who has praised Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad as a “breath of fresh air;” and several other depressing creeps and weirdos.
I happen to know from personal experience that some of the people Weinberg discusses do not take criticism well. I hope they leave him be and that he finds a way to speak to his audience through the internet. It might seem that more modern means of communication make worrying over who gets to be on the radio, and radio itself, rather quaint, but there are still many people who don’t have reliable access to the internet, and these are just the people whom WBAI and its sister stations have claimed to be eager to serve.
