Pacifica Radio: The Rise of an Alternative Network American Subjects: Amazon.co.uk: Matthew Lasar: Books

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"Far more than a study of one unusual radio station and its sometimes eccentric cast of characters, this book offers fresh insights on a host of issues essential to understanding modern American culture, from the shift in radicalism toward individualism during the McCarthy era to the rise of the counterculture, and the economics of radio broadcasting. It is enlightening and entertaining and makes a real contribution to the history of postwar America." --Eric Foner, author of The Story of American Freedom "Pacifica Radio: The Rise of an Alternative Network is indispensable reading for anyone who wants to understand what's happening now at KPFA and for all those who would like to know the perils that confront activists who create counter-cultural institutions. ... Lasar has an eye for paradox, irony, and contradiction, but he is first and foremost an able and astute historian, not a satirical novelist, and he does a lot more than air KPFA's dirty laundry. He shows how much the philosophy of the station was shaped in part by the political atmosphere of the Cold War and McCarthyism, though KPFA was opposed to McCarthyism and the Cold War. Pacifica Radio describes all the cultural, political and economic barriers that KPFA had to surmount to get on, and then stay on, the air." --Jonah Raskin, Santa Rose Press Democrat

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In the public radio landscape, the Pacifica stations stand out as innovators of diverse and controversial broadcasting. Pacifica's fifty years of struggle against social and political conformity began with a group of young men and women who hoped to change the world with a credo of non-violence. "Pacifica Radio" traces the cultural and political currents that shaped the first listener-supported radio station, KPFA FM in Berkeley, and accompanied Pacifica's gradual expansion to a five-station network.In the expanded paperback edition, Lasar provides a postscript ("A Crisis of Containment") that examines the external pressures and organizational problems within the Pacifica Foundation that led, in early 1999, to the police shutdown of network stations KPFA. Lasar, an admittedly pro-KPFA partisan in the conflict, gives a first-person account, calling it "the worst crisis in the history of community radio." Yet Pacifica Radio is about more than just the network's recent troubles. It is the story of visionary Lewis Hill and the small band of pacifists who in 1946, set out to build institutions that would promote dialog between individuals and nations. KPFA took to the air in 1949 with stunningly unconventional programs that challenged the dreary cultural consensus of the Cold War. No one in the Bay Area, or anywhere else, had heard anything like it on the airwaves.The first edition of "Pacifica Radio", which made the San Francisco Chronicle's non-fiction bestseller list, was praised as "fascinating reading" by In These Times. Matthew Lasar was a reporter for KPFA's news department through most of the 1980s. His essays on the social history of free speech debates have appeared in "The Journal of Policy History", "The Journal of Radio Studies", and "Pacific Historical Review". He has a Ph.D. in United States History from the Claremont Graduate University.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

Radical Radio 2 Dec 2002

By Robbie Osman - Published on Amazon.com

Format:Paperback

`Pacifica Radio: The Rise of an Alternative Network' recounts the fifty-year history of the nation's first listener-sponsored and only politically left radio network.

A previous reviewer laments the book's `failure' to critique the content and style of Pacifica's present programming. But this book's purpose is deeper and, it seems to me, much more interesting. It follows Pacifica's internal discussions, debates, and internecine battles through fifty years of its staff, board, and activist listener's efforts to maintain an American media institution that is not owned by or beholden to corporations, the government, or wealthy donors and thereby remains free to produce and broadcast challenging and controversial radio.

When Pacifica's first station, KPFA, began broadcasting to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1949 it was unlike any radio station before it. Its founders were pacifists and anarchists some of whom had spent time during WWII incarcerated as conscientious objectors. The station's agenda was radical. Its format was groundbreaking. And its means of support (listener-sponsorship) was, at the time, unheard of. Also, in 1949 its audience was tiny. An FM license could be had for little more than the cost of an application because most radios of the day were able to receive only AM signals. KPFA had to distribute FM receivers to its prospective listeners. Today the market value of the five Pacifica stations (in New York, Los Angeles, The San Francisco Bay Area, Houston, and Washington D.C.) approaches half a billion dollars.

The dangers posed by McCarthyism, the challenge and promise of the Southern Civil Rights struggle, the intense and tumultuous Vietnam years, the movements for racial and gender equality, and the struggles at home and abroad for personal, political, economic, national, and sexual liberation all have left their mark on Pacifica Radio and Pacifica has shaped those movements and events as well. Through it all Pacifica has managed to remain, as the motto of its signature program, `Democracy Now' puts it, "the exception to the rulers".

Whether one is inclined to describe the present programming as conventional or courageous (and it has elements that are both) Matthew Lasar's thoughtful account of how this `mission driven' network has reflected, responded to, and shaped our times will interest anyone who works with others to make progressive social change possible.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

Insightful and Provocative 23 Nov 2002

By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com

Considering the pervasive myths around Pacifica's origins, the ferocity of the recent struggle over the network's future, and the continuing disappearance of alternative media at a time when we need a range of information sources, this book is particularly timely. Written in a witty and accessible but intellectual style, the book puts the pacifist beliefs of Pacifica's colorful founders in context, while also tracing the evolution of programming of the first station, KPFA, from its initial day of broadcast to the early 1960s. Down and dirty internecine struggles are described, each with valuable lessons for contemporary non-profits, progressive media organizations as well as Pacifica today. If you're interested in understanding the challenges of maintaining independent media voices, this book is a must read.

0 of 9 people found the following review helpful

Interesting but light-weight and pretentious 8 Nov 2002

By deepti - Published on Amazon.com

This book will probably appeal more to those persons who want their opinions of Pacifica confirmed, namely that it is somehow, as one of the books blurbs puts it, "heroic". In general the content of Pacifica is entirely conventional, and in no respect is it courageous in the style of its programming or inventiveness of presentation. This book is something of a cheerleader rather than anything like an analysis of the station's content, and one must assume that a better book by a more serious scholar will eventually be written.

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Pacifica Radio: The Rise of an Alternative Network (American Subjects) [Paperback]

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