This is of course not a discussion of Pacifica, per se. But it's the longest-established, largest remaining network of liberal bent in the US, and it's going through hell. For purposes of our topic tomorrow, it's worth analyzing what's going on there, so as not to retrace their steps in any future efforts. For the same reasons, we're including a post-mortem of Air America in the show as well.

Pacifica is hardly ready for a post-mortem! But Radio Survivor's Matthew Lasar offers this analysis of what's brought Pacifica to where it is now. You'll find more here. Here's Matthew:

I have a long history of opinionated opinions about Pacifica radio, having written several books on the network.

Basically, I think that Pacifica radio is drowning in democracy.

Don't particularly need to be interviewed about this matter (you'll find no shortage of experts on Pacifica), but just wanted to share. Here are my five reasons (from the article) why Pacifica's democratized boards need to go.

Pacifica can’t afford them, even if the organization goes to electronic balloting. This is a network mired in expenses and inadequate levels of support from the station’s listener subscribers. The expectable “unexpected” expenses that invariably come up make these elected boards, which cost $378,023 in 2010, a luxury that Pacifica cannot afford. The network desperately needs to put its money into talented on-air people, not governance. That means not only scotching these elections, but dramatically reducing the size of the boards themselves.

Second: These elected boards don’t help Pacifica radio. I don’t even consider the people who are elected to these bodies to be board members. They’re really just the leaders of factions representing the interests of air-time seekers or air-time holders around the five Pacifica stations. Thus, the possibility of having boards that really work together to raise money or solve problems is dissolved in factional conflict that Pacifica now subsidizes via expensive elections.

Third: These elected boards politicize everything at Pacifica. I hear board members complaining about Pacifica workers obstinately challenging and arbitrating their layoffs. Of course they do. When you have elections in which candidates are constantly complaining about how we need to change Pacifica’s air sound, the employees of the network are always going to experience any decision made about them as political. So are their listener fans.

Fourth: Most Pacifica station subscribers don’t even participate in these elections. In KPFA in Berkeley’s 2010 election, about 84 percent of subscribers voted for nobody, despite receiving mailers from two different slates, an official ballot, listening to incessant candidate forums over the air, and doubtless being begged by their friends to vote for one slate or another.

Fifth: Elections are not necessary to protect the Pacifica stations. The biggest concern following the upheaval of 1999-2001 was that the board might sell one of the Pacifica stations, and that can be prevented by language similar to or stronger than the current by-laws, which give Pacifica subscribers, as “members” of the Foundation, the right to recall board members and weigh in on “the sale, exchange, transfer or disposition of any of the Foundation’s broadcast licenses.”

Meanwhile, we continue to take your input as we develop this discussion: recording tomorrow, airing this weekend, rolling on eternally in this comments section.