Letters Aug 28, 2008 at 4:00 am

Comments

1
What is this 101-hour Dada Festival doing on KBOO? Where's the news and information shows that I paid for with my membership? KBOO is not the 10-watt closet radio art project of a tiny liberal-arts college. It's a major player in the radio marketplace of a major American metropolitan area.

How much money did the lunatics who hijacked KBOO's programming pay for this 101-hour block of rot?? Did they pay more than the THOUSANDS of subscribers and KBOO members did?

Let's do the math: ( the numbers may be way off, but the point made by them is focused)
20000 KBOO subscribers buying memberships at $50/yr each. $1,000,000
Number of radio hours in a year: 8760
Subscriber payments per radio hour: 1000000/8760 = $114
Number of hours in the dada fest=101
estimated cost of KBOO operation per month: $80,000
Radio hours per month: 730
Cost per hour of broadcast for KBOO: $109
KBOO cost of the dada fest: $11,000

Have the lunatics who are doing the dada fest paid KBOO $11,000+ in sponsorship? Can you prove this? Have they paid more money than we have for 101 hours of programming?

If not, then what the hell are they doing with a 101-hour block of valuable KBOO radio time?

I speak on behalf of the tens of thousands of pissed-off KBOO members.
2
I would like to send a brief message to my Latino brothers and sisters who are insisting on changing the name of a major street to 'honor' César Chávez.

You are out of fucking minds!

Do you have any idea of what is involved in changing street names in the Internet/Global Positioning System age? There are millions of cars with GPS systems and millions of bytes of digital maps that are going to become worthless as a result.

In the Internet age (which few Hispanic activists seem to live in), changing street names is far more than just replacing a few street signs. There are tens of thousands of maps (in GoogleMaps, Mapquest, just to name a few) that will need to be reprogrammed. At great expense. And none of this expensive computer programming maintenance is going to be paid for by anyone with a 'z' at the end of their name.

Actually street-renaming perpetuates negative Latino stereotypes among the public. It's a grand expensive empty gesture that does nothing to improve the daily lives of the people that Sr. Chavez himself worked so hard to help. It's like the giant gilded statue of the Latino generalismo in some dirt-poor South American country who leads the revolution against a corrupt dictatorship. Only to replace it with his own corrupt dictatorship that gives the poor nothing but a statue in the park of the new 'great champion of the people'. What does renaming a street do to help the millions of Latino poor people? Why are all these Latino activists so angry at our refusal to go along with their plans for an grand, stupid, expensive, and meaningless gesture to 'honor' some guy who never even visited Portland, never mind actually improving the lives of the people who live here?
3
As to the Dada surrealism festival on KBOO, do you think it should be on OPB instead? Many people are quite upset about their favorite shows being preempted by "horseshit" and "sillyness" but many others really enjoy it. As for the lunatic fringe that has hi-jacked the station for these 4 days, that fringe includes several several dozens of volunteers, listeners, local musicians and others who are contributing to the event. I know there are many pissed off listeners, but tens of thousands (that you speak on behalf of)? And if the calls into the airroom are any indication, there are just as many if not more people who have really enjoyed this contriversal programming...
4
I don't listen to KBOO since it went communist.
5
I dunno. I pay more as a subscriber than the figure Mr. Probandt gives. I pay nearly three times as much and I'm as pleased as punch to hear the Dada Festival.
Probandt also neglects to mention that KBOO does a full day's programming once a year to only news and public affairs during pledge drives. The Dada festival has only happened twice (so far -here's hoping there's more!) at seven year intervals. Math's never been my strong point, but that's a hellavuh lot more news and public affairs than Dada and Surrealism.
And really - how could anyone even claim to speak for tens of thousands of listeners?


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