WBAI (99.5 FM) is a non-commercial, listener-supported radio station licensed to serve New York, New York. Its programming is a mixture of political news, talk and opinion from a left-leaning, liberal or progressive viewpoint, and eclectic music. The station is owned by the Pacifica Foundation with studios located in Brooklyn and transmitter located at 4 Times Square.
History Origins The station began as WABF, which first went on the air in 1941 as W75NY, of Metropolitan Television, Inc. (W75NY indicating an eastern station at 47.5 MHz in New York), and moved to the 99.5 frequency in 1947.WABF (FM) Broadcasting – Telecasting. October 27, 1947. pg. 48. In 1955, after two years off the air, it was reborn as WBAI (after then-owners Broadcast Associates, Inc.).Call Letters Assigned Broadcasting – Telecasting. July 4, 1955. pg. 83.
1960s WBAI was purchased by philanthropist Louis Schweitzer, who donated it to the Pacifica Foundation in 1960. The station, which had been a commercial enterprise, became non-commercial and listener-supported under Pacifica ownership.
The history of WBAI during this period is iconoclastic and contentious. Referred to in a New York Times Magazine piece as "an anarchist's circus," one station manager was jailed in protest. The staff, in protest at sweeping proposed changes of another station manager, seized the studio facilities, then located in a deconsecrated church, as well as the transmitter, located at the Empire State Building. During the 1960s, the station hosted numerous anti-establishment causes, including anti-Vietnam war activists, feminists (and live coverage of purported bra-burning demonstrations), kids lib, early Firesign Theater comedy, and complete-album music overnight. It refused to stop playing Janis Ian's song about interracial relationships "Society's Child". Extensive daily coverage of the Vietnam war included the ongoing body count and innumerable anti-war protests.
WBAI played a major role in the evolution and development of the counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s. Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" was first broadcast on Radio Unnameable, Bob Fass' freeform radio program on WBAI, a program which itself in many ways created, explored, and defined the possibilities of the form. The station covered the 1968 seizure of the Columbia University campus live and uninterrupted. With its signal reaching nearly 70 miles beyond New York City, its reach and influence, both direct and indirect, were significant. Among the station's weekly commentators in the 1960s were author Ayn Rand, British politician/playwright Sir Stephen King-Hall, and author Dennis Wholey. The 1964 Political conventions were "covered" satirically on WBAI by Severn Darden, Elaine May, Burns and Schreiber, David Amram, Julie Harris, Taylor Mead, and members of The Second City improvisational group. The station, under Music Directors John Corigliano, Ann McMillan and, later Eric Salzman, aired an annual 23-hour nonstop presentation of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle, as recorded at the Bayreuth Festival the year before, and produced live studio performances of emerging artists in its studios. Interviews with prominent figures in literature and the arts, as well as original dramatic productions and radio adaptations were also regular program offerings.
1970s In 1970, Kathy Dobkin, Milton Hoffman, and Francie Camper produced an unprecedented, critically acclaimed 4 day round-the-clock reading of Tolstoy's War And Peace. The epic novel was read cover to cover by more than 200 people—including a large number of international celebrities from various fields. Newsweek called this broadcast "one of the more mind-blowing 'firsts' in the history of the media". The complete reading (over 200 audio tapes) was the first Pacifica program to be selected for inclusion in the permanent collection of the Museum of Broadcasting in NYC.
In 1973, the station broadcast comedian George Carlin's iconic Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television monologue uncensored. WBAI's broadcast of Seven Words became a landmark moment in the history of free speech. In a 1978 milestone in the station's contentious and unruly history, WBAI lost a 5-to-4 U.S. Supreme Court decision (FCC v. Pacifica Foundation) that to this day has defined the power of the government over broadcast material it calls indecent. Mickey Waldman and Joe Cuomo covered much of the legal proceedings during this time.
In 1974, WBAI program director Marnie Mueller asked Charles Ruas to become director of arts programming. Thus the station, already at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement, the counterculture and anti-war protest, under Ruas also became a platform for New York's avant-garde in theater, music, performance, art, and poetry. When the downtown avant-garde operas A Letter for Queen Victoria and Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson opened at the Metropolitan Opera, the station was right there to tape excerpts in rehearsals for broadcast.
Ruas initiated The Reading Experiment, a year-long series on Marguerite Young's epic novel Miss MacIntosh, My Darling."Bed Time Stories: Miss Marguerite Young, My Darling," The Village Voice, Vol XIX, N. 45, Thursday, November 7, 1974 These readings were transformed into performances by Rob Wynne, who scored them with a complex collage of sound effects, music, and opera. The participants included Anaïs Nin, Marian Seldes, Alice Playten, H.M. Koutoukas, Leo Lerman, Michael Wager, Novella Nelson, Osceola Macarthy Adams, Owen Dodson, Wyatt Emory Cooper, Michael Higgins, Anne Fremantle, Peggy Cass, Ruth Ford, Earle Hyman and Daisy Aldan.
When William Burroughs returned to the United States from Tangier, Ruas invited him to present a retrospective of all his works. The series consisted of four programs, beginning with Junkie and followed by The Yage Letters, read by Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, The Last Words of Dutch Schultz, and, finally, Naked Lunch. Bill Kortum oversaw this series as well as retrospectives of the works of Jerzy Kosinski and Donald Barthelme, co-produced with Judith Sherman, the station's music director.
A semester of Allen Ginsberg's poetry seminar held at the Naropa Institute in Colorado was presented by Ruas, and for many years the station covered the annual New Year's Eve celebratory poetry marathon at St. Mark's Church. The day the Vietnam War ended, poet Muriel Rukeyser came to the station to read her poem on peace.
Ruas inaugurated the Audio Experimental Theater, a series presenting the works of avant-garde artists: Meredith Monk, Yvonne Rainer, Ed Bowes, Ed Friedman, Michael Newman with Joan Schwartz and Benjamin Folkman, Vito Acconci, Charles Ludlum, Jacques Levy, Willoughby Sharp, John Cage, Robert Wilson, Philip Glass, Richard Foreman, and Joan Jonas.
In drama, the station defended Tennessee Williams against his critics during the last years of his life by covering his Memoirs and broadcasting a production of Two-Character Play. Other dramatists whose works were featured included Jean-Claude van Itallie, Richard Scheckner, Andrei Serban, and Elizabeth Swados.
Ruas initiated interview programs featuring nonfiction writers discussing their fields of expertise—Buckminster Fuller, Thor Heyerdahl, Ed Sanders, Jonathan Kozol and Nigel Nicholson.
Each of the arts had weekly coverage. Courtney Callender's Getting Around covered the cultural scene. Moira Hodgson was the dance critic. The visual arts critics were John Perreault, Cindy Nemser, Liza Baer, Joe Giordano, Judith Vivell, Kenneth Koch, and Les Levine.
Ruas invited poet Susan Howe and CCNY Literature professor Paul Oppenheimer to produce a weekly poetry program. Howe produced a weekly poetry program presenting the works of John Ashbery, W.S. Merwin, Maureen Owen, Charles Reznikoff, Rebecca Wright, Ron Padgett, Carter Ratcliff, John Hollander, Anne Waldman, Helen Adam, Audre Lorde, Michael Brownstein, Mary Ferrari, and Muriel Rukeyser. She also produced specials featuring William Carlos Williams, V. R. Lang, Jack Spicer, Louise Bogan, Paul Metcalf, Jonathan Williams, Harry Mathews, and James Laughlin.
On alternate weeks, Oppenheimer presented the works of Barbara Holland, Ivan Arguelles, Ann Darr, Richard Howard, Karen Swenson, James Emanuel, Siv Cedering Fox, Nelson Canton, Victoria Sullivan, Samuel Menashe, Carol Hebald, Paul Zweig, Gregor Roy and Mary Jane Menuez. He also produced specials on the aesthetics of 20th century poets and the history of the sonnet with contemporary American examples.
From 1976 to 1979, poet John Giorno hosted The Poetry Experiment and presented, with Charles Ruas, his eight-part series Dial-A-Poem Poets.
When Ira Weitzman became Director of the Saturday night Free Music Store program, he was as interested in performance as dedicated to music. He oversaw Meredith Monk's performance of Quarry, as well as producing Broadway actress Marian Seldes in Portrait of an Unknown Lady: Eleanor Wylie. He produced Performing Poets in Support of WBAI with the country's most notable poets. His best known production was an evening with the performing poets Ed Friedman, Helen Adam and Patti Smith, who performed her first concert.
During those years, WBAI became a cultural force as these programs were disseminated nationally through the Pacifica Network.
In 1977, there was a major internal crisis at WBAI which resulted in the loss of the physical space of the station. WBAI was located in a former church on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. For many years, WBAI had believed it was exempt from New York City real estate taxes as an "educational" institution, but in March 1977 the City Tax Commission denied that status and WBAI eventually sold the church (which it owned) to pay the back taxes. WBAI signed a new lease for the 19th floor (the former Caedmon Records office/studio) plus one office on another floor of an office building at 505 8th Avenue on the West Side of Manhattan.
Turmoil and change After the events in 1977, the station began a shift to a more profound international direction. In 1980, Caribbean immigrant and Marxist activist Samori Marksman was hired as WBAI Program Director and with his ascension, there was more of a focus on international issues and the promotion of people of color to the WBAI staff which caused grumbling among long time white and Jewish progressives who felt they were being pushed out of the station. In 1983, Marksman abruptly left for the Caribbean island of Grenada to participate in a new government – a government that was thwarted by the US invasion of Grenada in October 1983.