KHSU’s Broadcast Engineer Re-Instated Following Union Advocacy
A small group of volunteers, staff, and listeners gather outside the KHSU studio after it was shut down abruptly in April. [Photo by Ryan Hutson]
When Humboldt State University abruptly announced layoffs at KHSU in April, the cuts meant the community’s public radio station would lose its one, and only, broadcast engineer. Following forceful union intervention, the position was restored and the station continues to be on the air throughout Northwest California and Southwest Oregon.
Of the seven staffers laid off, including the general manager, only the dismissal of the union engineer was rescinded.
“Management did not expect the Union to care. Or perhaps they did not even realize that one of the employees in the group they terminated was part of a Union and that they would held accountable,” said Steve Tillinghast, Humboldt chapter president with the California State University Employees Union which represents 16,000 support staff across the CSU. “Humboldt realized over the last several months that the chief engineer of KHSU is a critical employee and that the station could not operate, even in its reduced form, without him.”
KHSU is a community-supported, non-commercial public radio station, licensed to and located on the campus of Humboldt State University in Arcata, according to its website. It broadcasts a mix of programs to a local audience of about 135,000 people through a temporary agreement with Capital Public Radio till the end of October.
The layoffs came amidst leadership changes, fundraising shortfalls, and a state audit advisory that noted “opportunities for improvement particularly in the areas of strategic alignment, organizational structure, and governance.” The advisory did not recommend staffing reductions.
“Major decisions made behind closed doors, with zero transparency, simply do not work for this community,” wrote four current and former state legislators in an April 16 letter to California State University Chancellor Timothy White.
The politicians asked that the university involve the community in future decisions about the station. Since then, HSU President Lisa Rossbacher has retired and Tom Jackson, Jr., the University’s eighth president, came on board in June.
Earlier Chapters:
- KHSU’s Community Advisory Board Submits Vote of No Confidence in General Manager
- Do the Right Thing–a Member of KHSU’s Advisory Board Demands the General Manager’s Resignation
- ‘It’s a Death in Our Community’: Locals Reeling After KHSU Locks Doors and Streams Chico Radio Station
- KHSU’s Newly Appointed Acting Director Resigns Saying He Is ‘Saddened, Disappointed and Angry’
- Last Remaining Staff Member at KHSU Resigns
- Former and Current North Coast Lawmakers Denounce Surprise Shutdown of KHSU
- Ripples from KHSU’s Purge Spread: Sacramento Bee Has Article
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Maybe he will update the hourly announcement of the call letters, that without the frequency numbers that go with them are useless to folks who don’t know them. And KHSU NEVER gives the TIME anymore. 😣😳😵😡😠
I’m glad KHSU’s engineer was reinstated. He is excellent and vital. However, as one of the employees who was terminated, this points out just wrong and unfair it is to work for the HSU Foundation as an “At Will” employee with none of the protections that union employees receive and to be denied the same retirements benefits, and other benefits. I hope the new president is made aware of just how bogus Foundation employees’ situation is.
I keep reading that one of the reasons KHSU was gutted was “fundraising shortfalls.” This is a fallacy and a lie. The main reason we had fundraising problems is when VP Wruck and GM Fretwell fired Katie Whiteside, it started an incredible cascade of cancelled underwriting contracts, membership withdrawal and terrible publicity. Both Wruck and Fretwell assured us numerous times that the University would make up all losses for a year because they understood their firing of Whiteside had caused the financial problems.
However when Wruck fired us, (after having us do a fradulent pledge drive), he never mentioned KHSU making up the losses.
I did the underwriting for 17 years and never had a year that went down in underwriting until the last year. Over this period I raised over $3,000,000 and by the end, we were bringing in $250,000 per year, all from our loyal and generous local underwriters. I talked to numerous stations with many more listeners and almost none raised as much money in underwriting as we did at KHSU.
So many lies and so much broken trust and now our community is left with a zombie of a station with no local voices or content and so many people who will never donate or trust this university again. Like me.
Jeff DeMark, 17 year employee of KHSU.
Katie Whiteside’s firing was an absolute tragedy for the community, she is truly one I think of when I think of what it means to be a good citizen, a genuine example for the community as a whole. Being a daily listener for nearly 25 years I’d have to disagree that her firing caused the fiscal shortfalls solely or was even the main cause. From my perspective the shift in culture at the station alone caused it’s down fall and even indirectly the firing of Katie.
From 1994( when I began listening) up until just a few years ago KHSU’s main form of activism was environmental. Mainly local issues and concerns. Over the past few years KHSU’s activism adgenda has shifted from an environmental focus(which hardly even got a mention over the past few years in the local programming) to a social justice focus. That cultural shift has been extremely polarizing to the community and the programming put forth has been one sided and even overtly racists toward white folks at times ( for better or worse the main demographic in these parts).
I called into the station and spoke directly with Katie about this. One of these conversations was based on a program of Malcom X being aired. In this program Mr. X made specific reference to “kill the blue eyed devil” along with other racist nonsense. I asked her specifically how it was being allowed on the air, nothing justifies something so blatantly foul and directly against the values of diverse public radio. I had made my fair share of financial contributions to KHSU over the years, that day was the final straw. After many such programs and frustration over the absolute hypocrisy they express, I withdrew my financial support for the station. Over a year before her departure from the station the writing was on the wall and I explained at length my reason for my withdrawal of support and made her aware of a coming wave of many of the same withdrawls from long term business and private supporters for similar reasons. This was no longer a KHSU who was speaking for us and the community and seemed to be driven by a few over zealous programming managers with a racially motivated social justice agenda. An example of this, numerous times I listened to Thursday night talk only to hear Laurna Brant and her guests overtly make racist comment after racist comment directed bluntly at white folks. Go back and listen to the Race Beat and other programming along that line if the audio files are still available, open racist views being disguised as social justice activism. Racism is racism regardless of who it’s directed at, KHSU had a responsibility to be truly progressive and failed.
Simply put, environmental activism with a dash of social activism will get the pocket books out and the donations rolling in a community like this. Going all in with the social justice warriors is just a dead end and deeply polarizing around here. I’ve been listening to the fund drives for years and the shortcomings have been building, this wasn’t an all of a sudden thing. As the social justice agenda became the dominant local focus the funding for the station dried up. I imagine it would look like directly inverse curves when observed over time.
I’ve always appreciated your voice and presence on the station Mr. Demark, being on the inside I hope you can appreciate the perspective of a long time listener. The station really changed and I think everyone on the inside felt it as well. I think their were people on the inside who were really rocking the boat and those waves tore the station apart from the inside out.
I was listening intently nearly everyday, KHSU was a fundamental part of my auditory life. It’s saddens me what it has become.
Sincerely
I might suggest that the second paragraph of your autobiography should probably be broken into more than one impossible wall of text.
That is, if it’s important to you that anyone attempt to read it.
Incidentally, if you would dare adventure further into long form broadcasting and/or literature, you might find that Malcolm X did some editing of his own head trip.
perhaps if you had kept listening instead of making a panicked call to the radio station, you would have learned that Malcolm X eventually renounced hate and promoted working with poor whites and other races. Shortly thereafter he was assassinated by people who stood to benefit from maintaining the racial divide.
17 years is a long time to put into working somewhere. Jeff Demark is a stand up guy. He also has integrity and courage to speak up about mistruth’s surrounding khsu’s demise, and the firing of many long term employees.
No ofense khsu listener, but i think jeff would know better about things at the station than you the listener. Lots of really good people lots their jobs and careers and your upset that the agenda of the content of the station changed to your dissatisfaction and shook up your world. It is also not cool and in poor taste to blame the breakup on ” people on the inside who were really rocking the boat.” have some respect for your fellow community members. Im sure there were times when katie and jeff were solicited to work elsewhere or do something else for more money but they had loyalty to the station.
you would think that if you had a job on the hill (at HSU), you would have some kind of protections as an employee and would be putting your 17 years for a paycheck – but also for a good retirement package like calPERS.
I agree the opinions were sometimes not the same as mine, but all you have to do is not listen. It’s a community platform (was) – you don’t have to agree with everyone. The race beat was a bit much for me also, but I’m not overly sensitive like you seem to be.
……and when people stop listening they stop subscribing and stop underwriting. I believe that was the point of Listener’s post.
The “soapbox” model of programming, without accountability, was a weakness regardless of the particular content. A community radio station needs to serve all of the community, not just a select few special interest groups. That is where KHSU fell down. They used to make some effort to do that, but that changed some time during the 1990s. Thursday Night Talk was great when KHSU enforced standards of community discourse; they got rid of the neurotic demagogue Ida Honoroff and Luis Chabolla, by contrast, sought differing viewpoints with fairness and openness. Under Jamie Flower’s watch it was a sewer of propaganda and it apparently continued that way under race diva Bryant. KHSU stopped being a community station when it defined “community” as a narrow set of ideological interests. By my observation that happened decades ago.
‘Listener’. You tend to disregard the FACT that the politics in the country took a dramatic shift (“Over the past few years KHSU’s activism adgenda [sic] has shifted…”) with the (non-majority) election of trump, and prior to that as a reaction to having a black president. With those FACTS, you need to consider that non-profit radio stations are (and that very media were founded as) ALTERNATIVE VOICES, that, as they are designed to be more influenced by the community and less by business interests, should express the peoples’ thoughts and concerns.
I also hear an undertone of racism in what you have written. Another poor white person no longer in complete dominance and control.
That all said, I appreciate that you have laid bare the REAL REASONS KHSU was gutted: It was perceived as ‘too left’, ‘too inclusive of the voices of people of color’, and just ‘too far out of the mainstream box’ that institutions like the university and her controlling forces want to support.
No “alternative voice” is entitled to support from public institutions without demonstrating their merit. The strongest metric would be the ability to generate subscriber support and that’s what the various ideological soapboxes that came to define KHSU’s local programming failed to demonstrate. The demand that they be supported with revenue that they themselves fail to generate amounts to “Gimme gimme or you’re a (racist/sexist/homophobe/etc.). Accommodating them turned out to be a huge drain on resources with no real benefit.
Agreed politically things have taken a drastic turn. The democrats felt it was a good move to double down on identity politics and make everything about race. That political calculus sent trump to Washington. The same calculus lead to the demise of KHSU a beacon of awareness for decades before this political climate nonsense.
Like I said in my post, from my perspective, over zealous folks with influence on programming choices imploded the station from the inside out. The newly found racial focus of the station was the idea of individuals and should be taken responsibility for by those individuals. The death of our station may have been at your hands, or minds. Maybe it was all the rage in the national news but those are not the issues at the top of the list of our local community.
Just to clarify, I celebrate the species Homo sapien. I could care less what race, religion, or sexual preference anyone is. Our potential is wasted worrying about these aspects of humanity. I celebrate freedom, love, and evolutionary progress. Cheers to being human. If folks want to be black, brown, white or yellow, whatever, that’s up to them and the story they are bound to. Humanity is the culture I, we all belong to. Just in case there was an interest, or a racist label thrown out there. I love Humanity and all the other life on this planet.
Earth is where we live.
Jeff Demark was a joy to listen to. Anytime he spoke I listened, like a new instrument came into the symphony and was about to play something I’d been waiting for. I appreciated his built for radio, stage worn, warm classic tone voice. His commitment to the station and the community was obvious in his enthusiasm anytime his voice was present on the air. It was easy to hear he loved what he did. I truly miss the reassuring tone, and warm care of his voice. Thank you for your contribution to this community Mr. Demark.
Cheers
Like me.
I still listen, because it is the only place I can hear NPR, but nothing else is worth my time. And I feel crummy & disloyal even for that.
Thanks for everything you and all the others did for so many years. KHSU was an outstanding station and a credit to the community and the school. Alas, no more.
Thank you for your work all those years, and passion- and thank you now for your feedback. Perspective is crucial for the public’s understanding.
Peter Fretwell, the General Manager, was not laid off. I have heard that he is still drawing a salary and working remotely for KHSU from his home in Spokane.
He’s now gone. They tried to recycle him on the curb but their wasn’t enough slavageable material so he went into the regular trash dump.
Since many will no longer listen to KHSU, this news is slightly irrelevant.
Good thing that there is still a community radio station, KMUD that people can listen to and support.
KMUD does not have programming like FRESH AIR or HIDDEN BRAIN or many of the syndicated shows we all enjoyed especially on weekends. It’s a very nice station, but mostly music and semi-fanatic talk shows☺
Unions deliver so much more than just a living wage. Job security and dignity are two such deliverables which union workers enjoy on a near-daily basis.
Si, se puede!
Useful pawns for the rich hate unions. They (still) think (even after that dope Reagan’s economic policies bankrupted the country) wealth trickles down. Conservatism can be a congenital mental disorder.
…and remember, you don’t need your boss’ permission to unionize.
I’m sorry I did not see a Name of who was re-instated? Long time KHSU listener from So Humb but I am unclear who who the article refers? Could someone post who it is? Will it make any difference to what we are currently hearing on KHSU daily?
“Just Saying” – I still listen to KHSU a couple times a day. Partly because I am too lazy to stream BBC or some PBS/NPR stuff from my computer so I use KHSU.
Also I think it is important to show management KHSU IS still needed, if we all totally boycott KHSU they will convince themselves it’s Not Needed. It drives me nuts there are not local reports of live people in the studio telling me in So Humb some of what’s happening in No HUmb one any given day or time during the breaks in NPR stuff and such. Terrible canned muzac and worse!
Bring back KHSU. An oasis of information in a desert of cable news.
my old friend david Crosby is playing at HSU sept 3 — be there or be RECTANGULAR
The uniform, sing-song, complacent, self-satisfied, semi-bored tone of the disembodied voices I now hear on KHSU make me feel like we have been invaded. Who are these people? Where are they? How do they decide what they are talking about? It often sounds completely random, as if “the airwaves” are just being filled for the sake of noise. I, honestly, can find almost no “shape” to it. Certainly, no soul. It is like verbal wallpaper. And, then, suddenly there is an ad for a business in Chico. Chico? I haven’t been to Chico in 20 years. Why not Omaha? Or Cleveland? Does any of it make any sense? It is just plain spooky.
KHSU is broadcasting the Chico public radio station because they don’t have anybody left to run KHSU. They fired everybody.
I though they were broadcasting Capital Public Radio. Whatever. I like it better. But I’m mainly tuned to Jefferson Public Radio anyway.
Ironically the station manager & engineer salaries were off the map & probably the single biggest expense for the station. I’m a recording engineer & his salary would be high by Hollywood standards, maybe make sense at a national network but ridiculous for Humboldt State’s little public station. There isn’t all that much to maintain once it is set up, he probably did more paperwork than engineering. Those two salaries are what killed the station.