Amy Goodman has a great column today on the tragically late George Carlin. Although the obits have focused mainly on his Seven Dirty Words sketch, Goodman talks about Carlin the dissident, railing against the power of the political/corporate machine, and his seminal role in bringing listener-supported public radio to prominence:
It was neither accident nor coincidence that this iconoclastic comic would have some of his most controversial material broadcast over Pacifica Radio’s WBAI. The Pacifica Network was founded in Berkeley, Calif., in 1949, with KPFA as the first truly listener-sponsored radio station.
Back then, radio was so overwhelmingly commercial that Pacifica founder Lew Hill and others found it worthless. As Hill wrote in his “Theory of Listener Sponsored Radio,” “If we want an improvement in radio, the basic situation of broadcasting must be such that artists and thinkers have a place to work—with freedom.”
1 Comments:
only the true die young
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